A disturbing side effect to baking for dogs

For Christmas this year, I got this book.

As Madeline will be turning one later this month, I decided to try out one of the recipes so she could give goody bags to all of her little dog friends. Do you remember goody bags? They were the best part of someone else's birthday. I really feel that we need to bring these back in adulthood.

Emily made spectacular goody bags a few weeks ago for my brother-in-law's birthday. All of these great sugar-high inducing concoctions that we used to get at the penny candy store as kids. Remember Lik-M-Aid? When a Pixie Stick just wasn't enough flavored sugar powder, there was Lik-M-Aid. But I digress...

So I was making cookies for Maddie and her friends. I selected a recipe for lamb treats because it had the most regular sounding ingredients. Maybe if I really loved her, I would have tracked down dessicated liver and bone meal as a few other recipes called for, but it wasn't happening this weekend.

I have made many a cookie in my day. I enjoy baking. I enjoy baked goods. I kind of enjoy squishing a stick of butter between my fingers in a bowl full of flour. But this was my first crack at making meat cookies.

With regular cookies, if you work the dough by hand, you may be vaguely aware that your fingers will subsequently smell like cookie dough. You probably don't really notice, because cookie dough smells good. Not so with meat cookies. I was acutely aware that my hands stank like cafeteria beef stew.

Multiple hand washings with nice smelling soap didn't seem to do anything either. It was just several hours of non-stop stew hands. So gross.

Maddie better like these dang cookies.