Wow, we're already into 2009 and, shamefully, I have to catch up to summer of 2008! Well as you'll see Murphy and I didn't have a terribly exciting summer, so you haven't missed much. In July the highlight was Murphy's 8th birthday. He's EIGHT! I have not come to terms with this yet...

But as you'll see Murphy has no concerns about his age, he just wants to obsessively wait in front of the oven as his wheat free cake bakes, then chow down on said cake and check out his presents.

This year I didn't take pictures of the whole process of making the cake as it's a repeat of a cake I made a few years back. When your dog can't eat dairy or wheat or...input just about any other food here...it's pretty much impossible to come up with a new recipe. And frankly, if this one didn't make him sick, why try something that might? So to the right we have the cakes I made - two layers each for a cake for Murphy (the bone) and a cake for me (the fire hydrant). Because really, if you don't eat a fire hydrant shaped cake on your dog's birthday, are you really celebrating it? The "icing" was just peanut butter and margarine.

So finding gifts for Murphy is about as difficult as finding a cake for him, as he doesn't really *need* anything, and he can't even have treats as I've limited his food strictly to his regular kibble. But I had come across a cute collar and leash set back before Christmas that I saved for his birthday. Murphy was instantly intrigued:

I also made a donation to WSPA for Murphy's birthday. As I've mentioned before they do great, diverse, work, from neutering strays in the Canadian North to funding orangutan sanctuaries in Borneo to lobbying internationally for animal welfare.

So once Murphy had had his celebration I sat down to enjoy my perfectly reasonable fire hydrant cake. Murphy had other ideas:

Above he's clearly thinking "My cake, part 2!". Unfortunately Murphy doesn't realize that berries seem to be the kiss of death for his skin and these therefore signal that he's not getting any of it. He wasn't easily convinced:

That's his subtle beg, where he gets into your space, so you can't ignore him and, in his mind, are forced to acknowledge him with a piece of cake. This never works for him...except for during his birthday, apparently, as this next photo tells the tale:

It looks like I'm trying to floss his teeth, but I must have been feeding a piece of my cake. I just love the ecstatic look in his eyes; "MMM...POTATO CAKE!"

So that's it for the excitement in July, or more accurately, all the excitement that I remember based on the photos I took at the time! These last couple of photos are just cute shots I took one evening while watching tv:

This is the pose Murphy strikes when he's displeased that I'm either watching tv or on the computer. He has a weird ability to lie in just the right spot so that I can only see the tips of his front paws from the living room, which always makes me wonder if he peeks out at me when I'm not looking. The photo below depicts the exasperation that this posture relays to me:

So that's it for July. I have tons more pictures from 2008 to sort through, but think I'm going to slowly put together the updates over the coming weeks/months, to spread things out.

Email me!

Meghan

Here's the link to the next update: Fall 2008
Here's the link to the previous update: June 2008

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