Mister Bones and I had a very productive day today: we made peanut butter dog cookies! They're shaped like hearts and stars, and I've been meaning to make him some since he ran out of the garlic peanut butter cookies I bought him at Baked and Wired. Using Milk Bones smeared with peanut butter for dessert really doesn't cut it.

Often, when people find out that I bake Mister Bones cookies for dessert they freak out about how spoiled he is. Actually, he kind of isn't. There's context. This all started when my parents adopted him from a shelter near where we live. Mister Bones had spent his time at the shelter eating a very carefully constructed diet on a very carefully maintained routine to gain fifty pounds. For part of that time, he lived with the cats instead of the dogs, and we think this may be why he purrs and cleans himself like a cat. When he was brought to the shelter, he weighed only forty pounds, as whoever had owned him had, among other things, deliberately starved him to less than half his body weight. His ideal body weight is one hundred pounds. So, when you do the math, he still needed to gain ten pounds when my parents brought him home.

By that time he was eating normal portions of actual dog food instead of the small portions of rice and broth they started him out with, so it was easier. Part of constructing a food routine to deal with the starvation and other issues involved giving him midday snack cookies when people came home or when people ate lunch at home, as well as giving him some kind of dessert cookie. This works better if the dessert cookie is not the same as the midday snack cookie (Milk Bones).

Unfortunately, a lot of the dog treats on the market are crap and bad for your dog, even if they've had a normal diet history. Lots of preservatives, chemicals, unidentifiable animal parts, and the like. Sometimes, depending on the origin of the treat or the animals, they can be more outright malicious. Mister Bones wouldn't have even been able to digest some of the more normal things, as his system had adapted to no food and then to the simple diet required when weaning him back onto food. As it is, we've had him for almost two years, and there are still a lot of foods that make him sick which wouldn't make other dogs sick. Hence, baking him peanut butter dessert cookies, with only a few healthy ingredients.

Peanut Butter Dog Cookies

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
  
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
  
• 1 cup soy milk
  
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
  
• Combine all, knead, roll out to 1/4 inch, cut out shapes, and bake at 375˚F for 15 to 20 minutes
  

You can (maybe) substitute skim milk for the soy milk, but it's the kind of thing you should definitely consult a vet about - a lot of dogs (and cats, despite the stereotype) don't take to lactose well. The peanut butter absolutely shouldn't be crunchy, and we actually use the Simply JIF, as it's also easier on the digestive system.

Speaking of peanut butter - the easiest way I've found to measure peanut butter ever is to submerge it in liquid. In this case, but measuring out the 1 cup of soy milk first into a 2 cup measuring cup, and then dropping in large chunks of peanut butter until the soy milk level is at 2 cups. For this to work the milk has to completely cover the peanut butter, and you'll have one cup of milk and one cup of peanut butter by volume. Also, instead of scraping peanut butter off the sides of the measuring cup, it will all pour out smoothly and quickly.

Speaking of pets and food, the ASPCA is a highly valuable resource concerning what kinds of foods and plants are and aren't poisonous to different animals. Sometimes people are surprised at what can hurt their pets; their Animal Poison Control Center has a lot of information on what can be poisonous, what to do if your pet is poisoned, and also an order form for free safety information/materials towards the bottom of the linked page.

One:
Mister Bones is an advanced cuddler.

The old song and dance: I would wake up in the middle of a nap, and decide I would be more comfortable if I could breathe properly. It's easier to breathe when there isn't a dog half on top of your ribcage, so I would scoot a couple of inches over. Mister Bones would wake up about ten seconds later, and scoot three inches over farther than I did, and end up half on top of my rib cage again. This would go on until there was not enough room on the bed for me to properly lay down, and so I would bribe him with a milk bone to get up and move over back to his side of the bed. Then it would all start over again.

The new song and dance: He doesn't wait ten seconds to wake up anymore. Sometimes he doesn't even wake up. He just scoots over at the same time I do, so that even while I am in the process of scooting, there is a dog half on top of my ribcage.

Mister Bones is more than an advanced cuddler; he is a barnacle. The photo attached to this post is not staged - he grabbed my arm with his paws, pulled it under his head, and commenced napping.

Two:
Would you like to know a way to find out the diameter of a pipe that is easier than trying to remove melted-on insulation from a twelve length inch of the pipe?

Of course you would.

You can remove the melted-on insulation from half an inch of the pipe, wrap a twist tie around the pipe, measure the length of the twist tie, and then divide that by π.

If there is a sprinkler involved, and the pipe happens to be attached to a faucet that no longer turns off, this will also prevent you from getting any more wet than is absolutely necessary. Ha.

First, a hair update:

Remember when I said the cut was good enough? I lied. It's horrible. Horrible and brutal, and it's going to take a long time to grow out enough to be okay. It will take longer to grow out enough for me to go looking for another stylist who can handle a razor. I've already gotten some recommendations, though.

Second, an interlude of dog blogging:

Today Mister Bones and I went on an expedition to find balls for his found ball collection. We only found one - a Darth Vader Basketball. He played with it in the front yard - running with his back legs and controlling the ball with his front legs and mouth. I had to go retrieve it from the street, the neighbours yard, the street again, and the other neighbours yard. Finally he punctured it! And then his mouth got stuck, because he'd inadvertently created a vacuum with his teeth. But my dad and I pulled it off and deflated some of the air so it wouldn't happen again. After that he took a break and had some ice water before going back to closely supervising my dad as he washed the car. Mister Bones helps my dad wash the car by sitting in the backseat after the backseat has been vacuumed.
Also, Mister Bones recently got a doggy pool, but more about that later.

Third, there also may be more about this later:

By 'this', I mean something very loosely (barely) connected with the video.

Fourth, dispatches from church:

We're going trilingual soon, which is cool. The third language will be vietnamese. Also, the vietnamese community in my parish recently ordered a statue from Italy and placed it in the chapel where the tabernacle is located. There are two candle boxes on either side, which means that now we are finally a real Catholic Church, because we weren't before. The end.

This is Cardboard Barack Obama. He is already the star of a youtube video (after the jump) in which my friend J-- interviews him about important current events. We think the slightly low quality makes it funnier.

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