Without a doubt, there’s one moment of the day that I look forward to – no matter how old I feel, no matter how cracky and jangly my joints get, or how turbulent my tummy feels, or how bummed I am because it’s too hot to walk outside, or how tired I am because it takes a lot of energy being this good of a dog – Peanut Butter Spoon Time!

My Mom loves to give us peanut butter on a butter knife or spoon. She will load a spoon for Minnie Moo and then load each end of the butter knife (not a sharp knife, mind you!) and let me and Toby eat that together, one on each end. All three of us get our peanut butter fix together in the kitchen. Bonding time!

My Mom says she loves this moment, too, because our faces instantly melt into puppy versions of ourselves. My Mom got me as a pup (somewhere between 35 and 42 days old to be exact), so she saw ALL of my puppy faces. I had a different puppy face for every activity, and my Mom got to see them all. Here’s a puppy face where I had just woken from a nap. (I was about 3-1/2 months old.)

But for Minnie Moo and Tobaroo, Mom missed out on their puppy faces because they were older when they came into our lives. And Mom says that having a peanut butter spoon is how she can get an approximate view of their puppy faces.

For those of you who are not dogs: When dogs eat a peanut butter spoon, we RELAAAAX. Our entire world becomes the most blissful world where the act of eating peanut butter from a spoon becomes it’s own perfectly tuned universe where time and space bends into itself: comforting, tasty, never ending stickiness, all of your cares fall away.

While we’re enjoying the peanut butter spoon, we don’t hear anything, we don’t think anything, and we are in a meditative state. Our bodies completely relax, and our faces morph back into puppy faces – the years roll back and all stresses dissipate. Mom calls it Peanut Butter Puppy Face, or PB Puppy Face.

For our rescue friends: If you adopted your dog after the puppy phase, you can see what they looked like as a pup using the PB trick.

I can only imagine that Peanut Butter Spoon Time is much like how humans enjoy their dessert. Perhaps much like… an ice cream sundae – freezing vanilla ice cream with steaming hot fudge poured over it, and a generous helping of whipped cream topped with chopped peanuts? Or, hot caramel apple pie with expensive vanilla ice cream melting all over the crust and adding exactly the right creaminess to the pie? Did your face relax when you read this description of dessert and you could practically taste it? That’s Peanut Butter Puppy Face.