Small Treats. Big Wags. — The Neighborhood Edition is a love letter to a Katy dog community, one trail and one treat at a time.
For CeCe, it all started with her German Shepherd, Nox.
Their daily walks around the neighborhood turned into friendships. You see the same dogs and the same people every day, and before long, you’re a little community. Hers happens to be full of foodies; neighbors are always passing homemade dishes to one another.
“One afternoon, walking along the bayou with my friend Sherri and talking about what our dogs love to eat, I thought: our neighbors cook for each other all the time — why not the dogs?” CeCe said.
CeCe has a background in Foods and Nutrition, one of her two degrees, and as she’s gotten older, real food has mattered more to her. She wasn’t about to hold Nox to a lower standard than the rest of her family.
She was tired of spending money on store treats he wouldn’t touch, made with ingredients she didn’t trust. So, she started making her own dog treats with real, simple ingredients and writing down the favorite ingredient each neighborhood pup actually loved.
A plain list of recipes felt boring, so she turned it into something personal: a map.
A Map of Neighborhood Memories
The real heart of that map is CeCe’s neighbor, John.
Over years of walking their paths and bumping into neighbors and their dogs, John gave each walkway its own name — and every name has a story.
There’s “Nox’s Knoll,” the little hill where Nox plants himself and acts like he’s the boss.
There’s “Larry’s Lane,” where a pup named Larry Malek loves to make his rounds.
And there’s “Freedom Way,” named for the day two off-leash pups made a joyful dash after a rabbit and sent everyone on a merry chase to round them up.
Every path holds a memory like that.
“I only illustrated the map — John is the one who named it, and that’s what makes this map so special,” CeCe said.
Another neighbor, Colette, is the one who dubbed their big park the “Happy Place” — her spot to slow down, watch all the dogs play, and the name stuck for all of them.
A Neighborhood Cookbook
It’s also, truly, a neighborhood cookbook. Several recipes were contributed by neighbors for their own dogs.
Erica, Guilherme and Giulio, Astro’s family, shared their dehydrated chicken hearts; Jane, “Madame Leila’s” mom, contributed a dehydrated eye-of-round; and Beth gave them Larry’s “Swishy Pops” — chicken broth with green beans, shredded carrot and bits of chicken, frozen into little ice-cube treats.
Every treat in the book belongs to a real dog and a real place.
That’s how Small Treats. Big Wags. — The Neighborhood Edition came to be.
“It’s really a love letter to our little Katy dog community,” CeCe said.
From Katy to Houston Life
Recently, CeCe, John and Colette were featured on KPRC 2’s Houston Life on National Dog Day, which was a wonderful surprise.
Where to Find the Book
Small Treats. Big Wags. — The Neighborhood Edition is available for purchase through:
- Amazon:https://a.co/d/0aacs08R
- CeCe Blue Ink:https://ceceblueink.com/
Katy residents can also meet CeCe in person at her next author signing at Barnes & Noble in Katy, located at 435 S. Fry Rd., Katy, TX 77450.
The signing will take place Saturday, September 19, at 1 p.m. CeCe will be signing books and doing a live treat demo — making the no-bake Energy Bites from the book — so folks can see just how simple real-food dog treats can be.
“But honestly, the best part is still watching a neighbor light up when they spot their own dog in the pages,” she said.
Looking ahead, CeCe is working on a follow-up focused on nutrition for senior dogs, and she’d love to keep growing this into a real celebration of the neighborhood’s dogs and the people who love them.
Photos courtesy of CeCe Blue / Canine Culinary Lab
