Katie on her dog bed

I shared this photo (also on this blog two years ago) on Instagram yesterday as Facebook has been reminding me over the past three weeks about Katie's impending -- and then subsequent -- surgery and recovery. You can see where her IV was inserted, her incision, and the shrinking bruising area. A couple of days prior she had decided for herself that she wanted to go lie on top of her dog bed instead of the spare mattress we had set up for her to lie on as she recovered from her surgery. That's where I found her. At this point of time she was almost a week removed from her amputation.

It still pains me at times when I think about her now; I'll never get completely over it. I feel like that for Alex, Nikki, and Sadie (who died six months after Katie) who came before her, and I'll feel like that for Bean and Billy Bob (who came after her) whenever their time comes. But I look at all the pictures I took of Katie and I can better appreciate the nearly ten years she graced our household.

There are a lot of Katie memories, both good and bad, in those pictures. But Katie is in there, and that's really all that matters.

A Bean and Billy Bob group picture

I usually have a problem trying to photograph Billy Bob when I kneel down to his eye level. That's because when I do that, he starts walking towards me. So without Gayle's help this picture wouldn't have been possible. She worked to get their attention and also keep them on one spot while I shot a few frames.

I used my 70-200mm VR zoom to put some distance between the dogs and me. I also used my SB-800 flash to fill in some shadows. It might be worth getting this printed because -- believe it or not -- I have no prints of my pictures hanging on our walls.

(Shot with the Nikon D600, 70-200mm VR zoom, and SB-800 flash; shutter-priority mode, shutter speed 1/320 second at f/3.2; flash-compensation -0.7; ISO 1000; auto white balance; matrix-metered; shot in RAW and processed in Lightroom.)

Billy Bob does not tip over

February 23rd is Billy's birthday and I wanted to take some birthday photos of him. So I led Bean and him out to our backyard and tried my luck. To get his attention I have a video of barking and rooing greyhounds during a turn-out at a racing kennel, a greyhound roo-fest inside a friend's home, and a morning practice with a squeaking artificial lure at a racetrack. No doubt he wondered what I was doing as I walking back-and-forth on the patio while getting ready to play back the video, so he followed me. Hoping he would keep a bit of distance from since I was using my 70-200mm zoom (which has a 5ft/1.5m minimum focusing distance) I braced myself against a vine-covered wall and played the video a few times. I used my SB-800 flash to provide a bit of fill.

This was his reaction upon hearing the rooing greyhounds.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 with the 70-200mm VR and SB-800; shutter-priority with a shutter speed of 1/320 sec at f/3.2; ISO 400; matrix-metered; shot in RAW and imported into Lightroom.)

Secret Hound Business

Something's going on here...

(Shot with the iPhone 6, post-processed with Camera Awesome.)