Dog-friendly Cupcakes for DeeDee from Dinner for Dogs by Henrietta Morrison

Kayleigh Barker (yes, she's heard them all) in our Fundraising team tells us about her baking experiments with Henrietta Morrison's Dinner for Dogs while celebrating two years of her beloved DeeDee being a, erm, Barker...

We adopted DeeDee back in 2010. Two years on and she has become a wonderful, although sometimes rather wayward, part of the family and we cannot imagine life without her.

Seeing as it was such an important occasion we celebrated in style, as all important occasions should be celebrated, with cake!

Thanks to Dinner for Dogs by Henrietta Morrison, DeeDee could partake in the festivities with her very own celebratory cupcake. The recipe was very easy to follow and the cupcakes baked up a treat (excuse the pun). Safe to say it was a fair amount of work for a treat that was scoffed in seconds, but as it was a special occasion it seemed fitting and DeeDee loved it.

This book is ideal if you like to treat the four legged members of the family to something extra special once in a while with recipes ranging from hearty meals like Stew for Sad Dogs to tasty treats like the Celebratory Cupcakes.

Happy Dogiversary DeeDee!



If you're buying a copy of Dinner for Dogs and want to help Dogs Trust, don't forget to install Give As You Live so that we get donations from your online shopping - at NO extra cost to you!

Kayleigh and DeeDee review W. Bruce Cameron's A Dog's Purpose

Kayleigh, from our Fundraising team and her 'office dog' DeeDee the Staffy cross, let us know what they think about this charming tale of a dog's lives...

DeeDee takes a closer look

Despite my best efforts, DeeDee was having none of it when I tried to convince her that what we really wanted to be doing on a rainy Saturday afternoon was going for a nice long walk. So instead of enjoying the great, very wet, outdoors we spent the afternoon curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea (for me), a fresh bowl of water (for DeeDee) and A Dog's Purpose by W. Bruce Cameron.

It's a heart warming tale, narrated by a dog recounting the journey of being reincarnated through many lives trying to find and fulfil its purpose. T

he simplistic writing style makes this book a very easy read and you’ll find yourself chuckling out loud, although be warned: any pet owner will undoubtedly get a lump in their throat at a few poignant moments. 

If ever you find yourself looking at your canine companion and wondering what they are thinking and the stories they could tell you, you will almost certainly enjoy this book. DeeDee and I found it perfect for whiling away a rainy afternoon, and with our British summers we can guarantee there are going to be a few...

Book Review: Who Moved My Job? by Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

Who Moved My Job? is actually a short story about globalisation and the shifting tides of workers and skills around the world. So, what's it doing on a dog blog?

Well, Mark Kobayashi-Hillary has very cleverly taken the idea of Border Collies working on a farm who are supplanted by foreign sheep-herding breeds and used it as a nifty allegory for the issues surrounding globalisation.

The three sheepdogs - Winston, Charlie and Blair - are initially cut adrift and in danger of becoming, essentially, extinct. At first they're confused, bewildered and very resistant to any form of change such as finding a home from the centre they've been taken too. In steps Matilda - a wise old Staffordshire Bull Terrier based on Kobayashi-Hillary's dog of the same name and breed - to help push them in the direction of applying their farm skills to city life in a new, exciting and fulfilling way.

There are no trick questions or particularly opaque levels of meaning in the story. The idea is simply to prompt Western society to consider how jobs will develop and move around the world as time moves on. In Kobayashi-Hillary's dog world, those who stay fixed on the past and old use of skills will soon find themselves sidelined but those who examine their abilities and find a new use for them might find that they're in a better position than they started in.

Simple? Yes. Simplistic? Not really. This is the opening question, not the full scale analysis because that latter disection of the issues is what the book is pushing towards in the first place.

This thought provoking and engagingly written piece is well worth the time spent perusing it, and leads to a website from which links to discussions, information about the author and gorgeous pictures of the real Matilda can all be found.

Whether your job is yet to move or you've found yourself on the verge of a shift, take a glance and get involved with the issues.