Your pup is one year older…time to celebrate!

Doggie Birthday Party

Happy Bark-Day! We all love a
good party, so doesn’t it make sense that our dogs would love a party? A doggie birthday! To be honest, I have always wanted to throw my dogs a birthday
party surrounded by friends and family who are dog owners, and I would invite
them to bring their dogs so the birthday pup can have his own peers to
celebrate with. We’re going to share with you the planning process for a puppy
birthday and suggest some dog-safe party food and games, including some recipes
to help make your planning easy and organized.

Party Planning

A great party is one that is planned out very well, with every detail thought
through and researched. Is it going to be an indoor or outdoor party? How many
guests? What kind of food to serve? Where would be the best place to have it
and how to send out the invitations?

The menu would be the perfect place to start. Chicken fingers (because every kid
loves chicken fingers although we all know they don’t have any. That would be
extremely weird to see fingers on a chicken) Salmon Flavored biscuits, Frozen
Yogurt Pup-sicles and of course, a birthday cake. These are all dog-friendly
treats and we’ll leave the recipes below so that you can give them a try. Rest
assured, there is no sugar in any of these recipes because sugar is dangerous
for dogs. Sugar is detrimental to a human’s health but let’s leave that
conversation for another day. Since we have to feed the parents, let’s make our
lives easy and order in pizza and beer.

Decorations

One of the first things we do when we decide to have a birthday party is to pick a
theme. The theme will determine the color scheme and is the basis for all
decorations. Since this party is for our Shaggy’s 10th birthday let’s do
a Scooby Doo theme and keep to brown, blue and yellow in our color scheme. We
need to have tables for the dog moms and dads and shorter tables for the pups
to eat their treats. Plastic table cloths can make set up quick and easy, you
can get them in a variety of colors to match your theme, and cleanup can be a
breeze. Plastic table cloths and coordinating streamers are available at
Walmart in the celebrations department. Speaking of streamers, no party is
complete without them, but we’ll have to put those up high so our doggie
friends won’t get caught up and tangled in any stragglers that might be reached
from the floor.

Amazon is a great place to get all of your party supplies as they now have pinatas to fill
with your favorite candies and treats. We won’t be filling our piñata with
candy and I did think about filling it with dog treats, like Greenies or Alpo
Snaps but it reminded me of the time my son bought a Kong for his dog and
nearly ripped Shaggy’s throat out when he came sniffing around his new
snack-filled toy. Yeah, let’s not create a brawl at this party. A Scooby Doo
shaped pinata will make a fantastic addition to our birthday décor.

Games

You need to keep your canine friends out of trouble, so some entertainment to keep
them occupied would be a great idea. Playing dress up is a simple activity and
one that dog moms and dads will love. Create a backdrop using colorful props or
something that matches the theme of the party. Provide a basket full of hats,
scarves, shirts, dresses, eyeglasses…using your imagination will make for a fun
and popular activity and your gala will most certainly make its way to social
media with all of the photos being taken at your party.

An obstacle course is also a great activity for our furry guests and another photo
moment that will go down in history on social media. Using cones, boxes,
chairs, a variety of obstacles for your doggie friends to run through. An added
competition element by timing the guests to see who runs through the course the
fastest is sure to make it a hit! Provide treats to the winners of the day’s
activities but be sure to ask for parent’s permission before you hand out the
snacks.

Recipes

Here are some yummy treats to make for our furry guests that are healthy and safe
for doggie tummies.

Yogurt Pupsicles – Blend together 1 cup of plain yogurt, 1 small banana, 2 tbs peanut
butter in a Magic Bullet or Nutribullet blender. Pour into small silicone molds
and chill in the freezer for a minimum of 3 hours before your party. Pop them
out and serve!

Apple Peanutbutter Cakes – These easy to make mini cakes are sure to be a hit! Blend ¼ cup of peanutbutter, 3 eggs, a finely chopped apple and 1½ tsp of baking
powder. Spoon into jumbo muffin tins lined with paper and bake for 20 minutes
at 350 degrees. These babies are perfect for dogs and also edible for humans
too! If you want a bit of frosting you can add a topping of peanut butter.

Thanks for coming!

Guests have been entertained, fed, treated to surprises, dressed up and photographed.
Now it’s time to give them a proper sendoff with a thank you goodie bag to take
home with them so they can remember their amazing day. These Scooby Doo treat
cups are available through Amazon and are the perfect size to put our treats
in.  Snausages, tug of war ropes, chew
toys, balls, squeeze toys…these all make perfect mementos of our happiest day
of the year for our Shaggy!

Now you have all of the elements of a fantastic and memorable Happy Barkday for
your favorite furry friend. Post your pictures on Facebook and Instagram, tag all of your doggie mom and dad friends, and make sure you include videos of the obstacle course and you will be a big hit with poochie parents worldwide! We hope you enjoyed the party, and we hope to see
you back again soon!