Random shots from a retirement day

The latest batch of retired racing greyhounds to arrive from Caliente numbered 21. Eighteen was the original number, but leaving just a few in the pet kennel seemed pointless so all of them were taken. What was a bit surprising with this bunch was that there wasn't a broken-legged greyhound among them. So much the better.

I'll share some random shots that I took during the day.

Huck is a large, white male who lives with the McRorie's. When he was let out of the innermost of two fences that enclosed the property he wandered around and had to see what was going on while Joyce was giving instructions to volunteers new to retirement day processing. When he was still long enough I grabbed a few snaps. This one was a mistake, but look at the bokeh:

While this one of Huck was a little closer to what I was trying to get:

Then he walked up the ramp that leads into a house where kennels are set up to temporarily house some of the greyhounds. He went inside, then turned around and stood on the platform at the top of the ramp, so I got another shot of him:

This is probably a little too dark and kind of flat, but also lots of bokeh to see.

What do you do with a picture that sucks in color because you badly overexposed it? You turn it into black-and-white to see if it looks better:

Didn't work this time, I think.

I took a picture of a flower growing under the trees:

I tried for a different perspective of a greyhound being bathed:

There was a nice moment between a girl who hugged a greyhound she had helped foster before the dog left to be taken home:

Small dog-testing photos can be interesting:

All the dogs shown here were fine during testing, in case you were wondering.

The same applied to Kinko, the cat used for testing:

For some reason, Kinko swatted at quite a few of the greyhounds in this batch.

Then I had to leave. I'm hoping that I'll have some different ideas of how to shoot the next retirement day. Stay tuned.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm and the 18-200mm zoom; suffice it to say I used program, aperture-, and shutter-priority; auto, flash, sunlight, and cloudy white balance; normal JPG.)

The last retirees for 2011

Last Saturday afternoon I watched the last Fastfriends dog haul for 2011 arrive from the Caliente racetrack. There was a majority of brindles in this batch of 17 (a friend of mine who volunteers for the Greyhound Adoption Center commented that they too had gotten a majority of brindles in their last haul from Caliente).

Here are a few photos of some of the newly-retired houndies:

It's pretty hard to not want to hug every hound:

Or to just admire them:

I didn't spend much time watching the hounds being bathed. Instead, I ended up talking to a few people who were new to me and just chatted about greyhounds. But I did get this picture of one brindle getting a bath:

On an entirely different topic, I'll mention that two other dog bloggers (jcp of A Dog's Journey and Karen of Tricks for Treats nominated me for the Liebster blog award:

 

I'm supposed to suggest five other blogs that I read; I'll have to come up with that. I certainly didn't expect this -- I mean, all I'm doing is just sharing my pictures of greyhounds and hope people enjoy seeing them. My thanks to the two aforementioned dog bloggers.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 18-200mm zoom and SB-800 flash; program-mode; ISO 400; shade and/or flash white balance; normal JPG.)

Don't look at me in that way

When newly-arrived retired greyhounds from Caliente get a good and thorough bathing I find it very, very hard to avoid seeing them with their eyes locked onto me. All pictures taken with fill flash to lighten up the shadows, which results in sometimes using long exposures (1/20 second) to get both the foreground and background exposed but causes the subjects to blur.

I need to stop looking at them and move on to something else -- I'm going to want to bring one home.

(Shot with the Nikon D300 using the 50mm f/1.8 lens and SB-800 flash. Normal JPG.)

New hounds in town

There are ten new hounds in town -- ten newly-retired greyhounds transported from the Caliente racetrack in Mexico to an eager and expectant group of Fastfriends Greyhound Adoption volunteers.

While we waited for the hauler to appear, I wandered down to a corral to meet a four-year-old bounce-back male greyhound named "Arrow". He's in wonderful shape, is very friendly, and will lean on you if you give him just the slightest chance. I don't think it will take too long for him to be placed in another home:

 

I stayed with Arrow for awhile and took a few pictures when he wasn't trying to get in my face and plant his nose on my lens. He is so much like Katie in this respect: you can't kneel to his eye-level and photograph without him walking to you.

I walked back up the hill to the driveway and met Nascar. Poor guy had his right wrist broken, repaired twice and it's not quite right yet. Using my 10-24mm I took an overhead shot of him napping:

Then I walked over to the converted garage that now houses a bathtub and a number of kennels and looked at the kennel muzzles hanging at the entrance. I always liked the different colors used for the muzzles. I have this vague idea in my mind of how I want to show these but I haven't gotten it yet:

Then Tom and the hauler appeared and it was time to see the new arrivals:

The greyhounds were quickly taken to the corral where they were checked for ticks:

...took a quick dip in the pool to cool off a bit:

...then bathed:

...then photographed for their website, examined, and taken back to the corral to be small dog- and cat-tested:

For one particular hound, taking a second dip in the pool is better because being cat-tested is a bother:

In most of these pictures I used fill-flash to lighten shadows. Arrow's and Nascar's pictures are in open shade with no flash used. The 10-24mm zoom was used most often, although I did switch to the 50mm f/1.8 to take some informal portraits:

It was fun to see the new retirees prepped to be made ready for fostering and eventually placed in their forever homes.