Geoff Fox: My Permanent Record
Back when I was in school teachers would always scare me with stories of how my exploits would end up in my permanent record. I believe this is it! – Geoff Fox
Back when the late Richie Ashburn called the Phillies games he’d sometimes look at a base runner and declare him “runnerish.”
We see that in Doppler too. She did some wind sprints up-and-down the hallway today. Yes, we encouraged her, but she looked runnerish!
Doppler is a little under the weather. It doesn’t seem serious, but she’s got a touch of kennel cough. It probably from her stay while we were out west.
Considering she’s been inoculated and her friends had to show proof of inoculation it’s pretty strange. It happens.
Doppler is a little under the weather. It doesn’t seem serious, but she’s got a touch of kennel cough. It probably from her stay while we were out west.
Considering she’s been inoculated and her friends had to show proof of inoculation it’s pretty strange. It happens.
Her affliction doesn’t seem serious because she’s her usual self… except when she’s trying to clear her throat. Dogs and phlegm. Bad combination.
Her appetite remains. She’s just as anxious to doze on the sofa. Even the vet says it will run its course, though he threw in a prescription. We have to give Doppler a pill twice a day. Pill Pockets to the rescue.
Thankfully, my trusting dog doesn’t suspect an ulterior motive driving my new found light night snack largess. She hasn’t figured out there’s a pill wrapped inside. That’s why it’s crunchy!
Shhhh. Don’t tell.
As of last week Doppler was getting awfully big! She hadn’t been to the groomer in nine weeks and it was really showing. She had graduated from “World’s Softest Dog” to “World’s Fluffiest Dog.”
What we didn’t understand was her long time between cuts made it more difficult for us to brush her properly. That led to a tangle of matted fur near her body. Problem solved with a clip very close to her skin.
It’s warm so that’s not a problem. She also looks more puppyesque with her shorter coif.
I appreciate that you indulge me and look at the photos I take. Photography is satisfying to me. Maybe I’m a little obsessive.
Having Doppler has greatly increased my photo ops. She’s always available!
I took the photos posted here this afternoon and tonight.
I appreciate that you indulge me and look at the photos I take. Photography is satisfying to me. Maybe I’m a little obsessive.
Having Doppler has greatly increased my photo ops. She’s always available!
I took the photos posted here this afternoon and tonight.
Helaine had just made the bed. Doppler was relaxing on it. The sky was dull gray, but bright enough to fill the room with soft light.
All these shots have shallow depth-of-field. That makes what’s in focus pop. The background is very soft and blurry.
The files I work with are immense. Each photo produces a file around 25mb! Everything has to go through Bridge then Photoshop before it’s ready to be posted.
Fifteen shots this afternoon. Four shots tonight. Here are the three keepers.
I do public appearances. It’s part of my job. I do a lot.
There is a common thread before each one. I don’t want to go!
Most of the time I don’t feel that way when the event is over. Saturday was no exception.
I do public appearances. It’s part of my job. I do a lot.
There is a common thread before each one. I don’t want to go!
Most of the time I don’t feel that way when the event is over. Saturday was no exception. The event was “Paws in the Park” in South Windsor.
Far! It was an hour each way.
Helaine had girlfriend plans so Doppler and I settled in the SUV and headed north. This event was totally dog friendly!
Doppler has a little area with leash installed in the front passenger seat. Within the first five minutes she had managed to wrap her leg and become immobilized! That’s never happened before.
I was a judge. Theresa LaBarbara and Steve Parker were there from the old place. Beau Berman was there from FoxCT.
It was like a home show or travel show, but for dogs! There were tables with vendors and rescue organizations. There are lots of rescue organizations.
We judged a best trick, dog kissing contest and sitting version of musical chairs. The vibe was good.
I managed to get five new “Don’t go to sleep yets.”
After two hours we got in the car to go home. Doppler was bushed! I left the leash off and let her lay down. I guess dog days are like dog years!
Like a criminal on the lam, Doppler moves the bone from time-to-time. It’s never hidden, just elsewhere. All of a sudden for no reason she’ll get up and take the bone upstairs. A minute later she’s back without the bone.
Doppler is my favorite subject for photography. The camera came out right before I left for work. She was walking around carrying the Busy Bone. It was as if she had a few pounds of cocaine taped to her body!
She is tentative with the bone in her mouth. Can a dog be nervous? She was in nervous contemplation. She also looked a little like Triumph, the insult comic dog, with the bone sticking out like a cigar.
Why doesn’t she eat the bone? That’s what it’s for. It’s not supposed to be a plaything.
Sometimes she forgets where it’s hidden.
These two shots were taken with a Sigma 10-20mm lens. I used a very high ISO which means no external light was needed.
It’s the family room. There wasn’t much light. I hate shooting with a flash. Hate!
Doppler and Bentley were pretty hyper at this point. They were lunging and rolling and growling and constantly on-the-move.
You don’t have to read this part. Looking at the photos at the bottom is fine. Here’s how they were shot.
Dogs can become conscious of the camera. It’s just as it is with people. Doppler has already begun to turn away from the camera when she wants to be finished.
I had to be quick. I needed their attention. It was also nearly time for me to go to work.
I chose a Sigma 10-20mm lens. It’s an f/4 at 10mm which is how it was used. It’s very wide which means you must shoot close. Objects in my photos look farther from the camera than they are.
It’s the family room. There wasn’t much light. I hate shooting with a flash. Hate!
Doppler and Bentley were pretty hyper at this point. They were lunging and rolling and growling and constantly on-the-move.
I turned the ISO (sensitivity) up which brought me gain, also noise. It seemed a reasonable trade at the time, but some shots are just overwhelmed by it.
I shot 65 frames in a few minutes.
Don’t be scared to shoot. It takes a lot of photos to get a few good ones. It costs you nothing.
It’s pretty easy to go through and numerically rate them using Bridge. Most are going to be discards. Often there will be two or three shots which are virtually identical. Gone.
I grade everything on one pass then go through the survivors a second time. On that second pass I’ve seen all the shots once giving me a better idea which are no longer needed.
Next it’s Adobe Camera RAW to adjust levels, sharpening and noise reduction. Some shots which survived this far are now discarded because they just won’t clean up acceptably.
I chose four to show you.
My first sighting of the two of them was at the Wallingford Animal Shelter. They were on the floor yelping and wrestling. Mouths were open. Teeth were revealed. Neither applied enough force to hurt the other.
It’s playdate time at the Fox house! Cheryl and Steve brought Bentley to visit while they run some errands.
Bentley was found and adopted by Cheryl and Steve the same time we adopted Doppler. They were abandoned together and purposely trapped in a baseball dugout. Bentley is Doppler’s brother or father–we can’t be sure.
My first sighting of the two of them was at the Wallingford Animal Shelter. They were on the floor yelping and wrestling. Mouths were open. Teeth were revealed. Neither applied enough force to hurt the other. This was aggressive play, not unbridled aggression.
Back at the shelter Bentley was tiny–around five pounds. Doppler was the obvious alpha. Now Bentley’s a bigger boy. Deciding which dog dominates is much more difficult.
They still go at each other, but after fifteen minutes both were exhausted and laid down.
It’s obvious Doppler and Bentley still recognize each other instantly. Their action around each other is very different than their reaction to other dogs.
It’s always good to have a family reunion.
We are all creatures of habit, certainly Doppler! When she senses she’s getting a treat she’ll hop up on the sofa until she gets a good look.
We are all creatures of habit, certainly Doppler! When she senses she’s getting a treat she’ll hop up on the sofa until she gets a good look. Then she runs into her crate where she impatiently awaits something tasty.
Here’s video proof.
I’m a liberal, but even I’ll admit big government took the fun out of this part of the park. Are you happy now bureaucrats?
Tomorrow will be a stormy day. That made the sunny skies and mild temperatures of today unavoidably tempting. Helaine, Doppler and I took off for Hamden’s longest, thinnest, most used town park.
I’ve heard this trail called everything. It’s the Linear Park, the Canal Line and Rail-to-Trail. Google Maps calls it the Farmington Canal Heritage Tail. Mostly it’s just “the trail.”
We picked up the trail at Brooksvale Park, a more traditional park with ball fields, playground equipment, a pond and open space. Oh–and animals.
Brooksvale Park has a menagerie of small farm animals. Around twenty years ago the USDA forced the town to build a fence around the fence that penned in the goats, sheep and ponies. Kids could no longer get close to the petting zoo wannabes.
I’m a liberal, but even I’ll admit big government took the fun out of this part of the park. Are you happy now bureaucrats?
We left the park crossed Brooksvale Avenue, then a small bridge and were on the trail. It is a one lane blacktop strip with woods and wetlands on either side.
Before the trail this was the right-of-way for the long defunct New Haven and Northampton Railroad. Earlier still it was the route of the Farmington Canal.
Our section of the trail is flat!
We walked north toward Cheshire.
The trail was loaded with bikers, skaters and walkers. Many like us had brought dogs along. Doppler made a few friends. There are more small dogs here than on Sleeping Giant.
We saw two spectacular small birds up in trees. They were black with orange accents around their shoulders… if birds had shoulders. My cellphone camera was unable to get close enough for a good look, but they were pretty. We weren’t the only ones to stop and gawk.
Later this spring the trail will gain a canopy of trees. Today it was still open to a mainly blue sky.
This is the best time of the year. This is the weather conducive to everything.
Doppler has developed a strange behavior. It has to do with a “Busy Bone.”
Doppler has developed a strange behavior. It has to do with a “Busy Bone.”
Busy bone chewbone treat with the meaty middle. Its delicious taste and fun twisted bone shape make Busy Bone the perfect alternative to rawhide chews. Some pet behaviourists have shown that toys and treats like Busy Bone also provide dogs with healthy outlets for acting upon their natural instinct to chew. – Busy Bone sales schpiel from Amazon
Doppler is small, but even the small dog size Busy Bone looks oversized when in her mouth. She used to take these bones and chew them up. That’s what dogs are supposed to do.
No more!
Doppler now treats the Busy Bone like some sort of companion or toy.
Last night’s 4:00 AM trip to the front lawn is typical of what’s going on. She showed up at the front door with the bone in her mouth as if it were a stogie!
She’s been taking it upstairs, leaving it on our bed or sometimes her bed in my office. She’s been taking it downstairs, parking it on the sofa or in her crate. The only thing she’s not doing with it is eating.
Her current Busy Bone is getting ready to enter day four. It’s uneaten, but well loved.
Four days must be some sort of Busy Bone record!
The newly shorn puppy looked different enough that Helaine walked right by her without realizing who it was!
Doppler saw Gabrielle for a fur cut at Hot Diggity Dog a few days ago. She, Doppler not Gabrielle, was getting very scruffy. We wondered how poor Doppler was seeing through all that hair!
The newly shorn puppy looked different enough Helaine walked right by her without realizing who it was!
Thank heavens Gabrielle didn’t remove any of Doppler’s cuteness!
My forecast was for sunny skies. Ugh! Not so. The Sun should be out by 2-3p based on what I see now. I don’t like being wrong.
When you forecast the weather for a living the last thing you want to do is wake up on the weekend, look out the window and see something you didn’t forecast! Take this morning for example. My call for today was sunny. I woke up to cloudy. That’s not good.
Helaine and I planned to take Doppler up Sleeping Giant. I wasn’t showing my face with this kind of blown call!
Around noon I double checked my numbers then went on Facebook and Twitter to post:
My forecast was for sunny skies. Ugh! Not so. The Sun should be out by 2-3p based on what I see now. I don’t like being wrong. #hiding
Online friends started checking in. Western Connecticut got the sunshine first which then slowly crawled across the state.
By 2:00 PM the clouds had parted and we were ready to go.
On an afternoon like this Sleeping Giant Mountain State Park gets busy. We drove past the parking lot and into the picnic area. There were families and other groups of people walking toward the trails.
Doppler walked to our right. We were surprised to see she did little sniffing. She didn’t seem curious about the other dogs either… well, unless they were interested in her.
That’s how we ran into Benji. Benji is a Maltapoo–a Maltese/Poodle combination. There were some subtle differences, but he and Doppler surely share some lineage.
I’m glad I snapped these photos.
Doppler has four legs, but they’re short. She was taking two or three times the steps on twice the number of legs. Maybe she’ll make it to the tower at the top of the mountain later this summer, but not today.
We stopped at the bench a little over halfway to the top and rested for a moment before heading back down. Doppler’s pace quickened with gravity finally on her side!
As we walked the lower part of the trail I turned to Helaine and told her how good it is to live near The Giant. It’s tough to express how much I love that beautiful chunk of Connecticut.
Tonight I’m typing with a sleeping puppy next to me. Her paws are a lot dirtier than they were this morning.
If there was an NBA sofa sleeping contest Doppler would be the paws down champ!
We’re at the end of a lazy day spent at home. The NBA slam dunk contest is on the TV. I’m not much of a pro hoop fan. It’s only marginally entertaining.
Paul George of the Pacers just made a dunk over a 7′ 2″ teammate. I couldn’t clear 7′ 2″ with my chin much less the more sensitive body parts he put at risk!
Meanwhile Doppler is totally uninterested. She spent most of the day on the sofa in repose. I am so jealous of her ability to take it easy round-the-clock.
If there was an NBA sofa sleeping contest Doppler would be the paws down champ!
Doppler’s normally very docile, but you probably don’t want to diss the Phillies.
Doppler is nothing if not a stylish pup. She wears a collar with hearts, skulls and crossbones. Her sweaters carry designer labels. And now, on this day Phillies pitchers and catchers report, Doppler has a new tag to wear around her neck.
Doppler’s normally very docile, but you probably don’t want to diss the Phillies. Just because she doesn’t use her teeth doesn’t mean she won’t!
