The Holiday Round-up

Happy 2010 everyone- I hope you had a wonderful holiday season filled with love, family, friends, and diet-busting meals. I have several new ideas for this blog, but for now I thought I'd post some miscellany that I couldn't post before.

Nutcracker Madness. This unique drummer boy will join a large (and growing) nutcracker collection, representing the University of WI Marching Band with pride. And grit. Go Badgers!

Cute Pooches. A few portraits a friend commissioned in exchange for professional photography. I love barter!And finally, a pineapple update. Here are a few photos of my progress over the holidays- lots of knitting accomplished during movies and especially football.I really like how it is turning out so far... looks almost antique as it comes off the needles!
That's it for now- have a great week!

Cat + Cranberry = Win, Dog + Turkey = Fail

Happy almost Turkey Day! This should be a fun post- it will be the first with an actual veterinary story.

If you want to have lots of fun while making Thanksgiving dinner and your cat insists on helping (how thoughtful) - play the Cranberry Game!

The Set Up

Ingredients: One bag of cranberries, one cat (bagged). The brand of cranberries doesn't really matter, though did you know that many OceanSpray cranberries are grown in central Wisconsin bogs? But I digress.

Mix for hours of fun.
Oh, But the fun isn't over! Next find the cranberry in all sorts of unexpectedly wonderful places!
Cranberries are safe for pets... most won't actually eat them (though they may *roll* on them). Which segues nicely to the FAIL portion of this post.

Don't let your dogs get at turkey bones people. Seriously. (disclaimer- although I am a licensed vet I am not YOUR licensed vet. This post has general advice and is not meant to diagnose or treat your pet.) Our story concerns a 10 lb little white dog. Let us call him Sparky. Sparky had a GREAT Thanksgiving. He even found a way into the garbage... which contained the neck of a 25 lb turkey. Now, you may not think it possible that the little guy could actually swallow any of this, but Sparky was tenacious. He worked at it and managed to get a turkey vertebrae lodged in his esophagus half-way down his own neck. Sparky's Thanksgiving got a lot less fun. He gagged, retched, foamed at the mouth and worked hard to breathe all the way to the veterinary hospital, where he had anesthesia and endoscopic removal of the bone. This story had a happy ending, but the moral is: Dogs (and cats) are smart! They WILL get into things! Use common sense, use your human thumbs and make sure the garbage is secure. (Baby locks on cabinets work great!)

Ok, new craft and art stuff coming soon! There will be SPECIALS! And just for reading to the end of the post, CLICK HERE for a beloved family recipe using... you got it... cranberries!