This & That

Give That Puppy a Pancake

With the grandbabies here this week, Ollie has had plenty of people to play with.

But my youngest granddaughter, Caroline, has just fallen in love with this dog.

She will crawl right up to him, grab his rabies tag on his collar and start to shake it. She will grab his ears. She will put her hands right in his mouth and giggle hysterically when he licks them. Notice, however, the slightly shell-shocked look on his face.

She will work her way backwards to  get as close as possible to him. 

And he is totally and completely gentle with her. But all the while he's looking at us with this slightly puzzled and half-way pleading look in his eyes. "Please....make her stop."

Patience like that deserves a pancake.

I Only Want a Little Nibble

While the little boys were "riding" around the pasture, the other horses and people were just hanging out, waiting for the adventure to be over before they headed to a different corral. As is sometimes the case, boredom sets in.

 "Hmmm. This blueish greenish thing looks interesting."

"It doesn't smell too bad."

"I wonder if it's edible."

 

"I only want a little nibble."

"Just a nosh to get me through to the next corral."

 

Ride 'Em

We traveled down to Utah recently for a family wedding. While we were there, there were some horses to wrangle.

 This is the farm where my husband grew up.

He walked these fields with his dad and his grandpa and he learned how to work hard. 

We were accompanied by several kiddos. The Girl was there holding onto one of the critters. I could swear I heard this conversation go on between these two: Horse, "So what are we doing here?" Girl, "You got me...just stand still and it'll all be over soon."

We put my nephew and my grand-nephew up on one of the horses and my nephew's big brother took them around the pasture for a bit. I ridiculously love my grand-nephew's bright red hair.

He doesn't get a lot of exposure to critters, so this was tremendously exciting for him. He wanted to make friends and was willing to resort to bribery to do it.

Ollie

It's time for an Ollie post.

Ollie absolutely loves he cabin in any season. He loves the Great Outdoors and indulges often in the Crazy Dog Run. He loves going with DH for walks around the property. Actually, he loves doing anything with DH, because he knows it will get him outside. 

He loves wallowing in the snow and digging in it. The girls had him fetching big, frozen clumps of it, but he wouldn't give it up like he was supposed to.

He gets a little snotty about fetching for anyone except DH. 

 

Ollie

I think it's time for an Ollie update, don't you? He's been spending quite a lot of time in the house because it's so, so cold outside. LS Boy's been spoiling him by giving him lots of treats.

He's been really good about staying in his spot....sort of.

 

Shutter Speed

Week 2 of my photography class revolved around shutter speed...how to get it fast enough to take a properly exposed photo and how to freeze motion vs. imply motion.

It was a difficult lesson for me because I could not get The Girl to spin, dance, run or do anything that required motion  of any kind so I could practice. I was left with only one cooperative subject, and that was Ollie. Since The Girl wouldn't motate for me, I made her stand next to me and throw the retrieving buoy 5,000 times for the dog.

It was a difficult lesson for me because the dog is so dang fast. I never could get him totally focused. Mostly I have about 4,999 shots like this:

I'm going to insist that this look was intentional because it contains lots of implied motion. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Never mind that the instructor critique reminded me that implied motion contains parts of a subject that are moving and others that are in focus.  The grass is in focus. It's just the dog that's not, lol.

This was the best one of him focused. And the implied motion here is probably better.

You wanna see my creative shutter speed picture? I knew you would.

Ooooooooooo......ahhhhhhhhhh. I maxed out my shutter speed here and still couldn't freeze the water drops. I should have tried upping my ISO, but forgot to try it.

Next week's photo lesson: Aperture.....and the cooperative rose bush.

The Crazy Dog Run

Every once in a while, Ollie will indulge himself in what I call the Crazy Dog Run. He will run full steam back and forth, back and forth, around and through, and he's big enough that you want to really be out of his way when he's barreling around like that.

He likes to grab a handy stick (or a log) and run with that.

Back and forth, back and forth. He has varied feelings about the resident cats, though. Little Smokey totally intimidates him. She'll hiss at him and he gives her a very wide berth.

Bingo, on the other hand, he will send running up a tree in short order. He's getting braver about that.

Walk Numero Dos, aka My Husband Is Trying to Kill Me

The second cabin morning, DH and I took off on a walk, again before the kids were up, but he decided that walking up the road is much too tame for him. He wanted to follow one of the deer trails through the property and bushwhack it to the river. We've already discussed my lack of ability to do this. We were in grass up to our knees, I couldn't see where to put my feet or what was under the grass that might trip me up....pieces of fallen trees, a dip in the ground. I was taking life and limb in my hands doing this. I ended up with my swear filter slipping slightly and several scratches on my legs from unseen branches sticking up just under grass height.

Ollie, on the other hand was having the time of his life, doing the crazy dog run back and forth in front of us. We did eventually make it to the river.

I am just to the left of the big log jam here, facing upstream.

The river is quite a bit lower now with the hotter temperatures.

Ollie felt brave enough to step in at this spot.

We slithered further left to a wide spot with a big hole where DH threw sticks for Ollie. We wondered if he would step off the security of the rocks and actually swim for the sticks.

But he did, snorting out his nose like a horse as he went.

Since we have such cool morning temperatures, I am seeing little signs like this that fall will come to the cabin sooner that we think.

See those little yellow leaves? DH and I went for a rhino ride later in the day up one of the canyons close to the cabin. We drove up in elevation and close to the top of the mountain, we could see some yellow leaves on the aspen trees. It amazes me how short the growing season is.

Wildlife Sighting

While we often see signs of wildlife around the cabin, it isn't all that often that we actually see the animals that make the signs. It's even more rare to see them mid-morning, but that's what happened.

If you look closely through the deck slats, you can see a deer face looking at me.

I thought she would take off immediately, but I stay well back from the edge of the deck and didn't move much as I took the pictures.

While she was very cautious, she didn't disappear immediately.

 

Companionship

My companion this week with the family gone. Is it weird that I'm talking to him like one of the kids?