Holiday Dinner # Chewy Influencer

Hi Everybody,
Mom is sick so she asked me to do our Chewy review while she relaxes. She says she has lots of holiday posts to catch up on, so she'll be back in a couple days. 

Even when Mom is sick, we pups have to eat. This year instead of cooking Christmas dinner for us, she relied on Chewy to give us a special holiday meal. They sent us this Victor Grain-Free Turkey and Sweet Potato Stew.

 This is really good stuff. It's made with turkey, turkey broth, sweet potatoes, peas, egg and flaxseed.  It helps with healthy digestion and muscle health. Plus the flaxseed is a source of omega fatty acids that are important to keeping our coats healthy and shiny.

We had never eaten Victor food before so Mom did some research and says that it gets excellent reviews.  It may not exactly be Mom's home cooking, but this tastes really good. In fact we're having it tomorrow for New Years, too. It's that good.

Chewy sent us a bunch of cans of Victor Turkey Stew at no cost in exchange for our review. You can take it from me, Fudge, you'll like this food.

 Now all of us want to wish all of you a really, really Happy New Year.
From your pals:
Mackey

Sydney

Sebastian

 Norma Jean

Noah

 Lola

Bailey

Tess

 and me, Fudge

 We'll see you in 2018.
 

Happy Holidays

Sorry we've been AWOL. Someone gave me the flu for Christmas. We'll be back soon.

Umm Umm Good # Chewy Influencer

I'm always looking for something to help my boys with their intestinal problems. So far I've been fortunate with Fudge and Sebastian. They're both eating well and the output is good. Noah is another story. Just when I think I've found the magic potion that will help him eat, have normal stools and put on weight, we find ourselves back at the starting line.

I've resorted to making his dog food and making kefir. They both help him, but I learned about another item that also seems to help.

I first read about bone broth on the Wild Dingo Blog a few years ago. After reading her post, I tried making it for my dogs. It was easy to make and they all loved it. But in our modern life, we don't have a lot of bones. I buy boneless chicken and beef and even boneless pork chops. The one item that has bones is turkey and we usually cook two or three turkeys a year.

Just before Thanksgiving I read an article on the Dog Cancer Blog and it reminded me that I should make some more bone broth. When Rob cleaned the turkey, he put the bones in the crockpot and I followed the directions in the article. The broth came out great and after feeding it to the dogs for a couple days, I froze a few containers.

My dogs like bone broth and it is supposed to be good for them but I don't always have bones to use in making it. Now the problem is solved. Our selection from Chewy this month is  The Honest Kitchen Turkey Bone broth with Ginger.  

 This couldn't be easier to use. Just add the powder to hot, not boiling water and stir. Then serve to your dog either as a nourishing warm drink or over their kibble, as I do.

My dogs thought this was absolutely great tasting. We've liked everything we've tried from the Honest Kitchen and this is no exception. It's made with turkey broth, ginger, kale and lentils. It saves hours of cooking and straining and I don't need to take up freezer space.

Is it helping Noah? Well, it's not harming him and he gets to have a little variety in his meal.

Chewy sent us a container of The Honest Kitchen Bone Broth at no cost to us in exchange for our honest review

Special Wishes

We wish each of you a safe and peaceful Solstice.

Dear Santa

Dear Santa,
My name is Norma Jean Portie and I need to explain a few things. I try really hard to be a good dog but sometimes I forget, or things just don't work out the way I thought they would. The past couple weeks have been really hard and Mom kept telling me that you were watching, but last night she got mad and said that Santa is skipping our house this year because I was bad.

You see it all started about a month ago. Every spring when the mud comes, Dad puts straw in the yard to help keep our feet clean. This year he decided to get a head start and he bought straw around Halloween and spread it in the yard. I went out and played with the others but suddenly I got really, really itchy and I couldn't stop scratching. I scratched and chewed on myself all day and all night. Mom and Dad would yell at me to stop scratching, but I couldn't stop. Mom gave me allergy pills but I still couldn't stop scratching and I was starting to get sores from all the scratching, so we went to visit Dr B.

He told us that I'm allergic to a little mite that lives in straw. Other years when we've had straw, it was later in the year and there had been cold weather that killed the mites but this year it wasn't cold and the mites were biting me. Dr B gave me some strong allergy pills and Mom started giving me some baths with medicated shampoo. The shampoo had to stay on my skin for ten minutes, so I had to stand in the bathtub all wet and soapy for ten minutes. Do you know how long ten minutes is?? It's almost forever. 

I couldn't go in the back yard where the straw is, so Mom walked me in the front yard with Fudge and I had to eat upstairs with him too. I couldn't run and play with the rest of my pack. But after a month of all this, I'm feeling so much better. I'm not itchy and my sores have all healed up. Then we had some cold weather that maybe killed the straw mites. So a couple days ago Dad took me into the back yard to run with my sisters. It was great to be free again and I didn't scratch when I came inside. So the next day he took me out again and when he wasn't looking I rolled in the straw. Mom was not happy. She picked all the pieces of straw out of my coat and talked to herself while she was doing it. It's not good when she talks to herself out loud. So now I can still go in the yard but they watch me and yell if I start to roll. Sorry Santa.

Next is the blanket thing. You see, Mom has this soft, warm pink blanket that she likes to keep on the couch in the living room. She puts it over her feet at night when she's knitting and sometimes she takes a nap and pulls it up around her. When Mom isn't using her blanket she let's us curl up on it and it's so comfy. The best time to snooze on the blanket is just after Mom takes it out of the dryer when it's still nice and warm. The other day I saw Mom take it out of the dryer and carry it into the living room. Then she went to do something in the kitchen. I thought this was my chance to beat the others to the couch, so I ran fast and jumped onto the couch. How did I know that Mackey was already curled up in the blanket? She's pretty small and I didn't see her there. I didn't really look  but there was plenty of room for both of us.  Mackey let out a scream like I was killing her. I hardly touched her. Mom came flying in and told me to get down and said Mackey was there first. Honest, Santa, there was room for both of us. Mackey just doesn't like to share.

When I got down from the couch, I didn't notice that my foot got caught in Mom's yarn. Really, I didn't notice. I know not to touch Mom's yarn. Sydney is the only one who doesn't understand the rules about Mom's yarn. I dragged the yarn all thru the living room into the kitchen and Mom wasn't too happy about it. I didn't mean to do it and it didn't hurt the bird she was making,honest it didn't. See...

The really bad part happened yesterday. Mom spent all afternoon making Christmas cookies. Some are for you, Santa. She got kind of tired, so she put them on the kitchen table to decorate them. She made six or seven dozen cookies and they smelled delicious. She even put sprinkles on them.

 Then it was time for dog dinner, so we all went to the garage to eat. We had good dinner with fish stew and broccoli on it. After dinner we went back upstairs and Mom and Dad went to fold some laundry and talk about stuff. I only meant to look at the cookies, honest, but they smelled so good. I grabbed one and it tasted wonderful. There were a lot of them, so I didn't think Mom would miss a couple, so I started eating them and I couldn't stop. I knocked a few on the floor and Fudge and Sebastian gobbled them up. Then Mom walked in the room and yelled my name, NORMA JEAN!!!! I got down really fast but I took one last cookie with me, a snowman with sprinkles.

 Mom looked at her cookies and told Dad that I'd eaten about a dozen cookies with help from the boys. Dad said she shouldn't have left them on the table, but I don't think that helped my situation. She put all the cookies in a container with a top and told me over and over that I was a bad girl. Then she said that I should wear the naughty shirt. I can't, it's too little. 

Last night after the cookie incident, Mom said that Santa would probably skip our house this year because of me. I'm really sorry, Santa. I try to be good. Sometimes no matter how hard I try, it just doesn't work. Please don't skip us Santa, the rest of the pack has been pretty good and I'll try harder.

We love you Santa.
Norma Jean

What The Heck Is An Ort?

What do you do with your orts? I keep mine in a jar.

OK, like most people I only recently learned that I have orts. The dictionary definition of ort is a scrap. Any crafts person has lots and lots of orts. I have yarn scraps  and embroidery thread scraps and sewing thread scraps. Those pesky little ends that we cut off when we finish. As much as I tried to keep them under control till I could throw them out, some always escaped and wound up on the carpet or tucked in the chair cushions or even on the dogs. I wore a few too.

Then one day  a fellow knitter mentioned her ort jar and I had to look it up to see what she was talking about. Then everything changed. I found a tall glass jar. Any container will work but glass allows me to see all the pretty colors I've used and reminds me of certain projects that were fun or meaningful.

I try to keep my ort jar going for a full year, then at the end of that time, I move my orts to a suet feeder in the tree so that the birds can use the scraps in building their nests. Birds are attracted to bright colors so it's fun to see what they choose first.

This year my jar started to overflow before the end of the year so we filled two suet feeders and now I can start over with an empty jar for the new year.

Recycling those threads seems like a better idea than throwing them in the trash. What do you do with your orts?