Let them eat cake

I love cake. I am starting to think the main reason I go to agility trials is to eat cake. Seriously, on any given weekend, there is usually at least one MACH cake at a trial. Is this a Midwestern thing or do people do it from coast to coast to celebrate the achievement? Sometimes MACHS are celebrated with cupcakes or cookies but mostly its cake. A great big honkin’ sheet cake that disappears within minutes as soon as it’s cut. (I am refraining from a plague of locusts reference but, well, you get the picture.)

I find eating cake with gobs of sugary frosting at 9 a.m. to be very normal behavior, although judging from responses to my initial Facebook posting of the cake’s picture, it appears perhaps we DO eat an inordinate amount of cake at trials here in the Midwest.

New topic - dogs born in 1999 (there is a connection, go with me here). We have quite a collection of them among my friends. We call them “The 99s.” My Jamie is one of them.  Most are still with us, a few have passed. They were a well-accomplished bunch and until just recently, two of them were still running agility at age 13. They are a special generation, those last puppies of the old century.

I decided it was time to honor The 99s. Naturally, with a cake. I decided to bring a “99s” cake to my club’s recent agility trial.

I enlisted the help of an experienced cake procurer, my friend Paula. She has been responsible for designing, ordering, picking up and delivering a variety of cakes to a variety of events. She knows people who know people. I knew my idea was in good hands.

The only error that ever happened to a cake on her watch was when she ordered a carefully designed cake for a fellow agility friend’s 50th birthday. It was to have green tinted frosting with an agility course designed on it, complete with little dogs running. When she picked up the cake at the bakery, it was plain white and said “Happy Birthday.” That did not end well. Well, actually, it did, because it ended with a free birthday cake, in addition to the non-agility-course birthday cake, which we all ate anyway.

So Paula and I decided a Christmas theme would be appropriate for The 99s cake. Simple, with holly leaves and berries and the dogs’ names listed at random. Really. What could go wrong?

She texted me a photo the night she picked the cake up.

It had white frosting with the dogs’ names carefully and neatly spelled out in red piping. Red and black pawprints adorned the top. In each corner was a cluster of . . . marijuana leaves?

Clearly “holly” is open to interpretation. Perhaps the cake decorator had a different frame of reference than we did.

We laughed. We ate it. It was very good. We’re still laughing.

Here’s to The 99s. You guys rock.

The 99s
OTCh Jamie
Ch. Breeze
MACH Simon
MACH Rylee
MACH2 Nina
Sydney PAX
Magic TDIA