Memorial Weekend Camping – Day 1

On May 30, 2011May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn airstream, barclay, dave, navi3 Comments

We arrived in beautiful Trout Lake, WA, at the foot of Mt..hey, where’s the mountain?

This is our annual Memorial Weekend trip to meet our Airstream friends. This time we had about 10 trailers, which is a smaller party than usual. A lot of people had to cancel at the last minute.

Many of the regulars were there as usual, and brought instruments, because it just isn’t a party until the music starts up.

We got our little trailer setup, along with the new ‘dog yard’! This really worked brilliantly. The dogs enjoyed having space to hang out and watch the goings-on.

When we were just hanging out in the trailer, it made the trailer seem bigger because the dogs could be outside enjoying the sunshine.

The weather was kind of crazy. Storms kept blowing through, and it was one of the coldest visits we’ve had there! It’s been a late spring all over in the NW, and this place felt like it could have snowed at any time!

Dave wanted to snap a picture of me and Barclay in front of the mountain. I tried to smile, I don’t know why it looks like a grimace!

We spent downtime hanging out in the trailer until the storms passed.

When the sun came back out we took the dogs for a walk to see the stream where it crossed the main road. It was really high and roaring!

We got a glimpse of the mountain at last.

We cooked potato-dish for the potluck and then hung around the campfire, catching up with friends.

Even though it was cold, the mountain rewarded us with a pretty show at sunset.

Jack has settled back in just fine

On May 22, 2011May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn barclay, jack, navi, pets3 Comments

Jack is pretty happy here. He’s back to his normal self. I guess he’s a keeper.

Family portrait! I liked this shot because I got three neat pictures out of it!

Cropped to just the eskies…

cropped to a strikingly symmetrical Barclay. Fun 🙂

Flying dogs

On May 14, 2011May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi2 Comments

I was out having fun taking pictures of the dogs this afternoon.

I wanted to get a picture of them playing stick-ball.

That’s their ‘flirt pole’, is a ball on a rope on the end of a stick. I swing the stick around, they chase it and jump in the air to grab it.

They do the most amazing, acrobatic high jumps snatching the ball out of the air, but it’s really hard to photograph, partly because it happens so fast, but also because my hands are full with the stick! Barclay particularly does some incredible calculating to guess where the ball will go and is often hanging in the air waiting for it when it arrives!

After that catch Barclay got distracted by Dave coming home, which left Navi a chance to chase it without Barclay the Stick-Ball-Hog getting in the way!

But finally Barclay swept back in to show her how it’s done!

Dog Yard for the trailer

On May 8, 2011May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn airstream, barclay, navi1 Comment

We have a camping trip coming up, and I’m planning to take both dogs. I thought having a little ‘yard’ for them would be a lot of help. Our trailer is very small, and space around the door is crowded. So I took our X pens and spent most of the day making this:

I can make it bigger by adding more panels. Most of the time was spent figuring out how to work around the step.

I ended up cutting a panel in half, and then cutting one of the halfs in half again, and made this three piece panel to go under the step. I topped it with some flexible water pipe to protect our hands (you can see the pokey side on the right I have yet to do). This will make it so we can just open the trailer door and let the dogs out into the yard. That will be really nice for morning potty breaks! Also I won’t have to worry about Navi dashing out the door running off to annoy the neighbors.

Barclay’s ready to go camping. He’s waiting in the van!

Lap dance

On May 7, 2011May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn dave, mighty, navi6 Comments

There, that title should get some hits 😉

Dave came in from mowing and sat down in the office, and immediately Mighty took up residence on his leg. Soon Navi jumped up in his lap, even though lap capacity is really only 1 max!

But that was ok, she just sat ON the cat!

So they re-arranged a bit (Dave looks thrilled)…

Hang on, we’ve almost got it…

Purrfect!

Kids, Llamas, Alpacas, and Dogs

On May 2, 2011May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn 4H, barclay, jack, llamas, navi, pets2 Comments

I had a fun day today, with a 4H meeting first thing in the morning. We had it at one of our 4H family’s farms, where they have alpacas. Because they recently got in a group of young alpacas they were trying to place in good 4H homes, we got to see kids working with a variety of young animals that were new to all this, which of course made for an interesting morning!

Some were resistant to this ‘jumping over stuff’ idea…

Some did not like the idea of walking on strange surfaces…

And some of them just plain didn’t want to cooperate – even though this llama in particular had years of experience!

Some kids were having much better luck with the obstacles.

Practice and persistence pays off! These kids have a show coming up, so hopefully this little refresher got their animals in the mood to cooperate next weekend!

I took my new camera to the 4H meeting, along with my longest zoom lens (200mm) because that gave me a lot of reach. I was wandering around the field where we were working, and if I saw anything interesting about to happen, I was always close enough to zoom in and get it. Another thing I like about this camera is it takes multiple pictures in quick succession without having to go into a special mode. That definitely helped me get the shot I was looking for more than once.

At home I put one of my shorter lenses (the 28-80) on for taking pictures in the yard with the dogs, because they were seldom more than an arms-length away.

I love this shot of Barclay, but because I was zoomed in, the depth of field is shallow – the result being his nose is in focus, but his eyes are soft! I’d rather have it the other way around! The best solution would have been less zoom, and move closer – but he moves around so much I had to snap it when I could – oh well! So close…

A little bone-chewing action – with the green grass and blue sky.

Then Navi took the bone. I love the way they chew on bones, they’re so concentrated like nothing else exists.

I was so glad I got this shot of Navi! She is such a goofball, but sometimes she’ll hear something and just STOP with this rediculously serious look on her face! She looks so concerned!

Jack

I tried to finish off with a nice portrait of Barclay and Navi sitting in the dandelions, but before I could hit the shutter Navi had to sproing away to go do something else! Well, actually, that pretty much captures their personality perfectly!

By the time I was done I’d shot about 150 pictures today. Thank God for digital cameras! This explains why I couldn’t get into photography as a kid when all we had was film!

Dog training

On April 28, 2011 By stefrobrtsIn barclay, jack, navi, pets1 Comment

I just had a fun dog training session, with each dog individually. I started with Barclay, with my intention to teach him to roll a big ball around using his nose. Since he already knew ‘touch’ (nose to my hand), I just put my hand between him and the ball and had him touch it a few times, then removed my hand and he went right to touching the ball. I stopped then to go work on the soup for dinner, and he kept bugging me to come back for more! So I went and did another round with him, and actually had him double-touching the ball before I ran out of treats – he’ll be pushing it in no time. Then I just have to figure how I want to teach him to move it where I want him too!

Then I did a round with Navi, and worked on ‘Jump up’ like jump up on the couch, and ‘off’ – get back off the couch. And sits and downs. She is so eager to earn her treats, she goes at light speed and offers things so fast I have to click fast to catch her before she decides to offer something else.

For Jack’s turn, we did some starting nosework. I hid a treat under a towel and told him to find it, and he nosed under the towel and got the treat, and was VERY proud of himself (I think he was actually strutting around). After that seemed pretty easy I moved to putting the treat in one of three small boxes. I’d mix up the boxes and tell him to ‘find it’ and point at the boxes, and he sniffed around until he singled one out, and I opened it and let him get the treat – he got it right everytime! That’s a beagle nose for you!

Camera lens #3

On April 8, 2011May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn barclay, dave, navi, pets2 Comments

My ‘new’ Nikon D50 camera came with three lenses. The first is a Nikkor 28-80mm F3.3-5.6 which is the basic kit lens, so it’s the one I played with first. The second one is a Tamron 18-200mm zoom lens, which I have been playing with the last couple weeks – seems like that is the lens I’ll be using most of the time. The third lens is one the previous owner bought as a spare when he left his kit lens home on a trip, and so it is quite similar to the first lens, it is a Nikon 18-55mm F3.5-5.6. So it covers a range that could be described as wide angle, to not-quite-as-telephoto as the other lenses. For that reason I hadn’t been dying to play with it. I’m not even sure I’ll keep it, but I popped it on the camera to take a few shots today.

Dave in the office working (with a cat on the printer)

It’s hard NOT to be cheerful with these smilin’ dogs in the house!

The locust trees are always the last to get their leaves back.

This is the view north over the neighbor’s dilapidated barn.

And this was one of those lovely sunsets where the sun is behind the clouds and they light up with a brilliant outline of the light behind them. Clearly I need to figure out how to adjust my exposure on this camera – not only is the detail lost in the clouds, but in the picture of the barn above it the sky is all washed out. I was spoiled by my old camera having automatic exposure bracketing. I just need to figure out how to do it manually on this one.

So my conclusion about this lens was what I was expecting. It kind of covers a range I already have covered just fine with the other two.

Another thing I have to get used to with the new camera is that it doesn’t have a live view on the viewscreen – you have to look through the optical viewfinder. That makes it tricker to aim when you’re doing stuff close to the ground. I not only was spoiled by the view screen on my old camera, but it flipped out and rotated around so you could get shots from all sorts of interesting angles. But the quality of the pictures the new camera takes are far superior, so it’s worth the trouble to learn to just deal with the new camera!

Barclay and Jack run away from home

On March 31, 2011May 29, 2018 By stefrobrtsIn barclay, jack, navi, pets1 Comment

Luckily, it was only a very short trip before they were home safe again! Yesterday the dogs were out playing in the yard. Navi had come inside, and I wanted to close the back door, so I called the other two. No response. So I walked around to the front yard and saw the gate was open! Oh no!

Ever since Barclay was a puppy I’ve been working to teach him not to go through the gate without permission. But eskimos kind of do what they please. Worst of all, if Jack sees an open gate he’ll look at it, look at me standing there saying ‘wait’, and then go for it and run right by me! And once he goes the others follow. I’m not saying that’s what happened, it’s entirely possible they raced each other to see who could get through the gate first! I’m just saying that even if Barclay remembered his training and felt even an inkling of a feeling that he shouldn’t go through the gate, it would have been forgotten as soon as he saw Jack charging out.

So I told Dave and ran out to the front field, hoping they were in the fenced area, and calling Barclay, then I started hurrying down the drive, calling Barclay and looking every direction. Which way did he go? Not towards the road, I hope! But I heard dogs barking up the hill, so I looked up that way and saw a neighbor waving at us. I started running and hollered at Dave that they were up here, and he drove up in the car. The neighbor pointed towards the other neighbor’s house and said ‘they were trying to play with my dog but he ran them off, they went back there’. I called again and Barclay came running to me from behind the house, happy as can be! What a relief to see my buddy racing towards me! I grabbed him and hugged him and ruffled his fur and told him what a good boy he was for coming back.

Then the neighbor said ‘there was a beagle with him too’, and I said ‘oh, yeah, we’ll get him too’. Now, it might sound mean, but Jack ignores me when I call unless it’s dinnertime, especially if he’s doing something fun, so I wasn’t going to waste a bunch of time chasing after him. I was just happy to get my hands on Barclay, and I wasn’t going to let him go! I called Jack, but as expected he ignored me. Dave drove up and we put Barclay in the car, and about then we heard baying on the other side of the neighbor’s house, so Dave went around and came back with Jack, looking like he’d had the time of his life!

So our little adventurers were none the worse for wear. I wasn’t too traumatized, but really, what could be worse than losing your dogs? Calling your dogs and not knowing where they are, if they could be a half mile away in any direction, is the most empty, lonely, frightening feeling in the world! [note: this is why I don’t have kids, I’m barely responsible enough to handle dogs!] I mean, can you imagine having to go to bed knowing they were somewhere out there? There’s cars and coyotes and big farm dogs, or they could get into someones field and chase livestock and get shot! Having to put up posters and hoping someone sees them and grabs them and brings them back? The world is too dangerous for a little dog to be out wandering around on their own, even if they don’t know it.

Dave thought I was paranoid for always checking to make sure the gate was closed. I don’t know how it got left open this time, but I guess I’ll keep being paranoid and checking before I let them out. It’s better than the alternative!

Alpacas and fun with the new camera

On March 23, 2011 By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi, pets, photography2 Comments

Because I injured my eye last week I haven’t been in the mood to do much with the camera, but today I took it out to snap some pictures for a chicken update, and of the alpacas and dogs. I’m really happy with the camera so far. I just need to practice with it more.