dogs

The Puppy the Children Loved

/ Marie / 2 Comments

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Our children love puppies. We have two small, white fluffy balls of love at home named Sophia and Garibaldi. The children miss them terribly when we travel. We take them to a “doggy hotel” whenever we leave town. I think our children secretly wish they could come with us when we travel.

Outside of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao stands this 43 foot tall puppy with flowers in all colors of the rainbow sprouting out all over it. It turns out the children of Bilbao loved this puppy, and didn’t want the puppy to leave them. This sculpture by Jeff Koons was supposed to be a temporary exhibit installed for the opening of the Guggenheim in 1997. I don’t know how long it was supposed to remain, but it was saved from demolition by the schoolchildren of Bilbao. They mounted a letter-writing campaign to keep the giant flower-sprouting puppy at the Guggenheim. I’m glad. It stands as an example of the voices of children being heard and positively affecting the world around them. This is a story I share with my children so they can have an example of the power they can wield. And I find joy in the commonalities we share all around the world. In this case, the love of puppies.

Puppy Love

/ Marie / 1 Comment

I am excited by today’s Daily Prompt, Menagerie. I was just playing with a photograph of my two puppies. Well, strictly speaking they aren’t puppies. Sophia is 9 and Garibaldi is 5, but I will always think of them as puppies.

Puppy Love

Puppy Love

They are not very obedient. They like to bark. A lot. But they are also sweet and loving with our little children. We love them, too.

You might also enjoy Tongue 1 and Tongue 2.

Tongue 1 and Tongue 2

/ Marie / 4 Comments

To amuse myself while I am sitting and nursing my baby, which is a substantial amount of time throughout the day, I’ve been reading some photography tutorials to learn how to take better pictures. I want to have the skills to take awesome photographs of my children, of my travels,  of pretty much everything. This post isn’t really about travel, except that I would like to take better travel photos. But, I think it is amusing, so please read on. Last week I came across a tutorial about how to take action photographs of dogs. I decided to give it a try. Here is one photo of our male dog.

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This is the kind of photo that the tutorial was discussing. It’s a fun photo. I love how insanely puffed out his fur looks while running. I swear they could make stuffed animals that looked just like him, and children would go nuts over them.

Now, we have two dogs, a male and female. They love to lick babies. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love it. Especially our female, Sophia. My husband and I joke that for the first few months of life, our children know our dogs only as Tongue 1 and Tongue 2. Their soft, luscious fur remains elusively out of reach to our tiny baby. But their tongues can cover a huge amount of distance! Our dogs are also kind of mischievous like Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Dr. Seuss books. They are not the most well behaved dogs in the world. Anyway, one of the pictures that I ended up with was this.

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This is Tongue 1. If you love dogs you probably are laughing right now like I was when I saw this gem among the other dog photos. I love how her crazy, flipped out tongue is the most in focus of anything else in the picture. It just really captured her personality, a little neurotic, very loving, and very mischievous. So laugh away, and maybe try taking some photos of your own dogs.

Here is a link to the article about taking dog action portraits for your enjoyment.

http://digital-photography-school.com/6-tips-for-photographing-dogs-in-action/

Enjoy, and have a great day!