One Hundred!

This marks the 100th post at Peace-a-Bull Assembly!  Frankly, I can't believe we are here and have made this milestone in such a short time.  My old personal blog has 186 posts and though I posted in every year,  I have had that one since 2004!  I guess I find my furry menagerie more interesting to write about than myself.  Because this is about the whole assembly, I believe I will be incorporating more about the non furry family members as well, or even some projects, so I hope you'll stay with me for the next hundred!

This past weekend was fun and full.  I decided to try my hand at some home-made doggie treats and found a gluten-free recipe online that I used as a base.  I then began the process of turning this:

Into this:

Obviously, the recipe made more than one treat, but this one is the pretty one.  The rest are in various states of bone-shapes. 
The recipe I ended up with is 
1 lb ground chicken
1 large sweet potato, cooked and mashed
5 T milled flaxseed
1 egg
a sprinkle of garlic powder
a dash of parsley
Mix all together, spread on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for one hour.  Remove from oven and cut shapes then continue baking at 250 for an additional hour*.
Here is where I found the recipe.  By following these times I ended up with treats along the consisency of a bread, like zucchini bread so I ended up baking them for an additional 30 minutes and still found them not actuall crisp.  The upside?  The kitties love them as well and I like being able to treat everyone at the same time with the same treats if possible.  The downside?  Definitely the baking time.  The recipe actually made less than I thought and I ended up only getting the product spread on half of a cookie sheet.  I'd like to try this again and play with ingredients and different pans.  The furbabies, don't seem to mind that the shapes are all random.

My other big project was to help find a home for all of the bricks that we pulled out of the yard before the pool install.  We had a little pad in front of the shed but when we finished things, Kevin had redone that area.  Here is what I came up with:

This is a corner by the door in back but also out of the way.  I was pretty happy with the result and very sore from lugging bricks.

My learning moment for the weekend came as Ray was "helping" me with the laundry.  He is always eager to stick his big bully head in the dryer and run away with a random item or sit in front of the dryer and grab an item as I move it from the washer to the dryer.  As I've mentioned before, I'm a little slow on the uptake, so after blocking with my body didn't work, a lightbulb finally flashed on.  When I got ready to flip the laundry from washer to dryer, I took that opportunity to work on sit/stays with Ray.  Jackpot!

We also took what is becoming our weekly trip to the Tractor Supply Store in town.  We've been going now for a few weeks and when we arrived, Ray's favorite employee was at the cash register.  She said she had been talking about Ray earlier in the week about how sweet, polite and well mannered he was.  We were also approached by a manager who thanked us for coming in not once, but twice.  This is such a good opportunity for us to practice Ray's "outside" manners and this is the only place in town that we can get bully sticks, so double score for us!  We will definitely continue to spend our money in a place this is this welcoming.

Finally, I'm sure you are wondering if Ray was happy that we finally got our sod installed.  Well, see for yourself.