I had some time on my hands last night (which, translated, means I was too tired to do much of anything ;) so I decided to get a jumpstart on today, and bake some dog cookies.
I chose one of my easier recipes (Crunchy Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bread) and went to work, doggie helpers in tow of course. The first batch was for Nissa, which means they had to be made in tiny bite size pieces, and my dogs would just inhale those through their nostrils so they didn’t get to try any — a true test in patience, let me tell you. Dresden and Oreo were doing their usual clinging to my legs, Dresden trembling and whining, and Oreo just whining; Tempe was drooling up a storm at my feet, and both Kaylee and Toby were doing their best to impress: lying at the kitchen door, just watching and waiting.
Batch #2 finally makes it into the oven and the cookies are barely in five minutes when some very strange sounds start coming from the oven. The bright sparks and flames were the most troublesome, however, as the element basically disintegrated itself.
Great!
I turned off the oven, and looked to the five expectant doggie faces. How to explain?
I decided to leave the cookies where they were so I could finish baking them today, once I had a new element. It was a good thing actually that I had chosen to make these particular cookies because the dough was mostly baked at this point (I bake it like bread first, let it cool, slice it, then bake the bread-shaped pieces) and all I was doing at the time of the Great Element Debacle was making them crunchy.
As I cleaned up, I told The Fab Five in great detail what had happened, and how this was something beyond my control, and although I realized that it would be disappointing to them in the extreme, there would be no freshly baked Crunchy Peanut Butter Pumpkin Bread cookies tonight.
*Insert five confused doggie expressions as I turned out the lights and exited the kitchen*
For the rest of the evening, they did their best to communicate their confusion to me as they pouted, drooled (that would be Tempe), whined, scratched at my leg, and worriedly paced from me to the kitchen and back again. Clearly my explanation had not been enough.
Once bedtime rolled around, however, the lack-of-freshly-baked-cookies situation had been accepted, and everyone went to bed. Well, everyone except for Tempe. She just couldn’t let it go, and I kept hearing her get out of her bed and go downstairs — I knew she was checking on the cookies. That’s her self-appointed job, you see. She opens the oven door and checks on them. I even had to teach her how to close it on command, because sometimes she’ll check on them while they’re in the middle of baking.
At 3:21 she couldn’t take it anymore. She came and woke me up. By this point, her cookie concern was just bigger than her, I guess, because while she does come and check on me through the night, she saves the face washing for about 6:00 AM, when it’s actually time to get up. But here it was, 3:21 AM, and I was getting my face, neck, arm — anything she could find — incessantly washed. I told her to go back to bed, rolled over, and promptly rolled back again two minutes later when a huge crash sounded from downstairs.
It’s funny how a baking sheet full of cookies falling on ceramic tiles sounds just like you would imagine it would sound.
So that’s what I was doing at 3:23 AM this morning — cleaning broken, partially baked dog cookies off my kitchen floor. Fortunately she pulled out the bottom sheet only, which had much fewer cookies on it. They were the leftovers that didn’t fit on the cookie sheet that was on the top rack.
Knowing she’d probably crossed a line — or twelve — once I had everything cleaned up Tempe sheepishly followed me back upstairs and laid on the floor beside me instead of returning to her bed. By 5:00 AM she was gone, however, and according to my daughter when she went down into the kitchen around 6:15, the oven door was wide open and Tempe was lying on the floor underneath it. Guardian of the Cookies :)
There is a routine to cookie baking, and Tempe knows it. She respects it. She expects us all to follow it and isn’t afraid to let us know when we’re not doing it right. Even now, she’s laying in the kitchen, no doubt wondering what sort of madness could have caused me to veer so unexpectedly away from the routine. Just for her though I’m trying to finish baking some of the cookies in the toaster oven. I just don’t think she’d be able to get through the day otherwise.
Tempe snoozing on the couch
Toby snoozing in his bed here under my desk…
Kaylee snoozing in the sun on the floor behind me
The Waggery's Good Dog Blog 