No puppy. Boo.

The number of dogs that were retiring from both Tucson and Caliente tracks have been declining recently. So a dog haul from Abilene, KS was put together so that Fastfriends Greyhound Adoption, GreySave, Operation Greyhound, Greyhound Adoption Center, and Homeward Hounds would get some retirees. Word filtered in that there was an injured four-month-old greyhound puppy that would be included, and that Fastfriends would get it. Who wouldn't want to meet a landshark?

But while we waited at Fastfriends for the van to arrive with the group's hounds from the hauler (who was running late), word came that there was no puppy aboard. In fact, the "puppy" was more like a year old, and that its injury had almost completely healed. Even so, it was decided to leave the puppy out of this haul because it was deemed risky to have a smaller hound mixed in a number of adults. No sense in taking the chance of the youngster getting re-injured.

But still...it was a disappointment. Nevertheless, when the nine hounds arrived Joyce and a number of volunteers were ready to help out.

Joyce took it upon herself to trim the nails of one greyhound:

I noticed she was sitting in a pool of light but if I didn't use fill flash here the shadows would be too dark. On the other hand, I didn't want the flash to be too obvious. So I dialed in -0.7 flash compensation to lower the flash's power.

In the following picture I had set the flash setting to slow sync. This was because I wanted to properly expose everything. The only problem was I had to use a slow shutter speed to do this. I waited until the hound was still before pressing the shutter button. This was taken at 1/30 second:

This is about as slow a shutter speed as I'm comfortable with using a non-VR lens.

I guess sub-consciously I've been interested in getting pictures of hounds and the hands of those helping them. Here are a few:

This was a great-looking group of hounds. Maybe a puppy will come in a future haul. One can hope.