This morning Abbey, the hound, woke me up at 6 a.m. Because I hadn’t gone to bed until 12:30 a.m., and neither had she, I was astonished and angry. But then I realized that today is Father’s Day and we had already talked about making Grandpa some doggie-inspired sandwich cookies to thank him for all of the pool parties and mid-afternoon visits while Kevin and I were at work. Also these cookies would’ve been great for their dad as well, if he weren’t in California digging trenches on the beach with the Marines.

I combined two recipes from Martha Stewart’s ingenius “Cookies” cookbook. The first was a recipe I’d been wanting to make for a while: Bat Cookies. I followed the simple chocolate cutout cookies that called for a combo of cocoa powder and melted chocolate. But the filling—dulce de leche—didn’t feel right coming from the girls, and Nola, the boxer, agreed. What these cookies really needed was her favorite treat of all time: peanut butter. Of course she was quick to paw out that Grandpa could not have any peanut butter out of her jar. I flipped through the book until I found the whoopie pie recipe, which has a peanut butter filling, and used that recipe. The peanut butter filling has natural creamy peanut butter—not good in its own right—that is modified with plenty of butter, confectioner sugar and salt. Now we’re talking!

For the cutouts we used a series of dog bone cookie cutters and one very important squirrel cookie cutter. Grandpa was surprised and promply asked his doggies, Shamrock and Maggie, why didn’t I get any cookies from you?

Happy Father’s Day to all of you doggie fathers and grandpas out there.