- A Foreshadowing of "Gifts to Make for Holiday"

Dear Fans of Hounds Who Cook,

We awoke this morning to a particularly bright and chilly day and know that winter is going to snap at our tender whiskers before the peppers are even grown in the garden. We're going to start to cover everything every night no matter how warm it is. We found some long thin white material that reminds us of interfacing from sewing (did you not know we are also Hounds Who Sew? ) that is for protecting your garden fruits from the nipping of frost.

Anyhow, what is really important is that we are here and now telling you we are not hounds who abide by the parameters put upon us. While humble in form, we have the ancestry of The Wolf, who everyone knows is King of the Wild. (You can guess who started the competing "king of the jungle" nonsense. A cat. Probably a little mite of cat, too. Like our own Beltashazzar who we are fine and willing to share our home and chicken scraps with, but he's surely not descendant of any great beast, as are we dogs. We've never seen a cat even half the size of a dog. Though we have, sadly, seen dogs the size of a cat, which is confusing especially if they're fluffy like a cat not lean-haired like us.)

That said, we, Canis Lupus Familiaris, of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora, we will not be restrained by the common procedure of the blog. This common procedure is that every day, a dog writes something new and every day the new thing becomes preeminent over the last. so that there is a great and weighty archive of all of his dog thoughts in chronological order from most recent to last.

We dogs intend to defy the Common Procedure of the Blog.

You see, this morning The Gute had a good idea about gifts for the holiday season. Me was recently discussing the making of wonderful spa gifts for the holiday season. Gute decided that with Me fully occupied in her taxes and her travel, we dogs should take this on as a blog project. But not one that gets buried in the archive where only a good digger like Guthrie could find it.

So we're going to write a "Gifts to Make for Holiday" post that will include items of both a culinary and a spa aesthetic nature for birthdays, Christmas, housewarmings, bridal what have yous and so on. And it will be a blog that doesn't age but keeps rising to the top everytime we add another Gutiful idea. :-)

Watch for it to come soon. While we hounds deplore a bath, our first gift idea is likely to be our girl Me's favorite vanilla milk bath.

Poised to Serve,
The Usual Hounds

p.s. While the hounds are poised to serve, as pictured above (notice the one in back...), I'd just like to add, as the Cat of the Home, that I could take down either one of them at any time. I'm just a peaceable creature. It doesn't mean I could not wield my strength on an as-needed basis. I just wanted you to know. The Cat is a creature to be reckoned with. You'll be hearing more from me as the less interesting winter months approach. I go by the pen name B. Belize as it's my favorite nickname from my girl, Me.