oooh Please make some more pizza for dogs!!!!

Step by step Recipe for making a pizza for your dog! Perfect for dog parties!

Recipe for Friggin Crazy Dog Pizza!

Recommended by four picky siberian huskies, just kidding! They'll eat anything!

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I used a photo of our little angel from his first trip to the beach in Wilmington, NC.

As Dawn Goldsmith says:

"Quinn looks like a mess in pretty packaging!"

The Birds... the whole Hitchcock cast!

the new home for the mailbox bird whether she likes it or not!

There is a cardinal who peers at me through my office window and taps on the glass. He wants birdseed. I keep forgetting but honestly, there are many bugs to eat! Birds are very funny and amazing to watch. I have learned much from them and had quite a lot of interaction! I have had birds knock themselves out cold flying into a window. I will gently hold them in my hands and more often than not they will wake up look at me and fly away screaming! Others get buried. Hummingbirds are very bossy! They quickly get addicted to sugar water and buzz me if they run out! I also can not put up a hanging plant without someone making a nest in it! Last year I realized a hanging plant was not getting any sun or rain under the eaves, so I put it on the deck bench. I then went into the screen room to work. As I wrote on my laptop, a little bossy willful brown Carolina wren kept flying by the screen and screaming at me. i finally went outside and looked into the flower pot and saw the nest and eggs! So, I sacrificed the plant and returned the pot to its original location! But, the worst of them all is the Carolina wren who nests each year in the newspaper slot of our mailbox! It gives me and the woman delivering the mail a heart attack when it flies out at anyone who dares open the mailbox! I put up a condo behind the mailbox and we are changing the mailbox to one without a newspaper slot -so we'll see how next year works for Ms. Dive Bomber!

Siberian Husky Jewelry

Siberian Art Jewelry (and other breeds!)

My wonderful husband R, the quiet man puts up with a lot: a demanding job, a demanding wife, 4 demanding spoiled siberian huskies, a spoiled cat and a gaggle of goldfish. Add to the mix a Mustang that refuses to cooperate, a high maintenance sports car, a home in constant need of one repair or crisis after another! It's a miracle he gets anything done, let alone remember my birthday. We got married the day after my birthday, as he figured it would help remember both days. Ha ha ha.

So, along comes my birthday and he claimed he ordered my gift but it hadn't arrived yet. Since, we both use this lame excuse with others I didn't believe him. And since he also didn't get K a gift yet, I got angry. Two weeks later, my beautiful siberian necklace arrived from Israel... I am so embarrassed, I am humbled. I have loved Amit Eshel's work for years, I first loved his drawings, they reminded me of the stylized work of the Northwest Indians (the guys who do totem poles). He recently started doing jewelry of different dog breeds, they are like none other. You become accustomed to a crappy craft quality to a lot of breed-specific art. They assume that people just want their breed and damn the quality. Not so with Amit's work, he thoroughly knows and captures each breed in a playful, whimsical manner but also beautifully, you can only marvel at his highly skilled talent. Bravo! I LOVE IT and will treasure it forever!

Web Interuptus

You just don't realize how dependent your life is on the Internet until it goes down. On Wednesday night I noticed that our network connection seemed slow and Netflix kept rebuffering but there was a new format and we wondered if perhaps it was Netflix that was messed up. Thursday morning I discovered that Netflix was fine and our router was dead.

My first reaction was to switch gears, accept the change and go with the flow. I'd do some yoga, hop on the treadmill and clean house rather than do what I'd planned –to write or do my CSS classes. That worked until I finished my coffee. I seriously started suffering from withdrawal.

I got cranky, blamed R for not heading my warnings of doom. I bemoaned the fact I lived isolated from reality and relied upon my digital world for connection and safety. No cable, no phone, no ability to call if another rabid animal or an axe murderer shows up. No way to get help for the dogs if they need to be run to the vet and what if I fall?

When R called the cable company, they scheduled a repair call for 7am Sunday morning. WTF? I then remembered that when we moved here they also scheduled a Sunday repair time and the repairman never showed up. We called and they had no record of a repair ticket... nice! But then R learned from K that you can buy your own router and the cable company will talk you through hooking it up! So, off he ran during lunch to buy a router and set it up. So, alls well that ends with me back online.

But, I do need to seriously settle that addiction problem.

Know your Enemy: Rabies!

Today, we had a rabid raccoon in the yard!
Animal control came out and shot the poor guy, then took it away. Sadly, they are not going to test it. The Officer said they only test if the animal came in contact with a person or animal! So, while I am 90% sure it had rabies (I studied the virus in University, it was my senior thesis project), we'll never know for sure. Why am I disappointed that the county will not test the raccoon? Because, it will not be recorded in the statistics.
How will we know if we have an epidemic?
We need to test all animals that are exhibiting behaviour that is odd enough to pose a threat.
Why is this my pet peeve? I have a great deal of respect for viruses, I love them! They thrive, survive and are quite brilliant for an organism that has no brain! At one time in my life, my job was to grow live AIDS virus! I grew it and harvested it in high concentrations... I knew how to treat the virus with respect -as it deserves respect.
BUT, I can honestly say I am much more terrified of the rabies virus, than I am of concentrated live AIDS virus!
Why? Because people have no respect or understanding of the lethal virus vectors hiding under their porch, in their attics or in their garden!
I decided that I will spend the day writing about why this is a really scary virus and hope you will realize that it's in your community! You may never know how many rabid animals are disposed or how bad the problem is locally, so it is a good idea to respect this enemy!


The Enemy: Rabies

• Death from rabies occurs within days or weeks of infection!
• Any mammal animal can become infected, even cattle and sheep!
• The virus evades the immune system by hiding in the nervous system, it can enter any type of nerve and then rapidly moves to the CNS, central nervous system where it multiplies.
• Once the virus enters a nerve, any treatment like vaccine is pointless and chance of death 100%
• After being exposed to the virus, a vaccine can kill the virus; but, only if the virus has not made it into the nervous system. If the bite tears open and exposes a nerve, the virus can enter the nervous system immediately and death would be inevitable.
• All warm blooded vertebrates can be infected, but only mammals pose a viable threat to humans.
• A rabies infected cow can pass the virus through milk and raw milk has been known to infect humans who drink it! 
• There is a documented case of an early-stage, infected human mother passing the virus to her baby!
• The only rodent who lives with the infection long enough to infect is the groundhog. But, a dog or cat could become infected by catching an infected rodent, thus becoming vectors.
• The virus' action is neurotoxic rather than causing direct damage. So, research aimed at interrupting binding mechanisms hold a real promise of a cure.
• You do not need to be bitten! If you get infected saliva on your hand and rub your eyes, put your finger in mouth or nose. You are delivering virus to the mucous membrane and worse, eyes deliver straight to brain!
• Animals like infected  bats, monkeys, raccoons, foxes, skunks, cattle, wolves, dogs and cats are the biggest risk to humans.
• Vaccines are available for humans and people working with animals like vets or their assistants are required to stay up to date.
• A bat can infect you without your knowledge! If you have slept in a space where a bat was present, you will be advised to take the vaccine! A bat has an numbing substance in it's saliva, so it can land on your hand and quietly take a drink of blood without waking you! So, if you can't catch the bat and test it you will need treatment.
• In the past, rabies treatment required 23 to 30 shots into the abdomen and were very painful.  Treatment now is usually 5 shots, spread out over a period of time. The first shot shot is injected at the bite site, with the rest of the shots injected into the shoulder muscle, but children may get injected in the thigh. The shots hurt like tetanus shots on discomfort.

Sun Tsu said in The Art of War: "If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win numerous (literally, "a hundred") battles without jeopardy." Think of rabies as your enemy, think of how well you know this enemy. The battle is life, we should all want to live a healthy happy life and certainly, never jeapardize another person's life through our own actions! 
Rabies is a neurotropic virus and a neuroinvasive virus; in fact, it has both high neuroinvasiveness and high neurovirulence. Meaning it infects the CNS fast and once infected, it becomes extremely deadly! Lot's of big scary words huh? 
Why Rabies is so deadly is actually quite simple: our bodies have a wonderful defense system called the immune response. Flowing through our blood is one of the best military fighting forces around, our immune system! The immune system attacks, fights and defeats almost everything that we come in contact -viruses, bacterias, etc! And it gets smarter and better as we grow older and get more exposures. Where there is no immune system? In our nervous system, that's where! The is a barrier between the blood and the brain, our spinal cord, nerves etc. But, the CNS is a very well protected area. We have a very good blood/brain barrier, very little can get past it! Sadly, a few very smart viruses like rabies and Encephilitis learned that if they can get past the blood brain barrier, they are invincible! They grow, live and replicate without fear of an attack from the immune system. The infected brain makes the host crazy and it's behavior is perfectly tuned to maximize the hosts opportunity to infect others!

Imagine a game: where the goal is for the enemy to make it to a safe zone as fast as they can. Then, they can build and plan a huge attack without fear of getting caught all from within their victim's territory. They kill from within. 


Some Interesting facts:

• Groundhogs are the only rodent in the United States that can carry rabies long enough to infect humans. Squirrels, chipmunks, rats, mice, and rabbits usually die before being able to transmit rabies virus to humans, and human disease has not been documented from these mammals. But, that does not rule out the possibility of infection by hunters or taxidermists.
• Due to a remarkable slow metabolism, opossums are highly resistant to rabies; although, never say never! This maybe because they are marsupials. An opossum is a safer pet to humans than cats or dogs! But, a possum will not fetch a stick or curl up in your lap! They are really cute though!
• The rabies virus has a cylindrical shape, while most human viruses have a cube shape, cylindrical shaped viruses are widely typical in plant and insect viruses. The rabies virus has a P protein that acts like interferon and suppresses the immune system.

Interesting, scary anecdotes:

• A delivery man told me one of the 'other' drivers found a raccoon on the road and took it for 'something' and they were afraid it was rabid and he was infected. I asked, did he have series of shots? The driver said, Oh no! He heard they were painful and he didn't want to miss work, so he decided to just wait and see what happens. -really? OMG! If he did have rabies, his whole family would be at risk, not to mention the other drivers on the road! Given the choice I would choose a few shots over death!
• Our vet has a Pet of the Month feature on their web site. Last month it was a dog who'd been bitten by a wild animal. The owner had let the rabies vaccine lapse, so they were given a choice: board the dog in an approved facility for six months or euthanize it. They chose to board their dog for six months. I would think that avoiding the cost of 6 months of boarding would be enough to get people to vaccinate their animals!

Good Resources for further reading:

• Rabies Virus on Wikipedia
• Rabies an article from British Columbia
• Rabies, a Medscape reference
• Frequently asked questions about rabies

Mukki's Favorite Liver Dog Cookies!

Rolls of liver dough baked and being sliced

My oven is still broken. But, since it's grill season, I'm in no rush to fix it! It has given a new perspective to my baking.

I thought I'd perfect a dog treat in the grill!
Here are detailed instructions for making Mukki's favorite cookies!

Mukki's Liver Treats

You can use liver but it's a pain and messy. I have discovered that Liver Pudding packs the same punch and the dogs love it! It's located in the hot dog section of you local supermarket. Look for a square block of Liver Pudding, it's near the Scrapple... Here is all you need to know...
You can probably use any of their products for this recipe. You will be adding flour and water, so it won't be as salty. Also, the ingredients aren't too weird compared to commercial dog food! When we were raw feeding our dogs, we'd give them each a 1/4 piece to amend their lack of organ meats. So, once you have the liver, pudding or scrapple, you are ready to cook!

Mukky's liver cookies

1 lb. Liver Pudding

2-3 Tablespoons Oil, they like peanut oil but any will do

2-3 cups All Purpose flour

1 cup Whole Wheat flour

2 teaspoons yeast

1/4 cup wheat germ

brewer's yeast (optional -high in Vitamin B)

garlic powder (optional)

1 egg, with crushed shell (optional)

enough water or broth to form dough

I use a Kitchen Aide mixer but you can use a food processor or mix and knead by hand. If you mix by hand you might. If you do mix by hand, I'd suggest using a potato masher on the liver pudding. Basically, you mix all ingredients until it forms a ball of dough, then knead it like bread, 2 minutes at speed 2 or 10 minutes by hand. Next, allow to rise covered for an hour. Cut into pieces and role into long ropes. Bake at 350 degrees, 15-20 minutes until browned. Use a long knife and slice into pieces, leave in warm oven until dry through... may take all night. If these aren't completely dry, they might get moldy. But, if you have 4 siberian huskies, they will never be around long enough to get moldy. You can give them to your dogs early but cool first!

Are you using your backyard grill? Warm grill with pizza stone and use a teflon sheet, close top and bake until golden. Use a sharp knife or pastry cutter, then leave in warm grill after turning off to dry the cookies. Don't worry about the burnt bottoms, your dogs will find them more tasty!