Friday Food - The Puppy Version

After about three months of having our dog on an incredibly restrictive diet - including entirely hypo-allergenic food and treats - we were told this week by the vet that they've concluded that she does not have any major food allergies. (Sorry. Major run-on sentence, there.)

I'm not sure if the three months of abstinence was harder on her or on us. After all, she's a dog who also needs to take pills, so we had to get creative on how to get her to eat them. We actually got some of the hypo-allergenic moist dog food, which - as we were warned - kind of has a "canned cranberry jelly" consistency. But it did work as a medium in which we could put her pills.

As of this week, though, we're back to being able to give her her pills folded into jerky-type treats and - more importantly - peanut butter. If you've been paying attention (or if you did last fall), you know that she is a huge peanut butter fan. So taking that away from her was not fun.

Over the past couple of months, when I would be putting my lunch together in the morning, it was hard to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with her sitting on the floor with her big brown eyes watching my every move. After a while I gave up and just reserved the PBJs for mornings when I was really craving them, so that my craving could trump her stare.

Thankfully, as of this week, I can eat my peanut butter toast with relative impunity.

To celebrate, as soon as I finish this posting I plan to sit down with a jar of peanut butter and the container of (chocolate) Nestle Quik and a glass of milk. (What? You don't know how those all tie together? You spoon a little bit of peanut butter, dip it into the Quik, and eat it. Then you drink the milk to wash it down.)

Sure, I'll still get the forlorn look from across the coffee table, but the guilt factor will be mitigated knowing that she had her peanut butter earlier today - and she didn't share at all.