This is my friend Shiloh. Say hello, everyone!

Shiloh likes food that falls to the floor, randomly licking his owners’ legs, and running like a crazed animal around the yard. He understands the words “kennel,” “treat,” “food,” and “outside.” And even though he still sticks his head in the bathroom trashcan for the express pleasure of shredding tissues, I think he’s great.

You know who else is great? My husband, the dog trainer. Without him, Shiloh would run the household. (I’m slowly/lamely/poorly working on my Alpha skills.)

Yesterday Shiloh celebrated his first birthday. (And before I go any further, I need to say Happy Birthday, Dad! And Happy Birthday, Dad T, from last week! Yes, people are more important than dogs.) In order to mark this quite small celebration, I present Random Thoughts on My Dog.

• My dog is a miniature trash compactor. He licks and eats anything he can find, including the sleepy from his eye I dislodged and flicked to the floor this morning. Ew. Gross.
• In the same vein of “ew, grossness,” my dog is obsessed with licking himself. So much so that Jeremy and I googled it one night to make sure nothing was wrong. For the record, we do, in fact, believe nothing is wrong physically. Mentally, we’re not so sure.
• We think our dog is fairly stupid. Aside from the fact that he potties in the right location, he doesn’t seem to understand 1) that he’s not supposed to eat kleenex from the trash can and 2) that he’s supposed to roll over when we say roll over.
• The previous points are all made moot by the fact that I LOVE my dog completely. I am utterly charmed by the way he cuddles into his dog bed every evening and I can’t get enough of his incredibly soft white furry coat. He is a very sweet dog who clearly loves his pack (us) and is devoted to being by our sides.
• In a nutshell, all the grossness is worth it. We love Shiloh.

Something weird happens when you prepare one recipe for ten families. You hit a rhythm. Your eyes sort of glaze over… cranberry sauce, onion soup, pour the dressing, mix it together… until you make a mistake and dump the cranberries into the wrong bowl. Then you halt, figure out what’s what, and get back to the business of making freezer meals.

Several years ago my friend Carrie read a book about cooking a whole bunch of meals in one day—30 to be precise—and them freezing them. It’s a lot of work up front, but incredibly helpful in reducing meal prep time for future dinners. Carrie invited a bunch of girlfriends to Cooking Day and we worked, side by side, on our feet for hours on end to fix those 30 meals. We divided the costs and went home that evening with achy calves but feeling like queens with freezers full of meals.

Fast forward a few years. Carrie is keeping tabs on her husband’s cholesterol, which means a whole lot of lean chicken meals and not many casseroles at her home. So I’ve started a new freezer meal coop where all the chefs prepare two meals at home… ten times over. In this post I’ve included a few shots of one of my meals, Cranberry Chicken, and one of my dog, who stays oh-so-faithfully at my side when I’m cooking. I like to pretend he enjoys my company but I know better. He’s the dog equivalent of a Hoover vacuum cleaner so all in all, he earns his keep and keeps the kitchen floor spotless.

The recipe for Cranberry Chicken can be found at my (our) recipe blog, Needs More Butter.

Kids can’t resist piles of leaves.

And fun-loving adults can’t resist doing things like this.

With minimal arm-twisting, poses are made and captured with my camera.

And then the dog gets involved. I wish I could insert video here because Shiloh’s tunneling and leaf-leaping was absolutely hilarious.

Even the neighbor boy gets involved, because, as we all know, kids can’t resist piles of leaves.

Q: What’s worse than having emasculating surgery and then being forced to wear a cone?

A: Having emasculating surgery, being forced to wear a cone AND a doggie diaper!

We had Shiloh neutered on Wednesday. Apparently, post-surgery he was the perfect model of a canine patient—didn’t lick or bite at the incision and stayed perfectly quiet in the kennel at the vet’s. However, within seconds of being placed in his kennel in our car, he was going nuts. So on went the cone and we went home.

The next morning our pet proved to be not only terribly flexible but also quite tenacious. We needed something more than the cone. We needed… Dog underwear! Oh my goodness, PetSmart has items I’ve never even heard of. Now I know that we have options if Shiloh is ever incontinent (doggie wraps for the boys), but for the moment, girlie pants will do the trick.

Cone + dog diapers = highly amused family + one slightly crazed Coton.

I have other blog posts in mind. But frankly, they all require too much time and forethought. So instead I’ll post a photo of my dog.

In this pic his fur is unkempt. He’s quite dirty. He’s dog tired. And yet I still think he’s the cutest pooch on the planet. That’s what love does apparently—it blinds you into believing your dog (or more frequently, your child) is the cutest, best, brightest creature on the planet. That’s what I think until Shiloh puts his paws up on the coffee table and licks Livia’s apple slices. Then he’s not so cute.

Shiloh-lito.
Shilozers.
Al Poochino.
Poochy-poochers.

I love my pup.