Technology

Dog Blog Post #264: Geez - I almost got away with an "easy" one. Today's Daily Shoot was...

Make a photograph that illustrates a role of technology in your life.

... and yesterday's Henry Fur picture popped into my head. Perfect! I could take another picture just like it, and call it: Home Again Chip.


And I did. Well, I took the picture. The sun was shining, Henry's fur was looking fetchingly random, and in 10 seconds I had a great shot. It looked, well, pretty much like yesterday's shot, and I loved it, and I proudly showed it to hubby...

... who rolled his eyes and called me a wimp.

(sigh)

He was right, of course, but he could have least told me it was a lovely picture and then called me a wimp.

So I pulled out "the set" (ex-pen, backboard, butterfly clips), the lovely purple/plum fabric and the cheap black fabric, and grabbed...

The Computer.

Yeah, I know. A bit of a leap of faith there. My boys are fairly young, rather large, and sometimes exuberant (especially around food) and it is our only computer.

I shouldn't have worried, they both behaved beautifully, and I freely admit to being happy with how the pictures turned out.

But now I'm itching to get more pictures with props -  and maybe of the boys actually interacting with the props. And possibly doing poses with the props.

I can't say I have any concrete ideas at the moment - perhaps future Daily Shoots will inspire...

... for the curious, the top and bottom pictures have me just out of view on the right, waving cookies in my right hand while I snapped the pictures on the tripoded camera with my left hand. The middle shot (Zachary looking down) has cookies out of sight, sitting on the keyboard.

Yup, that ever-so-handy "Leave It!" in action!

For once, I can't actually think of a Missing Skill of the Day. Hmm...

FWIW: I teach "Leave It" by putting some cookies in my dominant hand, closing them in a fist, and then showing it to the dog. The dog tries many things to get the cookies from the fist, fails miserably (at least, that's the plan!) and will eventually stop mugging it (if only for a moment) upon which I quickly click and then treat. Lather, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat.


Now, the recommended thing to do is treat from the non-offered hand. This produces a dog who looks away from the food once you've got the behavior down and you give your "Leave it!" cue. On the other hand, for picture taking, having a dog who stares lovingly at the food is most handy - in which case you treat from the hand the dog was mugging, so the dog stays focused on the food.


I'm quite torn as to which to choose - do I want the "better" behavior of a dog who backs away from the object when I say "Leave it!", or do I want to be able to direct the dogs gaze using cookies. Since I can't make up my mind, I do both. Probably not a great solution, but there you have it. :)

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