My Children, the Dogs

Well, that last post certainly didn’t show off any photography skills with my new camera, did it?  Oopsie.  I guess I was anxious to get the Scarf to Clutch project documented and done, and wasn’t worried about photographic quality.

I tend to love very close-up shots, but I’m not combining the adjustable lens and the auto-focusing capability of this camera quite right yet.  It’s wonderful to control the zoom on the lens, yet difficult to just allow the auto-macro/focus to work.   Hhhhmmm.  Control freak?  Still learning.

My greatest camera practice opportunities are on my dogs, as they are always close to me.  [I’m pretty sure they think I’m their mother.]  

Ruby, the brindle boxer, doesn’t always like the camera much.  She sometimes gets disgusted with me and looks the other way.  When I can capture her, I think she is beautiful.  Maybe I do it too often for her taste – she is a little bit of a spoiled fuss-pot.

Seriously?  You are pointing that thing at me AGAIN?

Taffy, the white Pug-Poodle, has always loved being a star.  I honestly think she used to pose every year on the kids’ first day of school.  The girls would be all ready for the annual photo before they trotted off to school, and Taffy would magically appear and promptly sit by their feet at full attention. I'm going to have to dig in old photos and see  how many of those I can find.

This is Taffy - now 14-1/2 years old: 

Do you like my new haircut?

She doesn’t see much other than a shadow here and there, and doesn’t hear a thing.  She’s still as happy as can be, sometimes bouncing around like a puppy, but most of the time she runs into things before she realizes there’s something there.  It amazes me how she gets around by memory though – if you didn’t know her, you might not realize how blind she is.

It’s quite the comedy to let her in and out of the house.  I let Taffy outside from upstairs on the deck, and she doesn’t reappear to come back in.  So, I run downstairs to the patio door where she is waiting [ever-so-patiently] to be let back in.  By the time I get to the door, she’s on her way back to the deck stairs.  Mind you, she can’t hear me holler at her to come back, and doesn’t see me waving my arms to get her attention.  At this point, I race back upstairs to let her in up there.  Most of the time I get there fast enough, but once in awhile she’s on her way back downstairs again.  Who needs a gym?!  We nearly trip on her daily, and we’ve noticed many little changes in her as she seems to be aging very quickly.  

She wants to be in the same room as someone in the house now – she never used to care as long as she had the most comfortable chair in the house!  This is probably due to being shut in the laundry room by accident.  We startle her easily because she doesn’t see or hear anything, but in her younger days she was aware of absolutely everything that came within 50 feet of the entire house.  [Annoyingly aware when the yard was full of fluttering leaves. . . ]  She would retrieve a Frisbee for us to throw again and again as many times as we would throw it.  In fact, we had to teach her to “take a break” or she’d keep going until we thought she’d collapse. 

Now we just love her up and keep an eye on her so she doesn’t get lost. Or shut in a closet somewhere.