Happy Birthday Toby

Toby turned one on Friday.

Is it sad that I actually know the birth date of my dog? Personally, I'm happy to claim the title of besotted dog owner. Or crazy dog lady. Just don't ever call me a crazy cat lady or I'll claw your eyes out and hiss at you.

Toby's been such a wonderful addition to our family - for me at least. He's such a great companion. He sleeps in my workroom during business hours and has only barked at a client once. He fetches our paper when we can't be bothered walking down the stairs in the morning. He makes Iven go for a walk at least three times a week. And he makes me laugh every day.

Even when he's been naughty.

He's also the BEST cuddler. He crawls up on the couch with me every night to get a bit of TLC and a good tummy rub. 

I didn't want to appear too obsessed when it came to his birthday so we kept it a low-key affair. I bought him a new set of tennis balls because they're almost his favourite thing in the world - besides a good tummy rub.

And I also made him a cake. That's not going overboard is it? It's perfectly normal to bake your dog a special cake for his birthday surely!!

But I didn't bake the cake so that he could eat it. I made it so he could lick the bowl. Because that's also one of his favourite things.

I also made the cake to use one of the birthday presents I'd been given - a set of colour gels for baking. They'd reminded me of a cake I'd seen on Kristin's Pinterest board. I had to go out and buy a new cake tin which was an engineering work of art. 

Then I made the coloured balls to put in the cake.

 It turned out looking great but it was a bit drier than I would have liked so I'm going to have to tweak it a bit next time - not cook the balls for more than 10 minutes and use a moister recipe. 

Toby didn't mind that it was dry, though. He used every begging technique in the book to get some.

And maybe I did weaken, just this once. After all you only have one first birthday.