Our puppy Trooper turned 1! Which is about the most exciting thing that has happened in our house for nearly the last 3 months. So we had a great time throwing a puppy “paw”-ty for him today! Including a delicious doggy dinner and a football shaped “pup”-cake.

Birthday Puppy Dinner Recipe

This was nothing complicated, I just made up a recipe with some of his favorite ingredients:

• Dry puppy food
• Boiled chicken
• Canned pumpkin
• Green beans

I combined about 1/2 of a regular scoop of his dry puppy food with the other ingredients to make enough for a normal serving. He LOVED it!

Peanut Butter Banana “Pup”-cake

This is another SUPER simple recipe. I found a couple of ideas online and used them to come up with my own:

• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup oats
• 1/2 mashed banana
• 2 TBSP peanut butter
• Water (for consistency)

I combined all ingredients, only adding enough water to make it a spreadable texture. Then divided the batter into 2 of the football shaped cupcake molds and baked them at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Topped with a few slices of banana, it was the perfect “pup”-cake for him! And he was OH SO happy! He even did a funny little happy dance after he ate it… seriously. I wish I had a video.

Pull-Apart Cupcake Paw (for the humans)

And of course, we had to have human cake so the rest of us could join in on the celebration. 😉

To make the paw shape, I bunched 4 cupcakes together in the middle, and arranged 4 more around the middle 4 to create the paw shape. Then I gobbed on a BUNCH of chocolate frosting and spread it over the top to make it look like one smooth surface. Piped on the number “1” with vanilla frosting (just using a plastic baggy with a tiny hole cut in the corner) and voila! Fun and really easy pull-apart cupcakes.

At the end of the day, he was a pooped out puppy.

He had a ton of fun, and honestly so did we. It was a blast watching him play with his new toys, although I don’t have any pictures of him playing with them because they all came out like a total blur! Sometimes I think we should have named him something like Flash or Dash or Zippy. But he’s our Trooper.

If you have a furry family member, do you celebrate their birthdays? If so, I’d love to know what types of things your family does during your celebrations! And if not, I highly recommend it. The kids were so tickled by the whole thing, and giving their furry brother gifts was almost as exciting for them as it was for him. It was an all around awesomely fun family activity. 🙂

XOXO ~Kristin