So when a friend of mine asked if anyone was interested in joining her family on a whale watching trip on Monday, I said, “Oh! We totally need to do that!” The kids were excited, I was excited, we were good to go.

It was a gorgeous day in San Diego, albeit choppy as heck on the water. While we boated out of the harbor, a volunteer naturalist from the Birch Aquarium told us all about the annual gray whale migration.

We lucked out. A mere twenty minutes into rolling around on the 10 foot swells, we saw a spout. Then, two spouts. We followed the pair for a good 15 minutes, the boat miraculously staying level despite the entire payload crowding onto the port side with their cameras out and ready. And when the whales were sure we were ready for their closeup, they obliged with a hello. And not just any hello, but full-on breeches:

Whee!

Sploosh!

And, before he descended back below the surface, a little wave goodbye to the delighted boat:

My kids were interested for about half an hour, but going on the advice of the captain as he surveyed the conditions out on the open water, I had given them Dramamine, so by 45 minutes in they were yawning and trying to sleep on the benches. So I watched the rest of the nature show by myself, with a sleeping head on my lap. Even after leaving the whales behind, there was plenty to see.

The boat LIES. Those are sea lions. (Thanks, R.)

We saw the yacht America, a replica of the original yacht that the America’s Cup is named for:

And the USS Midway, slightly larger, heavier, and more imposing than its lithe sibling racing out on the waves. Retired from service, it floats permanently at dock, continuing its service as a maritime museum.

It’s amazing how interesting your everyday world is, when you take the time to actually look.

The kids woke up, groggy and ready to depart, right as we pulled up to the dock. I’ll take groggy over seasick any day. As we made our way off the boat and back to terra firma, one last fascinating treasure, nestled on the doorway of a harborside ticket booth:

A miniature Banksy. What wonders there are, hiding right in plain sight, and we so often float about on cruise control missing most of it.

Eye exams for animals are a little different than they are for people. Sure, you can examine the physical structures of the eye and evaluate its anatomic vigor, but figuring out just how well your pet sees is a little more tricky. We can’t exactly sit them in front of one of those big eyeglass flippy things (I’m sure they have a name, but I never bothered to ask) and get the dog to tell us which is better: This, or….THIS?

Nonetheless, the ubiquitous eye chart is synonymous with the doctor’s office. To that end, Local Paper Studio has created two charming eye charts- one for dogs, and one for cats- that might not reveal whether or not your lab is nearsighted, but they will add a touch of whimsy to an exam room, office, or home of a pet lover.

For today’s Giveaway Tuesday, Local Paper Studio is giving away THREE sets of eye chart posters. Gift one to your vet or keep them for yourself! Who can resist the cute? To make it even better, read on for the way they use eco-friendly paper and donate to Best Friends for each sale!

Set of Two 18″ x 24″ Dog & Cat Eye Charts – Standard Size Posters

Designed for veterinary clinics, this set of two posters makes a
perfect gift to say thank you to your favorite vet. They are sure to
get a laugh in waiting rooms or exam rooms. Also fun to share with dog
and cat enthusiasts.

Each poster measures 18″ x 24″ and will fit easily into a standard
size frame. All posters are shipped rolled and are not matted or
framed.

The artwork was printed in the U.S.A. by a Forest Stewardship Council
certified printer, using vegetable inks on 100% recycled paper from
60% post-consumer waste and processed chlorine free. Due to the
environmentally friendly production of this paper, please note that
small amounts of fibers and recycled matter may be visible on the
paper surface.

$1 from the sale of every poster will be donated to the Best Friends
Animal Society. Visit them at bestfriends.org.

——————————————————–

This is a little bit about our studio:

Printed With Love And Care For The Environment And You.
This pledge appears on all of Local Paper Studio’s projects and
summarizes our belief in community, sustainability and giving back.
Our main goal is to give you fun ways to share a little joy with your
family and friends—the people local to you. 100% recycled papers are
used for all of our projects and we work exclusively with eco-friendly
printers located in the U.S.A.

To enter, leave a comment below and make sure you enter here on Rafflecopter! Additional entries available for tweeting the contest. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Until this year.

Last Friday, as I was at home recovering from the jetlag of my Westminster trip, I was interrupted in my reverie by a phone call from the school principal, who called to let me know that she had received “multiple complaints” about my little craft. My immediate thought was, oh no, the kids forgot to remove the matches from some of the boxes, but that wasn’t it. Some parents were just mortified that I used matchboxes for a craft. The principal patiently explained, in the same tone one might explain to a kindergartner why gargling with Drano is a bad idea, about the dangers of sulfur residue. Then she said the part that really killed me: “You need to think about the message you are sending here.”

The message I had sent, or so I thought, was, “I care enough about your kids to spend a day running around gathering supplies to make a cute and time consuming re-purposing project.” But people being the contrary types who like to assume the worst read something else into it, what, I don’t know exactly. “Hey kids, pyromania is fun!” “Crack is cool!” Empty matchboxes are the gateway craft, y’all.

I’m not going to lie. I was upset, both at the parents who immediately assumed the worst and then, rather than just throwing it away, ran to the administration demanding recourse, and then at the administration for treating me as if I had sent home used hypodermic needles to the young impressionable minds of the school. The message I got loud and clear was this: you, Dr. V, are a bad mother with dangerous ideas.

The Tainted Love Project

So anyway, rather than continue to stew about it I started looking around for more constructive uses of my energy. I do believe our actions speak to our character and our messages should reflect that. So here is what I am doing:

Later that day I saw a post from my alma mater, the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, about something called the Josh Challenge. It was started by a veterinarian whose child needed surgery. He created the I’ll Be OK gift box: in it, a book he wrote for his daughter while she was in the hospital, and a stuffed Golden Retriever. These boxes are donated to scared children in the hospital to let them know that “It’s going to be OK.”

My school is in a friendly competition with other vet schools to see who can raise the most money to purchase these Josh Kits for donation to local children’s hospitals. If they raise $1K by this week, pharmacology professor Dr. Alan Buckpitt is going to shave his 35 year old moustache off, which alone is worth a donation in my eyes. I remember him from my days at school. The ‘stache was impressive even back then.

In order to help them to this end, I am making a limited edition series of pet themed “Tainted Love” matchbox trinket boxes, which I will send along to anyone who makes a donation of $7 or more to the project. They will be lovingly crafted of dangerous cardboard and dusted with the sulfurous residue of its vacated matchheads. I use mine for Altoids. You can store whatever you like in yours: gunpowder, glass shards, mercury, the options are endless.

Lest anyone make assumptions about what message I’m sending, let me just go ahead and spell it out: We should all be so lucky that the biggest threat to our family’s health would be an innocuous empty matchbox. And if it is, be grateful for your blessings and rather than waste time condescendingly lecturing well meaning people about the dangers of repurposed cardboard, how about you remember those who are dealing with a real crisis and send a little love their way instead.

If you want to help me send a little message to the world about positive uses of one’s time, you can make a donation directly to the SCAVMA Josh Project fund through the Paypal Donate button here.

If you would like one of these toxic art pieces, just forward me your Paypal receipt for a donation of $7 or more and I and my kids will get right on it. In addition, if Dr. Buckpitt shaves off his moustache, I will pledge to donate the contents of my doggie goodie closet- piles of toys and pet supplies I’ve accumulated in the last couple years- to the Rancho Coastal Humane Society here in San Diego. I have a lot of stuff in there. Much love to you all!

So I’m used to dealing with stressed and angry people. You have to be. There are ways to defuse situations, and ways to escalate them.

Now I know that I am, personally, sometimes but not always, a bit of a hothead. Shocking, I know. I’ve never yelled at clients, never gotten loud, never thrown things or berated coworkers or any of that. Not because I’ve never felt the urge, but because that’s not what you do. Being pleasant and polite in the face of stress is what professionals are paid to do, so you do it. That aside, getting into it with clients or customers never serves any purpose, right? Help them solve their problem and move on.

Now on the flip side, when I’m out and about living life, I get irked not uncommonly. I try really hard not to, but it happens. And when it’s accompanied by jet lag, lack of sleep, and dehydration it only gets worse.

It was in this state that I arrived back home on Wednesday. I was already mad because I had to gate check my bag, which I HATE doing, and despite my attempts to make the bag handler-proof as it was being whisked away I realized my car keys were still in it. Greeeeeeat.

And because I am lucky when I travel and we had the extra pleasure of a TSA agent at the gate doing a triple level of screening, he took my nervous fidgeting as I watched my car keys being handed off to some stranger on the tarmac as signs of impending terrorism. He pulled me out of line for additional harassment, which consisted of him looking at my drivers license, up at me, back at my license, back at me for a good three minutes while asking me my name and my destination about three times. But he wanted to be thorough, so then he asked my middle name just for funsies, I guess, and, convinced of my benevolent intents, finally let me on the plane.

The flight attendant tried to take my one remaining bag away, you know, the one with my laptop and iphone and wallet and all of the photography equipment. And because I was feeling very New York by this time, I said bite me “No thanks” and just walked by to my little breadbox of a seat and stuffed it under.

At Chicago, I was bounced around between the B and C terminals a few times until they decided where my connection was going to take off from, meaning I never got time to get coffee. Then on the second leg home I had someone sitting in my seat. He nonchalantly said, “Oh, I thought you’d just want the window instead,” and I said, “I’m sorry, you thought wrong,” and stared at him until he got back in his window seat and glared at me for three hours. See? Crabby. Do not be around me if I haven’t had my coffee.

(This is also why my husband told me we wouldn’t be going to Africa if I didn’t get a Xanax prescription, but he wasn’t there to be embarrassed by me so I could be as snitty as I wanted.)

ANYWAY, I got back to San Diego, where I had to wait the usual 45 minutes for Lindbergh’s baggage handler (I assume there is just one, who I conclude is also elderly, arthritic, and partially blind) to get around to getting the bags off the plane. To everyone’s credit at least no one stole my car keys, though they did rough up my bag a little just to make the experience authentic. But here’s where it got ugly.

The San Diego airport is under construction, so I had to park two counties away in a remote lot and take a bus in to the terminal. I checked with the information booth, who confirmed where to go to get to the bus back to my car. So I took my bag and my keys, walked through the terminal, over a bridge to the shuttle area, which is about a mile long and has two lanes of taxis and shuttles, looked around in vain for signs for the parking bus, looked up at the sky as it started to rain, and asked the guy standing there where to wait for the bus. There was nowhere to escape the rain, by the by.

“Did they tell you that at the information booth?” he said, shaking his head underneath his rain parka. “You have to go back inside and catch the bus back inside the terminal. I don’t know why they keep telling people to come here.”

So I go back up the bridge, through the rain, through the terminal, and out to the street, where a big orange bus marked “AIRPORT PARKING LOOP” had just pulled up.

“You’re going to Terminal 2 Parking, right?” I asked.

“No,” he said, like it was a strange question.

“But it’s part of the airport parking,” I said, pointing at his bus.

“No, I don’t go there,” he said. “You have to go across the bridge and catch a parking bus there. It’s orange. You can’t miss it.”

“But I already went over there,” I said, wondering if I was still on the plane, having a surreal dream. “They said to come here.”

“They were wrong,” he said. “You have to go over there and find it.”

“But they don’t even know where the bus is!” I said. “I’ve asked three people and gotten three answers and no one knows where this magic bus actually materializes.” As you can see, by now the stress of the day has filled my Bucket of Rationality beyond capacity by this point. It was overflowing. “Do you know where it pulls up?”

“No,” he admitted. “But it’s not here.”

And then I started to sniffle, because as awful and stereotypical as it is, that is what I do when I am overtired and stressed and frustrated. Some people yell, some punch, and others, like me, lose it like a three year old.

Now, if the situation was turned and I was the one dealing with a freaked out traveler, I can think of many things I could do or say at this point that might be helpful, ways to solve the problem. Instead, he did the following: “Now miss, calm down.”

Which is of course the exact wrong thing to say to anyone teetering on the precipice. This pretty much guarantees they will never calm down. That was all he had to offer. Admonishment, and a vague insistence that I could just figure it out if I just walked around a wee bit more.

Now by this point I had already been wandering around the stupid terminal for half an hour, so I said, “Forget it. I’ll just walk.” Problem solved.

And he started to argue with me: “It’s a long walk, miss.” Now, suddenly, concern. That, or more likely I was ruining his fun since he was looking forward to calling the guy on the other side of the bridge to let him know I was coming back for him to mess with some more.

“Are you going to drive me to my car then?”

“Well, no, but it will take a long time-”

“It’s already taken forever and I’m still at the terminal,” I said. “At least I know I’ll get there.” And I walked away. And I did walk to my car, and it took a long time and I was in terrible shoes so each step towards the end was agony and I was a sopping wet mess in my soggy wool coat, but it was still better than bouncing around from idiot to idiot like a ping pong ball across the terminal one bridge.

This was not a travel horror story, I realize this. I think it’s actually pretty much the norm these days. This is why I could never be a frequent traveler. I don’t like deviations from clockwork-like precision. You should see me when a flight gets cancelled- ugly. But on the flipside, it’s made me more sympathetic to the rantings and ravings of people when they are under stress because I do the exact same thing. And when I’m the bus driver, I figure it out, know what I mean?

I’d love to hear your stories of clueless and unhelpful travel employees to make me feel less alone in this. Or, on the flip side, has someone ever, you know, actually gone out of their way to help you on the road? I hear it happens once or twice in a lifetime.

One, Westminster is a sea of people. I mean, worse than Disneyland in July. Just elbows to rears everywhere. They pack in like sardines on the floor around the little green oasis that is the carpeting of the show ring, where everyone oohs and aahs over such delights as a gaggle of beagles.

On the main floor of Madison Square Garden, during the day the floor was divided into five rings, so if you stood high enough in the stands you’d get a view of multiple groups going at the same time, all day, for two days. For people like me who didn’t want to jostle for space on the floor, sitting in the stands offered a bird’s eye view of all the action.

I finally learned what is meant by this being a “benched” show. All the dogs have to remain in an assigned spot in an area called the benching area, and there they go both before and after the show where they must be available to greet the public. It’s a very up close and personal opportunity for the public.

Due to construction at Madison Square Garden, the benching area looked more like the grounds of Woodstock than anything else with all the crowding and cacophony, but it is theoretically a wonderful chance to meet the champions live and in person. When they weren’t being mobbed, that is.

Lots of public education going on. And now we know Indiana Jones is a dachshund fan.

Some of the lower maintenance dogs had plenty of time to hang out and talk to people. Did someone say TREAT??

While the dogs with more intensive grooming needs spent most of their time on the table getting clipped and/or fluffed.

Or in this case, flat ironed. I know how long it takes me to flat iron my own hair. Can you imagine doing it to a whole dog?

It’s tiring greeting the public for hours on end!

Oh Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind HEY MICKEY!

And before you ask, really, you don’t need to ask. It was a given:

I found some of those, and some of these:

Though after meeting this soulful pup (Borzoi, I think?), I may have to revisit my interest in the hounds:

And not every pup I met was there to show:

Ceva here is a service dog in training. Her puppy raiser is veterinary behaviorist Dr. Theresa DePorter; you can read more about her and Ceva here at About Veterinary Medicine. I couldn’t decide which of the two was more charming- it was a tie, I think.

I thought Westminster would be overwhelming and a bit stuffy, but really, it was a lot of fun. I thought for all the stress the handlers were surely under they were all very gracious about talking to people and seemed to be enjoying themselves. Also, I was lucky enough to connect with a few people I knew who were going to be there- and thankfully Dr. Crosby ushered me around when I first arrived on Monday morning wide-eyed, confused at the insanity of Madison Square Garden, and completely unaware that one should not stand under dripping beams in a subway station. I still have much to learn.

One, there was drama. There’s always drama at these shows to begin with, it seems, but this year was extra dramatic. I know lots of you already know about the controversy about Westminster breaking ties with Pedigree, and all I can say for now is that I am going to do all I can to get a better understanding about what happened and report back to you, because I think it’s a worthy topic to discuss.

But there was other drama too. I actually like the Pekingese who won, but there were plenty of disgruntled people muttering around me about how they liked the Irish Setter or the Dalmatian or what have you. I’m not vested in that world so to me, so I just sit back and enjoy seeing the many beautiful dogs. Who won or did not win is not that important to me. I met Maverick, who some of you have already heard about- he went from being a rescue dog on Craigslist to showing at Westminster and Eukanuba. AMAZING story and I can’t wait to share him with you all.

But aside from that, I took a breather to do the one thing I really wanted to see in New York aside from the show itself, and that was the World Trade Center memorial. It was very moving, and jarring and surreal to be there.

It’s late, and I have to be up early to jet back home, so forgive me this abbreviated post. I promise to write lots more later. In the meantime, how was your Valentine’s Day? Anyone have anything fun they did with the pups or something else exciting to share? I’m already in the doghouse for missing this holiday at home so I have to plan something good in the next six hours.

1. Bone chilling cold requiring layer upon layer of thermal undergarments
2. Unhelpful scoundrels who would ignore me, scoff at me, or mug me
3. Cacophony

And all I have to say is this: New York, you’ve disappointed me.

The cabbie took me from the airport straight to the hotel, no driving around and taking the long route.

No one’s yelled at me, not once.

I haven’t put my hat one ONCE and my gloves only on sometimes. It’s actually, dare I say it, refreshingly brisk. I even walked two whole blocks all by myself when I bid Annette goodbye at the subway station and I didn’t get mugged, not one single time on the way to the hotel.

I’ll even take it a step further- when I was going into Madison Square Garden, there is the main entrance, and there is the press entrance. The main entrance is right by my hotel. The press entrance is around the block, under a rock, through a tunnel, past some murder holes in a dark alley, or at least it felt like it in the morning when it was cold. So I went in the main entrance, expecting to be firmly rebuked, kicked, or escorted off the grounds, and the guard just shrugged and let me come in the nice warm brightly lit entrance. I will take ambivalence over power trips any day.

But seriously, so far New Yorkers have been quite nice. I think you all have been fibbing to me all along, or else living in LA for years has desensitized me to poor behavior. I don’t know.

Sure, some of the handlers are a little stressed, and tensions are mildly elevated, but aside from two press journalists almost coming to blows over an occupied cubicle in the press room I saw very little in the way of yelling, drama, or overt hostility. It’s actually been quite pleasant.

And now here is my favorite part about New York (aside from the 15 story David Beckham billboard on the side of the H&M building): some of you know I grew up in Boston. So despite multiple decades on the West Coast, I still have some New Englander tendencies in me. Now, after living in Southern California for as long as I have, the one thing I’ve never particularly gotten used to is the expectation that you will strike up conversations with complete strangers. At the grocery store, standing at a crosswalk, people just feel the need to chat. I’ve come to expect it.

No one does that here. Everyone just walks along looking straight ahead or at their feet and ignores you, pausing only to dodge tourists taking pictures. If you try to talk to a stranger, they either just keep walking, or throw you a dirty look THEN keep walking. I LOVE IT.

Oh, and the show’s fun too. I have been taking pictures feverishly with the DSLR, though don’t get your hopes up since I’m still in a steep learning curve so I may end up with 300 pictures of blur.

Yesterday was fun. I woke up at 6 to take Brody to the Helen Woodward Puppy Love 5K, and about 5 minutes after I left the house it started drizzling. 5 minutes after that, it was pouring. Now, I looked up the weather report that morning and it mentioned nothing about such drenching debauchery, so I had found myself leaving the house with absolutely nothing that would protect me from a long wet run, no hat, no windbreaker. Things were not looking good. 

The entire county was getting drenched. I pulled up to Del Mar, where the run was starting, and found that the one teeny little section of coast where they were having the run was actually clear. It was like Helen Woodward president Mike Arms looked up to the sky, waggled his finger, and the clouds obediently dissipated in just that one 3 square mile section of San Diego. (I have no doubt he could accomplish this. He is a force of nature.)

I was concerned Team Iams might see this inclement weather and send me apologetic texts that morning, but everyone who was planning on coming made it. Our team had already been suffering from some unfortunate setbacks; Heather from Iams had an emergency and was unable to attend; Leah, she of amazing motivation, was running another 5K the day before and injured herself; Tasha’s dog broke her foot; Karen broke her toe.

Between all of us, we were down to three people and two dogs.  But that’s life, right? Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t, and you just press on and do the best with what you have, when you have it. Being the only person on the team who showed up with both dog and human injury-free, I promptly stepped into a pothole and twisted my ankle about 10 feet into the race, just to kind of fit in, I guess. I didn’t want to feel left out.

I didn’t really race, anyway, as much as I did “leisurely stroll”. There were 2 separate courses, one for runners and one for walkers. I decided to hang out with my friends and walk. The vast majority of participants were walkers, so there was much better dog viewing on this half of the course anyway.

Did I say dog? There were pigs too.

In the race materials, they did make sure to let people know that the full loop was only 2.5 K, so in order to complete the full 5K you needed to turn around and do the course twice. We finished the first loop, saw a bunch of people heading for the finish line, and just followed them, figuring we would then get routed back onto the course.

“CONGRATULATIONS!” said the peppy volunteers pressing a banana into my hands like I had just done a 26.2. “Turn in your chip?”

Now at this point we had walked about, what’s that, maybe a mile and a half? I hadn’t even broken a sweat. Brody was barely warmed up. So, because Team Iams is HARDCORE y’all, we turned around and did the course again. I think there were maybe 10 other people who followed suit.  I just couldn’t justify getting up that early for a one and a half mile walk, though if the rain had continued I might have thrown the towel in early too.

By the time we finished our second loop, the finish line was already being taken down and everyone had moved on into the market place, where there were booths, agility demonstrations, and doga. I’m kind of sad I had to miss doga but at least I got to watch it for a few minutes.

As far as I can tell, doga consists of you doing yoga and your dog practicing his or her stay, by the way. Not that that is a bad thing. Dogs need that kind of practice too.

Yee haw! There were some killer agility demonstrations too.

So nice to live in a dog friendly hood.

Take this weekend, for example. On Sunday, I’m running in the Helen Woodward Puppy Love 5K on the inaugural Team Iams with an ace group of dogs and friends. Brody and I are super excited. And by excited, I mean, Brody is excited for a long walk and I’m just now realizing I should have spent more time training and less time sampling Girl Scout cookies.

No matter. I may walk a lot of it, but we’re getting out there, and there’s going to be dogs and awesome people and doga, and it will be great.

Then, I’ve given myself just enough time to run home and shower before running to the airport to catch a flight to New York to see the Westminster Kennel Club show for the first time. I could have caught a slightly earlier flight and foregone the post-5K shower, but I figured out of a sense of respect for my fellow travelers this was probably not an optional item.

I still have no idea what I’m going to be doing there- I have no agenda, no scheduled meetings (aside from finally getting to meet Annette from Biscuits by Lambchop!) and nothing that I have to do. What I do have is a list of people I want to meet for drinks, and that is good enough for me.

What I do want to do is get some good photos, and this is always a challenge for me on these solo trips because my husband always takes the pictures. This is both a blessing (when he’s around) and a curse (when he’s not.) I’ve never learned the art because I’ve rarely needed to use it.

After seeing that hysterical and slightly cringeworthy screenshot of me trying to hang with the big guys at the AKC show with my point-and-shoot, I decided to go big or go home and bring my husband’s DSLR with me to New York. I’ve been using it for three years, but by “using it” I mostly mean “I set it to full auto and fix it the best I can with Elements”.

What this translates to is that I have spent the last 24 hours with the camera in my lap, flipping through “30D for Dummies” learning what all the buttons mean. I’m reminded of my first clinical days in the vet school hospital, when I stood in the exam room with one hand on the dog and the other looking at the chart murmuring, “Eyes….OK, looked at that….teeth….lymph nodes.”

It took me 15 minutes to get through the exam in those days. That will be me trying to take pictures of squirmy dogs with a new camera. “OK….hmmmm, low aperture means narrow depth of field? Or is it the other way around? Wait, where’s the button for adjusting shutter speed….” and then I will say forget it and flip the dial to Auto and just throw a sock over the persistent auto flash just like I do now.

Much like perfecting the art of the spay, I assume this will take a little more time to learn than the one afternoon I allotted to the task. Oh well, such is the life of a procrastinator. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bag I need to think about packing and not do until late Saturday night.

I love making treats for the pets, almost as much as I love things that are easy to make. Sometimes I’m in a complicated mood, and sometimes I’m in a lazy mood. This month, I’m lazy.

As you know, I’ve started a torrid love affair with my dehydrator, using it to suck the water out of everything I can get my hands on in the house like a hydrophilic vampire. The chicken jerky treats went over very well, so I figured, hey, let’s make some Valentine’s Day treats while we’re at it where I don’t have to turn the oven on.

Sweet potatoes cut with a heart shaped cutter are as easy as it gets.

Though no one will blame you if you want to spice things up with a little bit of cinnamon. These are great not only because they’re easy, but in small bits they are relatively low-calorie and a veggie that is rarely allergenic.

Be still, my tangerine heart. One for you, one for me, sweet potatoes are super yummy.

Now, if you want to get fancy, and a little grosser, you can also continue experimenting with meat. I took some thinly sliced beef and cut it into little strips to evaluate its performance in the dehydrator.

But you know, it’s Valentine’s Day, so before you put it in to dry, you should arrange it in festive patterns by poking it into heart shapes.

OK, the resulting jerky hearts are not the most cosmetic of treats, looking more like actual dried out hearts than the adorable meaty love-nibbles I had in mind, but I can tell you of two dogs in the house who didn’t care that it looked like something you might find in a serial killer’s pantry. They loved the effort. And the meat.

Are you doing anything for your pet for Valentine’s Day?