New Skete Monasteries News

Reflections by Brother Luke Our married community, the Companions of New Skete, back in the 1990s, decided to start a dog biscuit business to help support their monastery. Brother Elias created the recipe for the biscuits. This was truly a cottage industry, since all the work was done in the Companions’ residence. They purchased all the ingredients for the recipe, mixed them together and made the dough, rolled it out, and used dog-biscuit-shaped hand cookie cutters to cut out each individual biscuit and place it on large cookie sheets. But that was not all; they also made an egg white wash that they applied to each biscuit with basting brushes. Of course, they also purchased convection ovens to bake the biscuits. The business grew, but it reached a point where they could not keep up with orders. At this time the monks had come to the conclusion that we could not keep up with the sausage-making business, so we thought we could replace that with dog biscuit production. We purchase...

By Brother David When a trainer friend of ours, Marc Goldberg, suggested that we could hold a successful dog seminar, well, we didn’t believe him. OK, we laughed at the idea because we didn’t believe him. “Who would come?” we exclaimed. Then he laughed, “You don’t know? In the world of dogs, you guys are rock stars!” Ummm… rock stars? Anyway, we had the seminar. And it was a success, with the gracious help of Ida and Karen and Scott and Josh and Michael and Scott and Lisa as well as all the volunteers who helped make our guests feel welcome and kept the train of the seminar running smoothly on the rails. Brother Christopher’s talks on the human–canine relationship and the spirituality of working with dogs, Brother Marc’s session on New Skete’s history, Brother Luke’s presentation on his experience of dogs here at New Skete and what his dogs taught him, as well as my sessions on puppy socialization and the rationale for purebred dogs were all well received. Each of the semi...