Banana Bones

I am way overdue for another edition of Kat's Crazy Kitchen. Back when I announced the Kat's Crazy Kitchen feature, Mya of The Painter Pack asked me if I could feature a recipe with three ingredients or less because as Mya put it, "so my cooking challenged mommy can do it". Well, Mya, I've got a super simple recipe for you today. My mom first got the idea from Khyra, just to give credit where credit is due.

Here's what you do. First get some bananas that are past the point where your human wants to eat them. That means that they are at the perfect point of mushiness.

Then get your masher and mash up the mushy bananas.

Next get some plain non-fat yogurt and put a couple spoonfuls into the bowl.

Stir the banana and the yogurt up. Now get your bones ready. Mom lines them up in a bowl like this.

Scoop out the banana mixture and fill up your bones.

Next have your humans put the bones in the freezer and let them get completely frozen, then it's time for you to enjoy them!

You can even do variations of this recipe. Sometimes my mom puts the mixture in our kongs instead of bones. Or sometimes she uses pumpkin instead of yogurt. So you can do whatever you think sounds tasty.

Just don't forget the best part, cleaning out the containers so they can go into the recycling bin.


Enjoy!
Kat

Steve's Photo Shoot

Here are some pictures from my photo shoot that I mentioned on Monday.

Can you see my snow nose in this picture? I get a hint of one in the winter.

Finally, Mom said "treat?"

Woo at ya later,
Steve

I'm not depressed!

I'm interrupting Steve's scheduled blog post about his photo shoot to talk about my snow. That's right, I said SNOW! Last week, I posted that I was very sad that it seemed like all the other bloggers had snow and I didn't. Well, guess what? Saturday I got some snow! Mom said it was more like ice pellets, but whatever. My yard was white and I was happy. I was running around like a crazy dog and Mom came outside to video, so I stopped.

We have to make sure the parents have to work hard for their videos. (You can see in the background where we have lots of stumps from Dad's lumberjacking in the back yard.)

The snow is gone now, but at least I feel better that I got to have at least one more run in the snow this year.

Kat

My new furniture

Back when we lived in Texas, we had a patio set and I really enjoyed laying on it and watching over my backyard kingdom. Here's a picture of me on that table.

I also liked standing on the grill, as evident in this picture of Kat, Ulee, and me.

When we left Texas, we had to live in an apartment up here, so Mom gave away the patio set to one of her friends in Texas and Dad sold the grill. After six months of apartment living, we moved into our house and I was really disappointed to see that a patio set and grill did not magically appear. I have a much bigger yard now, but no good vantage point for surveying, especially since Dad blocked off the stairs to get on top of the clubhouse after Kat jumped off the roof.

Luckily, a couple weekends ago, Mom went to Lowes and found a table and chairs that she liked and they weren't very expensive. So that night, she and Dad went back to Lowe's and purchased the stuff.

Now this is more like it.

Dad got a new grill too, but he put it up against the house and not where I can stand on it. I'll have to fix that soon.

While I was up on the table, Mom took a bunch of pictures of me, so I'll share my photo shoot with you all in my next post.
Steve

March Madness!

Some of our long-time readers know this, but back when we lived in Texas, we helped out with Adopt a Husky of Dallas.  We even had a foster sister for a while, Ulee.  I really liked Ulee.  She was fun to play with, but I won't tell you what Kat thought.  (It wasn't good.)  Ulee was adopted and became a California girl and gets to go to day camp every day and go to the beach a lot.  She's really living it up.

Anyway, even though we moved away, we still stay in contact with our pals at the rescue.  Mom does their newsletter each month and sometimes Kat and I pose for pictures for the newsletter if Mom doesn't have anything from the rescue volunteers.

For March, AHDI is doing a March Madness fundraiser.  Anyone can play, so we thought we'd let our blog pals know, in case any of you are big basketball followers.  The details are below.

Woo,

Steve

March Madness is No Match for our Huskies, but we’re gonna try!

 

Please join us for the first annual Adopt a Husky March Madness Tournament.

You don’t need to know a thing about college basketball. You just fill out your bracket by mascot, school colors or flipping a coin. Or maybe your dog picks the winner! The cause is great, and we need a big jumpstart (pun intended) for our first year.

 

Kelli Knight, is our first commissioner. A basketball coach, and former player, Kelli is ready to lead our husky pack through the dance.

 

Kelli’s email address is: commish2k9@gmail.com  

 

Please contact anyone you know who would spend $20 to help rescue dogs. We can’t tell you how full the shelters are. It’s too sad.

 

For our entries, half the money will go to the winner and half to Adopt a Husky. So play, donate and talk smack. And, since we’ll have a lot of people who are more familiar with huskies and dogs than basketball, you hardcore players may have a pretty good shot.

 

Please start spreading the word to anyone who loves rescue, dogs, huskies, basketball, or may just be a soft touch. And for all of you who can’t foster, but are always willing to help, here’s a great opportunity.

 

Send us your email info if you’re interested in joining us! Let us know how you found out about the tournament. When it's time to fill out the brackets, the Commish will howl.

 

Tail Wags and Wooo Wooo Wooo!

I'm depressed

I'm really depressed.  I have been working really hard this evening to catch up on blogs.  I have read so many blogs with pictures and movies of pups playing in their new snow.  Then I went back to Google reader and I see that I still have tons of blogs about snow!  (I'm not sure if you can read it in this picture.)How much can a girl take?  It's been sunny and in the mid-50s here.  That's not snow weather.  We're even getting flowers popping out of the ground.  Where's my snow?

Kat

Me

The Bumpass Kitties (because I'm sure the hounds had nothing to do with it) asked about my welfare while the furry beasts were at the dog ranch and Mom and Dad were in Oregon. Thank you so much for asking! Actually, I got to have the house to myself. I have my own electronic feeder, so it spits out food for me twice per day and I also have a big water fountain so I always have freshly filtered water to drink. Before they left, Mom also gave me a big can of Friskies.

It was a wonderful weekend. First I pulled down the curtains in the office. The curtains are just the scarf kind and I get in trouble frequently for scratching at them, but since I was home alone, I just scratched at them until they were completely messed up.

Then I got all my toys out of my room. Normally most of my toys have to stay in my room so the furry beasts don't get them, but there weren't any furry beasts!

I also got to enjoy all of my favorite sleeping positions. I've included a sample below. (Just one though because I'm working on a post about sleeping.)
It's so nice to sleep without a furry beast nose in your butt.

So Bumpass Kitties, I was just fine. But it's nice to have friends looking out for you.

Meow,
Wilbur

On Vacation

Mom and Dad went to Oregon this weekend, without Kat or me.  (More on that in another post.)  Kat and I went on vacation at our new cool boarding place.  It's a really fun place.  We have an indoor/outdoor run and we got to bring our own toys, which we never got to do at the place in Texas.  Mom even made us Kongs to get each day.  We also get off-leash playtime three times per day, just Kat and me.  The humans at the ranch took pictures of us and sent them to Mom via email.  She likes that because she can check on us via the iPhone.

Here are some really cool action shots of us.  Doesn't it look like I am winning?

Finally, here's a picture of us just hanging out.  We're a bit tired after that wrestling.  I also have a dirty face.  I'm going for the tough guy look.

Steve

Steve's Tricks, Part 2

I hope you enjoyed my tricks from the last post.  Today I'm going to show you some of my other tricks that I do to get treats.  I know several variations of the "shake" command, as well as up and down.  However, my best trick is my lightning fast reflexes where I catch treats out of mid-air.

Mom says I should learn more tricks that are much more impressive.  She really liked the "bang, bang" that Keva and Nebo do, but I think I'm fine, just the way I am.  Really.  Just give me treats and I'll do... something.

Steve

Steve's Tricks, Part 1

Kat's not the only one with iSight camera movies.  The other day when Mom was sick, she took some videos of me doing my tricks on the bed.  I'm going to share my tricks with you in two segments.

This video illustrates my two favorite tricks, accepting chin scratches and enjoying tummy rubs.  I don't need treats to do those tricks, that's how good I am at them.

I know that Nebo and Keva do a lot of great tricks, but I don't think they do the tummy or chin ones that I do.

Steve

Watchin' Movies

Today I was catching up on blogs and the Thundering Herd posted a video.  It featured some digging, one of my favorite topics.  Mom activated the iSight camera on the computer and took some footage of me watching the video.

Thundering Herd, keep up the good work.  Your video should win an Oscar tomorrow night.  I was on the edge of my seat!

Kat

Our tracks

Ari posted about the tracks that she had found in Maine. She posted one of her tracks, along with moose and bobcat tracks. That gave us the idea to post this picture that Mom took before Christmas.

I'm not sure if that is a Kat track or a Steve track, but it's for sure not a Wilbur track.

Steve

Motivating Mom

Sometimes I have to really work hard to motivate Mom to get up and let me outside.  Today she has the day off, but isn't feeling all that great, so she was still in bed this morning at 8AM!  That is just more than I can take.  Plus, she wasn't even sleeping, she was playing with her computer.  An outrage!  So I decided to get her up and make her let me outside.  It's all documented for you here.

First, I give Mom a stern look.  Obviously I'm giving her the chance to get up right at that moment.

Since she didn't listen, I have to make a really cute face and see if that works.

I still didn't have any luck with that, so I had to go in for the kill... constant kisses all over the face.

My kisses technique always works.

Kat

Valentines for You!

Iditarunning

Several pups have been posting pictures of themselves running. We took Mom and Dad for a run last night and decided to post a video of us running. I'm sure you will all be impressed with my great speed, strength at pulling, and form.

Disclaimer: If you get motion sickness, you might not want to watch this video. Mom has apparently been studying the Bourne Identity film style or something because her video stability is horrible!

Steve

Iditawalking

We are participating in the Iditawalk this year.  It's where we walk 30 minutes per day until we have walked 1049 minutes, one minute for every mile of the Iditarod.  We have been featured a couple times on the Team Sibermal blog.  Check out the link in our sidebar.

Steve doesn't like his Gentle Leader, so Mom bought him an Easy Walk Harness.  He wore it for the first time today.  He looked like a total goof ball.  I tried to pretend that I didn't know him and Mom was giggling so much, she could barely talk, as you can hear in this video.

Later on during the walk, Dad stopped to adjust Steve's harness and I took a roll in the grass.  Mom says I was messing with my Gentle Leader, but honestly, I was just taking a break and most definitely not trying to take off my GL.
Happy Monday!

Kat

Tagged by Huffle

Huffle tagged us to play photo tag. We're supposed to post the fifth picture from the fifth folder. We used Mom's flickr account and this is what we found.

This is our Aunt Kari. That's Wilbur on her shoulder. This picture was taken in April 2005, just a couple weeks after Mom found Wilbur at the Fort Worth Animal Shelter. Wilbur had taken his first plane ride to fly with Mom to Missouri to help Aunt Kari plan our wedding. Our Missouri grandparents don't like animals in the house, so Mom had to promise that Wilbur would stay in the basement. Wilbur worked his magic though and before you know it, he was running all over the house. He made several trips to Missouri after that and even stayed there for two weeks while Mom was on a business trip (that's in the pre-Dad days when Mom didn't want to leave Wilbur home alone). Can you believe that our Missouri grandparents, who don't like animals in the house, actually drove to Texas to pick Wilbur up and take him home with them? Obviously Wilbur's cute face did it.

Too bad he grew up!
Woo,
Steve and Kat

New Blog

For those of you who live in the Pacific Northwest, we have some news for you. Our mom has started a new blog, documenting the trails we have visited. She has been having trouble finding information about which trails allow dogs, so she decided to start writing about the ones we have used. So if you need some good trail advice, check it out. So far she only has two trails on there, but she promises to put up more soon.

It's called: Pacific Northwest: On Leash!

If you live around here and want to post a review of your favorite trails, just let us know. Otherwise, stay tuned to read about our favorites! We'll be talking about trails for hiking, snowshoeing, biking, and just about anything else we do.

In other news, if your blog uses the comment form where you can select your account at the bottom, we can't leave comments. Other dogs can, but apparently our mom is retarded and can't figure it out. So we are not ignoring you on purpose.

Hiking in the snow

On Saturday, we packed up the 4Runner and went to the mountains to go snowshoeing. When we got there, the trail was packed down so Mom and Dad didn't wear their snowshoes and we just hiked.

Here's a view of the trail.

We stopped for lunch and Kat and I camped out on a snow mound. Mom decided it was a good time to take a quick picture over her shoulder.

The ground and trees were covered with ice crystals. I tried to take a picture for you.

We decided to take Mom and Dad down to the ice caves. Here we are leading the way.

We got to the bridge we needed to cross to get to the caves and look what we discovered!

The bridge had washed out! I tried to look for where it went, but I didn't see it.

Mom made us pose for a picture.

Finally when we were almost back to the car, Mom made us pose again. (We're so cute, she just can't help it.)

We like it better when Dad is holding cookies.

I complain a lot when I have to put my backpack on, but really, I love it!!
Steve

Walking with Steve and Kat

We've been horrible at blogging this week. It's been over a week since we posted! How horrible!

Anyway, last Monday, Mom was off work, so we went for a walk. We decided to video it.

We'll be back soon to show you what we did yesterday!
Steve and Kat

Awards and other news

I have been pretty lax about blogging this week. There is a lot to catch up on.

First, we have received some awards. Khyra gave us this one:Obviously she thinks we have a 5-star blog and we think the same about her!

The OP Pack, Tibby, and Kelsey gave us this award.This award is the Bloggy Friends award. Our favorite things about blogging are the friends we have made, so we really appreciate this award.

Also, King Sky Boy inducted me into his Royal Siberian Court. I am now a knight! How cool is that? My official title is Sir Steve of the Washington Woos. I am really excited.

And finally, I thought I'd end with this picture. Ozzie likes to talk about how the lap of his 1973 male is really great, I am fond of the feet of my 1980 male.Happy Friday!
Steve

The 4Cs - Canine Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hey pups! Welcome to the first installment of Kat's Crazy Kitchen! Today we are making Canine Chocolate Chip Cookies. Since this is my first episode, I had a bit of a disagreement with my producer. It went something like this.

Me: Producer Mom, I would like to put all of the ingredients in little bowls, just like on the shows on the Food Network.
Mom: Kat, I don't want to wash all those dishes.
Steve: I'll do it!
Me: Steve, stay out of this. It's not your show.
Steve: I'm just trying to be helpful.
Me: Whatever, you just want to lick the bowls.
Steve: That is not true!

At that point Steve and I started wrestling and Mom said she won the battle. I agreed to compromise with her and we just took a picture of everything in packages.Here are the ingredients you will need:
1.5 cups brown rice flour
1.5 cups oat flour
Note: You can use whole wheat flour if you desire and do not have any food allergies.
1 egg
1 cup carob chips (Do NOT use real chocolate chips.)
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix everything together and it will look something like this.Now preheat your oven to 350F. Scoop cookies onto an ungreased cookie sheet. The cookies do not expand while baking, so you can put them close together. Here's what we did.Now bake the cookies for about 20 minutes or until they are just golden brown. I let Steve make a guest appearance and show you what to do while the cookies are baking.Once your cookies are done baking, you'll want to let them cool on a wire rack. Here's me with the freshly baked cookies.Once you let the cookies cool completely, it's time to do a taste test. Steve and I are always ready for that step.The cookies were delicious! This recipe makes about 40 cookies, if you make them with balls about the diameter of a quarter. Next time, Mom said she would flatten the cookie dough before baking so they weren't balls and were more like cookies.

I can't wait to find out how your baking goes. Stay tuned for my next recipe!
Kat

Cookies and New Blog Feature

Hey pups! Kat here. I have a big announcement. I have a new blog series for 2009. It's called "Kat's Crazy Kitchen". Mom was going to call it "Kat's Krazy Kitchen" but Dad told her that was a bad idea for some reason. (He didn't like "Khat's Khrazy Khitchen" either, Khyra.) I'm not sure how regularly I will post new cooking recipes, but I promise it will be at least once per month. As a sneak peek, I'm going to reveal the first project. This weekend, we will be making good, old-fashioned Canine Chocolate Chip Cookies. Yum!

Speaking of treats, cookies, and baking, we don't want anypup to think that we have completely started eating Mom's treats. Oh, no, we are still forever fans of Happy Hearts Cookies. In fact, we have something new to share about the powers of the Happy Hearts Cookie. I'm sure you pups have heard the old adage:

A Happy Hearts Cookie a Day,
Keeps the Ole Vet at Bay!

We had heard that but we thought that was just some old mom's tale (especially the part about just one cookier per day). Well, apparently there IS something to it! You see, Steve and I each get two small Happy Hearts and one big Happy Heart in our Kong every day. Yesterday, when we went to the vet for our checkup, the vet told Mom and Dad (and I quote), "Steve and Kat look great. I wouldn't change a thing!" So obviously it's the Happy Hearts! So for all you pups who's parents complain about spending too much money at the vet, just get some Happy Hearts cookies. They are like vitamins! Steve has also done some experimental tests and has determined that the correct dosage of Happy Hearts is 1-1000 cookies per day, depending on how good you are and how good your parents are.

Well, that's it, pups. I hope you all are having a great week!
Kat
PS. I've added an area on the sidebar where I will keep links to all of my recipes. That way, when you're in the mood for cookies, you know where to send your Mom (or Dad).

Reader Requests

Back when we posted about our Christmas presents, a few pups asked to see pictures of us in our harnesses. We never want to deny our fans, so here you go!

Handsome me:Cute Kat:Here we are with Dad getting ready to go biking. We have Walky Dogs and they work great for us. We are always VERY excited to go for a bike ride, if you can't tell from this picture.We also got requests for our Wooscotti recipe from our new readers. Well pups, you're in luck! Kat provided excellent illustrated directions for Wooscotti back in the summer. Check out Part 1 and Part 2. Trust me, Wooscotti is easy to make and delicious!

That's it pups! We love your requests, so keep 'em coming!
Steve

We've been published

If you see this magazine, you should buy it.

Then go to page 23 where you will see this:

That's right!  We got our wooscotti recipe published!  We are feeling pretty awesome.  (We also thought we were going to win a prize, but that hasn't arrived yet so maybe Mom is hiding it.)

Steve and Kat

Last Christmas Video

This will be our last videos of this Christmas. Mom thought we should try to open presents, so she wrapped up these presents for us. (Thank you very much Forget Sit and Stay gang!) She didn't have any Christmas paper, so our presents are actually wrapped in wedding paper. We didn't care. The paper had hearts on it so we just thought Mom was trying to tell us that she loves us!

Anyway, we didn't really know what we were supposed to do with the presents. I was much better at it than Kat!

Inside were these really cool stuffies!

I especially like my santa and have been really trying to eat the puff off the end of his hat. So far I've been unsuccessful, but I don't give up easily!
Steve

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! Did you all make it until midnight? We took a lot of naps, but technically we were awake at midnight. Then we went to bed and stayed asleep until 6:30! Can you believe that? We never sleep in like that.

2008 was a big year for us. We went snowshoeing for the first time. We had our first camping experience. We moved into our house and got a huge yard so we can run and dig (Mom doesn't like that last one). We also starred in our first commercial and learned about the wonders of Dairy Queen. We had lots of other exciting times as well and we can't wait to see what we get to do in 2009!

Steve, Kat, and Wilbur