Snow dogs

Last night as I was starting to drift off I found myself thinking about snow dogs. I spent many a winter day detaching snowballs from my dogs legs and leaving them by the heater to drip dry. I haven't had to do that now for almost 11 years; but I am considering heading north so that I can shoot some snow dogs. Other than shooting dogs at the beach I think shooting them in the snow is about the most gorgeous.

I have a couple of photos put away; some amazing ones of Tilley when she was only a year old that I will have to dig up and scan. She was still pretty black back then and that with the white snow all around and her silver face; well pure magic in my eyes or lense. The dogs use to love the snow; even little Jessie as she would trudge almost completely consumed by the surrounding snow trying to keep up with the long legged poodles.

Shoveling was even fun when the dogs were around; there was always one dog ready to catch a face full as I tossed the unwanted snow over my shoulder. And a snow dog can have just as much fun with snowballs as with tennis balls; albeit after a while they tend to get the equivalent of brain freeze I would imagine. A wet face surrounded by falling snow; beautiful. And when you take a standard poodle soaked to the skin from playing in the snow and capture those flying ringlets; well I could sit and shoot for hours.

The only snow days that bothered the dogs were the frigid ones. You always knew it was really cold out when the dogs started lifting their feet; we stayed in and enjoyed the scenery out the window on those days. And we quickly learned that shoveling a path through the deep snow for the dogs to use helped keep the snowballs down. Poodles and any other breed that has alot of leg hair tend to be snowball magnets. Especially on those mild days when the thermometer hovers just below freezing; the days you want to spend outside. I remember my airedale being covered in three inch snowballs as we head home after a big snowy hike.

Ah,....... snowdogs on snow days.