Eating Christmas nuts on the dog beds

So Christmas is getting nearer and it is ok to have lots of nuts around the house. Not that we are eating them constantly, but at the moment they are replacing the roasted peanuts that go with that Ahhh break feeling in the evening when the dogs have settled down on their dog beds and a small G&T or a single glass of wine is used to divide the line between work and not-work. Missed it tonight, it’s nearly 21.30 and soon bed time.

The dogs, who are never, ever allowed titbits at the table, are allowed one Christmas treat, which is the fun of the nuts. Yes, some say nuts are bad for dogs, but it doesn’t seem to bother them. In fact, I have often enough observed a pooh, which seems to be a couple of handfuls of peanuts. This is obviously when SOMEONE has been naughty and emptied the peanut bowl in a moment where there was nobody in the room. My dogs have all had a steal from the coffee table and survived the peanuts. You come back into the room and they are all lying there, ever so happy on their comfortable dog beds, but not telling you that their bellies are full of stolen peanuts. Hahaha.

Anyway, the Christmas nuts are given out in their shells and each dog comes to get one. They carefully take them to their dog beds, where they fumble them round their mouths till it is just between the right set of teeth and then CRACK. The walnuts make a mess because the dogs will crack and spit. The whole lot goes on the dog bed once it’s splintered and the dog then picks out all the edible bits. The walnuts are complicated for that because they have all those bits of convoluted nuts with little dividers between them and the shells splinter into lots of bits. But they lick out every morsel of nut and when satisfied that the dog beds are all full of slightly soggy nut shells, they see if they can perhaps come and ask for one more.

The hazel nuts are better. They tend to crack into a few pieces with the nut still intact. They don’t take long to eat for our canine friends.

It is our intention to plant lots of hazel nut trees in the area outside the Tuffies work shop because I have observed, when I go on my bike in the morning, that there is a little area near the river, where the bank is covered in hazel nut bushes, that there are lots of red squirrels. The Tuffies workshop has plenty of windows to give a light, nice work environment and we would love to be able to see the odd red squirrel whizzing by while we are making great dog beds.