Ssshhhh don’t tell Chloe, but I made gluten-free peanut butter dog cookies today in preparation for her 2 month ampuversary on Wednesday! I have class all day Wednesday, so I knew I needed to do some early prep work. I was inspired by Indi’s mom’s recipe for grain free cookies on the forums! Click here to see the original post!

I ended up doing 1/2 batch from the original Indi recipe because I wanted to make sure Chloe would eat them first.  For this recipe it made about fifteen 2.5″ cookies.

Ingredients
1.5 cups Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
1/4 cup chunky reduced fat peanut butter
1 Tbsp canola oil
1/2 cup water

The twist: 1/3 cup Reeses Peanut Butter chips! (yes they do sell these in the baking isle! I already had them so I just decided to use them)

I am kind of a bake-a-holic so I probably went overboard in my baking techniques.

Instructions
Preheated oven to 375 F.

Blended peanut butter, oil and water with hand mixer about 20 sec on low setting in a large mixing bowl.  Slowly added flour, beating together with peanut butter mix on a low setting until it resembled coarse crumbles.

Mixed in Reeses chips by hand. Let batter rest in fridge, covered for 15 min while I cleaned up kitchen (optional). Note: I always do this out of habit for any cookies because sometimes the dough gets overworked and ends up “melting” in the oven.

Used a lightly floured work surface, rolled out dough to about 1/4″ thick and cut them out with cool cookie cutters! Since they are heartier cookies, they don’t expand like sugar cookies. What ever shape you make them, they will remain about that size! Place on cookie sheets and put in oven!  Note: I always use aluminum air bake cookie sheets (see below) since I have had issues in the past with dark nonstick sheets (any cookies with butter in them melt out and I got crispy flat cookies).

Baked in oven 18 min. You can adjust the time by a few minutes depending on how soft/hard you want them.  These have a crispier outsides and soft insides. Let cool on cookie rack (optional) then serve to pooch!

Don’t know what to do with that left over dough? Don’t want the hassle of baking another batch? I have a solution! Cut the cookies into the shapes you would like, put them in a bag (not touching other cookies) and freeze them! They should stay good for a few months and that way you can just turn on the oven, place the cookies on a cookie sheet and bake them! Less mess!

What’s this?

It’s a package. But who is it for I wonder…

It’s for Chloe!!! You see, Chloe’s name was drawn by spokesdawg Wyatt Ray for the Tripawds Travel Tips Contest! It is a package chalk full of goodies from Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul as her prize! This couldn’t have come at a more perfect time since Chloe is not eating as much as she should for the amount of calories she burns every day at the beach 🙁 Maybe these fun goodies will help whet her appetite!  What a pawsome prize, thanks!!!!!

Chloe and I go to the beach 1-2 times a day and we see sooo many different dogs! Today we saw a Chloe look alike!

As you can see they have similar faces and coat colors. Chloe is blessed to have natural high lights and low lights to make for a variegated coat.  The only other difference (other than size and coat variegation) is that the other girl dog had a little bit more around the waist if you know what I mean… But don’t get me wrong, I think they are both beautiful.  The owner of the Chloe look-alike said Chloe was very sweet (we all know that of course), but I’m sure Chloe appreciates all the compliments.  Here they are checking each other out!

Soon after we left the beach an older guy working with his crew trimming a tree nearby asked what happened to Chloe. I told him that she had cancer and that she was fortunate enough to only have a cancerous tumor confined to her leg. Therefore amputation essentially “cured” her.  I also explained that with her breed mixes (husky/hound) that she should have an average lifespan of about 14 years. With amputation, I have potentially extended her life for another 5 years if not more (I am hoping MORE).  He then proceeded to tell me that most people would have put her down but that I did something special.  He remarked that the amputation couldn’t have been cheap.  I told him no, it wasn’t, but that it has been totally worth it.  Finally he told me a story of when he was 7.  He said that his first dog ended up getting cancer and in those days, there really wasn’t anything you could do.  They were poorer in those days and couldn’t afford to put the dog to sleep.  The vet told this man’s father to give his kid a gun to shoot his dog.  This man told me straight that he couldn’t do it.  All I have to say is who gives a 7 year old kid a gun and tells him to shoot his dog because the vet says there is nothing they can do?!?!?! Anyway, he said that Chloe looked great and that she was a beautiful dog.

Oh and did I mention that we had a possible monkeybutt look-alike spotting too? See for yourself. This little pup was quite elusive, so of course the photo is not top quality.  But that is how most sightings go like with yetis, sasquatches, the loch ness monster etc…

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