A Dog’s Life

So this was the assignment: “My husband [let’s call him Daniel] is having a birthday and I’d like the cake to represent how much our dog loves Daniel and how cool he thinks he is.” Well, I’ll admit that last bit kind of stumped me. How to portray a dog’s version of cool?

For those needing a translation of the cake (and I assume that’s most of you – even the dog didn’t get it), here goes.

The dog starts off at the doghouse (the bird, Woodstock, is perched on top as a tribute to Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame). There are many distractions in his path and if you follow his paw prints (don’t be confused by the one or two that point in the wrong direction!) you’ll see that he circles the first tree, then heads over to the fire hydrant – which he ignores – and carries on towards the football, which he also disregards. Although there’s a dug up bone in his path, he continues on around another tree and ends up at his final destination where he digs up a birthday message for Daniel.

For those of you wondering why he didn’t just make a beeline for the card instead of meandering all over the cake – that is, how cool could he really think Daniel is? – just bear in mind that nobody mentioned canine intelligence as a requirement. If they had, the dog would have written and performed a three-act musical with fully choreographed numbers.