In conjunction with National Homemakers Month in April, the Celebration Team is developing a guide for your reading (and using) pleasure. Here are the topics:

• Cleaning with Your Canines
• Decorating with Your Dogs
• Homemaking with Your Honeys

This guide will include tips, stories and pictures from YOU on how your dogs help make your home a wonderful place to be.

Here are some examples:

• Decorating with Dogs: Doggie beds can be purchased in colors to coordinate with your room and furniture colors. These can take the place of any throw pillows you may have but which have been chewed up by the dog.
• Homemaking with your Honeys: No need to purchase an expensive home security system, the woof woof, bark bark works far better and faster than a system where the security people take forever to get to your home!
• Cleaning with Your Canines: If your dog likes to leave nose and paw prints on your sliding glass doors or windows, do NOT clean this off. These are wonderful sun-blockers and break up the glare in your room.

In closing, here is a wonderful tip that we know most women will be happy to know:
Dog Hair in your kitchen and/or bath room drains prevents your fine jewelry from going down the drain in the event you drop these. Not only does this save you a tremendous amount of money for a plumber but it saves many a family argument about how silly you were to have your jewelry at the sink anyway!

Continue for more good tips on decorating and housekeeping with your dogs.......

Post-meal kitchen clean-up is so much faster and easier when your cairn helps wash the dishes. If you have more than one cairn, then one can "wash" and the other "rinse". A third one can be a huge help in removing the stuck on food from your casserole dish. Since my kids have started doing the dishes, my hands are much softer. Of course, I do have a problem getting friends to agree to eat at my house. Oh well, at least the kids are earning their keep!

"Who needs an expensive dishwasher when you have a Cairn on duty to do the dishes for you?"

Ole teaching Ciara how to redecorate his space:

Just remember not to run with those scissors in your mouth. ;-)

Here Rowdy and Rissa help out with some home improvement.

Hmmm, wonder if they cut those tiles with their nails...

• If it's latex based, soap & water should work
• If it's oil based: time.... (ha, ha) Also on a more practical note the suggestions were brushing it out with a fine-tooth comb (wouldn't work for the nose of course...) & peanut butter!
• Paint the rest of the dog to match...

Need a little help with the housework? Tired of scrubbing those floors? How about cleaning out the dog food bowls? Well I don't have any of these problems because I have Charlie the Wonder Dog!!! Charlie is an efficient method for all of these chores. Drop some food on the floor while cooking, no problem Charlie will lick it up quick as a wink. Floor just need a general lick oops cleaning; don't feed Charlie his breakfast and he will make your floor licking clean. He will inspect every inch for anything at all. He'll even check out the lower kitchen cabinets for you and clean them as well. And since we have a crew of 4 furkids, Charlie has apppointed himself in charge of making sure all bowls are cleaned after every meal. He will gobble his down, and sit and wait patiently for the other kids to finish their meal. He then steals their bowl off to a secret place and licks it clean. In fact, it will literally shine! He does this for any and all bowls. Although there is only one Charlie the Wonder Dog, he is available for training of your pet. Just invite him over and he will perform his cleaning wizardy on your home, thus showing your furkid how it's done. No guarantees are offered on the teaching, but we do guarantee you won't have a drip, scrap or spill on your kitchen floor.

FINE PRINT: While Charlie's work as a cleaning machine is guaranteed, we do not guarantee his "decorating skills". Don't believe him when he tells you that a little off of a chair leg, coffee table, china cabinet, etc. would give your home that "decorator touch". Also be careful of any and all dog toys, pencils, pens, etc. as Charlie thinks it is his duty to rid your home of these items by either chewing then pooping in the appropriate place outside, or carrying all toys out to the yard to add some color and improve the overall appearance of the boring green lawn.

Dicey and Breck need to rest after a hard day "helping" around the house. Wet paws come through the kitchen and I must say they are perfect in their work..they never leave their muddy paw prints in just one place, but make sure they get the whole floor decorated! Then it's off to the carpet they run. I always liked mauve and white and with the stuffing left behind from toys I always get what I like. Of course, it helps with my exercise, as I am always bending at the waist to pick everything up! It always helps to have a tattletail, too. Breck ran to the kitchen barking and scratching at my feet..when I asked "what", he ran back to the living room to find Dicey walking around on the table helping me dust. These are just a few ways my kids "help" around the house!

My name is Wendy, and though I've gone to the Rainbow Bridge, I spent a lot of time steering Mom's vacuum all over the house, telling her where the dust bunnies were. Luckily, she had a cannister vac, because I would have had a terrible time, riding an upright.

Let your cairn help with the laundry!

Slobber is a natural wrinkle remover.

Dog hair can provide a protective layer for many types of materials.

Dog teeth can make perfect starter holes for additional buttons.

Under NO circumstances should you let your cairns use power tools!!!

Rocky and Grommy help in the bathrooms!