Last week we celebrated Pierre's very first Birthday!  YES, I went over the top, YES, we donated a bunch of really cool things to the Midwest Small Breed Rescue, YES, it was featured in the county newspaper (how HILARIOUS is that?) and YES, we all had so much fun!

I found these super sweet "doggie" bags and made assorted size biscuits with colorful frosting.  The frosting is a white candy coating (no chocolate) I colored with food coloring and assorted sprinkles.  I made a variety of biscuit sizes appropriate for different sized dogs and stuffed the baggies for "big" dogs or "little" dogs! 

I used colorful felt, pompoms, ribbon and boas to create party hats for the dogs.  Again, I made a variety of sixes and left the elastic chin strap a bit longer, so they could be a customized fit simply by knotting the elastic.

Along with the Birthday cake, I also created a platter just for dogs of bacon, ham wedges and muffins.  The Birthday cake was frosted with peanut butter and decorated with candy dog bones!  The candy dog bones were also featured on the "People" foods;

For our people guests, I did a Raspberry Vanilla Cupcake with a lemon buttercream frosting!  A cheese plate and beverages rounded out the treats!

Our Pierre has plenty of everything a dog needs, so guests were asked to donate to the Midwest Small Breed Rescue in lieu of a gift.  WOW!  All of our friends are so generous!  The MSBR was so excited to have great goodies for needy dogs!  I love these types of rescue organizations as they are fostering dogs in homes versus a shelter! 

We had 17 dogs attend and about 25 people!  I think it was so much fun for all of us (we could have done without the rain) especially the dogs!
Each dog went home with a doggie bag full of biscuits and I picked up a bunch of rope, balls and squeaky toys as party favors.  I didn't get a photo of it, but I put all of those in a large wooden bowl for the dogs to choose from.
It was amazing that all the dogs got along great (so did the people) and enjoyed an hour of fun and cake!!!  I hope this inspires you to throw a dog birthday party for a great cause and have fun!

You can find all of the recipes I used on this blog by using the search bar 

A Dog Birthday Party!

Birthday Boy Marty!!

Yesterday was Marty's 1st birthday.  Marty is my brother Mike's miniature Australia Shepard.  He is a little farm doggie, he helps himself to fresh vegetables from the fields, chases away the rabbits and does a great job herding all other animals and people to their appropriate places!  Marty lives across the road from my parents, so they babysit him quite frequently and he gets along well with their dog, Ajax.

Pierre LOVES his dog family!  So we thought we ought to have a birthday party for Marty with all of the trimmings!

The dog family: Marty, Pierre and Ajax

I found a cake recipe here: http://baking.food.com/recipe/dog-doggie-birthday-cake-193085 . I was out of a couple ingredients, so I adjusted to to this recipe.

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup corn oil
4 eggs
1/2 cup chicken, diced small
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1/4 cup carob chips
peanut butter and yogurt for frosting

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Grease a 9X5 loaf pan.

In a mixing bowl, cream butter adding eggs, oil and meat.  Stir in dry ingredients and pour into pan.  Bake for 1 hour until golden brown and crispy on outside.  Let cool in pan for 10 minutes and turn out, leaving cake on it's top side.

Almost party ready!

I took a sharp bread knife and cut away the sides and notched the ends, so the cake resembled a dog bone.
I then frosted with peanut butter and piped MARTY with greek style yogurt (ziploc bag with end snipped off) and decorated with some carob chips.

Pierre's hat had to be customized!

Mike and Ajax; the uncles

What a hit!!!  The dogs absolutely LOVED the cake!!  They even allowed us to put party hats on them and pose for photos (sort of) for another piece of cake!  A birthday party was complete with some doggie take home treats in bags!