It does not suck to be a pet in the Blankenheim household.
shadow
Snow Day!
The weather reports said it was supposed to rain today. I guess technically, it did. In the form of snow. Five inches of it! It was a little unnerving to drive as it’s falling… especially when it gets really heavy. It was down way lower than it normally is (our house is typically right at the snow line, yet I drove for about 20 minutes in it). It was really beautiful too. I spent a few minutes just sitting in my car when I got home watching it fall… it was so peaceful! Then I grabbed my camera, the dog, and headed out to play! Shadow has seen snow one or two other times. He loves to run in it and to eat it. This has to be one of my favorite pictures of him:
I’m still learning to photograph – lighting in the snow is still a little tricky for me. I love how the trees look when they get snow on them – especially the huge oak trees all over our property:
Saturdays with Shadow
Saturdays with Shadow
Today I decided to make Shadow do a little photo shoot outside… in his element. I actually got a couple good ones (anyone who has taken pictures of dogs knows you have to take like fifty pictures to get one good one). He was tooling around his pen and decided to try to hide behind this bush. It gave me a chance to play around with manual focus because my camera really wanted to focus in on the leaves.
Happy Saturday all!
Super Bowl Musings
As most of you know, I’m a born and raised San Francisco 49ers fan. As is Shadow:
The first half of the game was really disappointing for me – it really looked like they weren’t there to play. I thought overall Colin Kaepernick played a pretty good game – he had some rookie mistakes, but for only being his 10th NFL start, the kid did ok. The power outage thing was crazy… definitely a game changer (in the 49ers favor), but they just couldn’t pull it off. If they had come out in the first half like they played in the 2nd, I have no doubt we would have won. It was a good, fair game, and the 49ers just didn’t have the extra oomph to pull it off.
Now, onto the ads. I was pretty disappointed with this year’s selection – I felt like they were mostly boring. There were two commercials that I really liked. My favorite (of course!) was the Budweiser Clydesdale commercial – I’m a sucker for the horses! I seriously got all misty-eyed at this one!
The other commercial that I thought was pretty cute came from Tide. I loved the Joe Montana Miracle Stain commercial. It was such a cute concept!
There was one last commercial that seriously made me laugh. It was on after the game (we actually didn’t see it until we got home). Even though I was on the losing side, I think this is pretty darn funny. Because, you know, “nothing masks the bitter taste of defeat quite like the sweet taste of pudding”. Apparently they’re really giving pudding away in San Francisco tomorrow!
Saturdays with Shadow
I was on a business trip for the last few days and was so happy to come home to see this little fella. This picture is one of the first ones I took with my new camera late last year… happy Saturday from Shadow!
Saturdays with Shadow
I can’t believe it’s already Saturday again – the days seem to be flying by lately! This morning Mike and I decided to finally finish the Lord of the Rings trilogy… my parents own it and let us borrow their copy. Did you know that The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is FOUR HOURS AND TEN MINUTES long? Apparently my parents bought the extended version, because why watch only nine hours when you can have eleven? Holy cow. That said, it was a great trilogy, just very time consuming. Shadow wanted nothing to do with it, so he spent the morning playing outside. Now he’s tired and lounging around:
Saturdays with Shadow
This is actually one of my favorites of Shadow. Those of you with labs know it’s almost impossible to get a good picture of them. Shadow will pose and then the minute the camera goes “click” he’s on the move and I have a blurry shot. This was taken after a long day of playing in the yard and working on the patio with Daddy. He was so tired that he didn’t bother to protest being photographed. I love that little grey chin!
Neurotic Eating
Sometimes I really do wish my dog could talk. Those of you who have labs know that they’re notorious chow hounds. As in some people have to get special bowls to slow their dogs down.
My dog, on the other hand, thinks a little more about his food. He’s always done it. When Mike was working at the fire station and gone for several days in a row Shadow would go on a hunger strike. Sometimes he takes bits of food, carries them to a random part of the room, spits them out, and eats them later.
This is what his bowl looked like when I left for work this morning… I swear, I did not touch it at all. That’s right, he ate it right down the center. I wonder what he’s thinking!
Does anyone else out there have a dog who does this? Do you have any solutions? I don’t even know if it’s something that necessarily needs to be fixed – he’s healthy and happy, but I feel terrible when I leave for work and he hasn’t eaten all of his food!
Saturdays with Shadow
I’ve decided to start a new segment on my blog called “Saturdays with Shadow”. Every Saturday I’m going to post a picture or funny story from the week about him. Since I now have the camera and Photoshop, expect to see more pictures… I’m having so much fun playing with both of them!
This picture is from the first day I had my camera… Shadow was in his pen and I took a zillion pictures. I was playing in Photoshop this morning and was able to crop and add some effects. I still have a lot to learn, but I like the result!
Down The Road I Go 