Saturday morning

Good rainy morning; I awoke this morning to thunderus rain coming down, nice. I love weather. It is 9:00 and we are all still in bed; none of the dogs are thinking about getting up anytime soon. Is there anything better than snuggling and listening to the rain? Nope. Yesterday I got the dogs out nice and early; I wanted to make sure that they all had their walks incase it started raining earlier than anticipated. But it did not and the rain held off until early this morning.

During our walk yesterday I was wondering how I can better communicate with Jessie other than touch. Her hearing is really bad and her vision is not far off; so when we are on our walks I tug on her harness to get her attention. At home she can be seen running here and there through the house in a panic looking for me. She runs right by and I yell out her name; if I yell loud enough she will stop and look around. But her hearing is not good enough to pinpoint my location and I literally have to come out into her path waving her down so that she sees me. It is difficult; especially because this is all new, she has never had to rely on other senses. And I have always relied on hand signaling as my dogs get older; but it doesn't work with Jessie.

Poor little girl; she is constantly startled now that her hearing is so bad. She was never a nervous type dog; solid as a rock like Tilley but now she is much more nervous as people and dogs seem to pop out of nowhere at her. I think I'm going to visit a few websites on training deaf and blind dogs; I should be able to get a few tips from them. I have worked with several deaf dogs; once you teach them to pay close attention the rest is fairly easy. But blind too?

Yesterday afternoon I had a photo shoot; fabulous Great Dane. I got some amazing shots and he could not have been more studly looking. After we wrapped up his photo shoot I grabbed a few shots of his little girl and him; this is quickly becoming my favorite subject to photograph. A kid and their dog; not much cuter.