Hank is visiting for a few days but he shows no indication of losing a tooth, but if he does I hope I find it to add to Swing's budding collection. Maybe he will surprise me with one before he goes home later this week. In the meantime he's been having a blast hanging with his sister and cousin (and Dirk, the old man who gorged himself on a box of Milkbones on Monday. My fault, I forgot to take them off of the counter before I left for work). He's learned to have his teeth brushed, negotiate a bunch of steps, open the pantry door (that one surprised even me) and supervise yard clean up. Tonight is toenail night which we will do at training and tomorrow we may have a bath night since they could all use it after dealing with the mud leading in from the back yard. He doesn't have a large fenced in yard at home and it is so cute and funny watching him and Swing race around the back yard like a couple of young foals/deer. I'll get some pictures of that before he leaves. I warned Howard that he may not get the little monster back since he has settled in so nicely. Of course we all know that keeping litter mates is not a good idea and I wouldn't dream of it, one is enough work!
This past weekend the weather was wonderful and after agility training we put together some props for me to take pictures of all of the dogs. Of course the dastardly duo had to have their pictures taken and it was quite comical watching 3 adults try to handle and manipulate two 19 week old puppies. Individually they were manageable, together was another story. But we got the task done and here are some results...
Swing (L) and Hank (R)
Swing
Beau (aka Hank)
And the pups were not the only stars of the photo shoot. Dodge sat patiently while I took his pictures (he was very good about taking directions from my friends) and while I love the colors in this shot if I were to re-shoot it I would find a way to shield some of the sun from his eyes (can we say diffuser?).
Dodge
This is Candy, Jan's sheltie that Howard is presently running in Novice. At her first agility trial she picked up one Novice standard and one Novice jumpers leg. We were glad that there was a bit of a breeze on Saturday because Candy has blown her coat so she isn't carrying as much as she was a month ago. The wind helped "fluff" her a bit.
Candy
Finally, one of the shots that I really like, we have Bart. Bart has the wonderful honor of being his breeders for ROM and he's currently running with my friend Carolyn's husband, a job he took over when she injured her knee last fall. Now Carolyn did all of the ground work with Bart so her husband just had to learn how to handle him and they have done extremely well since hitting the ring less than a year ago! As you can see, Bart is quite the looker and he obviously knows it.
Bart
Photographing animals and kids is considered challenging by some photographers. Personally I find it fun to work with subjects that can be unpredictable, uncooperative, sometimes unruly and basically FUN! The key to successful pictures is having an assistant or two that understands said subject(s) and can take direction from the photographer. It also helps if they can take over pressing the shutter when the photographer realizes that they need to intervene and take over the posing duties. This is what happened when the puppies were being photographed. Trust me, I have a number of shots of one or both of them jumping off of the bales of hay, climbing on each other, looking away, etc. Thanks to all of my assistants, I think we got some nice pictures.
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