Dogs: Past, Present and Future

Today's post was originally all about my little southern boy.

That's right, Gus is a Georgia boy.  Atlanta, to be precise.

Gus is our first rescue puppy.  And our first non-golden retriever.  

But as I started writing about Gus, I kept making references to Rosie and Gracie, the dogs I had before Gus.     After many editing attempts, trying to keep to the subject of Gus, I decided to just start from the beginning.

We've had two goldens.

First, there was Rosie.  

Why did I get a golden retriever?  I wanted a dog, a big dog.  I didn't care what kind of dog, as long as it was big.

I don't know if Mr. Terrific wanted a dog.  I didn't ask him.  I did know that he liked golden retrievers.  I logically came to the conclusion that getting a golden retriever would fulfill my wish for a big dog, and that there would be no protests from my husband because the dog would be the breed that he loved most.

Rosie was awesome.  When she was a year old, Caitie was born.

Rosie didn't seem to mind.

Then came Sean.  Great!  Two playmates.  And then Erin came along.

Three was never a crowd as far as Rosie was concerned.

Giveaway Winners!!

After assigning numbers to the entrants for the cutting board giveaway, I went onto random.org and used their random number generator to pick the winners.  Congratulations to Maureen and Anne!  Your cutting boards will be delivered today.

Unfortunately, I do not have a cooking post at this time--between taking care of my recuperating family member, gardening (will it ever get done?), and buying a new car--I've been sticking to tried and true recipes for the last few days.  Like the barbecued sirloin tips and pasta salad that I blogged about previously and the chicken, broccoli and pasta that started this whole blog. 

I'll be experimenting in the kitchen today, and if I'm happy with the outcome, I'll post the recipe tomorrow!

 I do feel the need, however, to post something more substantial than a short announcement of giveaway winners and my feeble excuse for not spending much time exploring new recipes.

So I decided to post about one of my other favorite things in life.  First and foremost, that would be my family, but they would never go for me talking about them.  Dang.  It would be so much fun for me to post my son's prom pictures from last week.  But he has forbidden me to publicly display them.

So I'm going to post about Gus.  He doesn't care if I post his picture! 

In the above photo, you can just see the corner of his dog frisbee.  It's his favorite new toy.

I've been the lucky owner of two gorgeous golden retrievers.....

Rosie was the first.......

..........and then Gracie.

Rosie never left our sides, never wanted to be alone, ever.

She can be found lurking,

more or less,

in pretty much.......

every picture we took....

from 1990 'til 2002.

And then there was Gracie.......

who never found a hat she couldn't rock.

What Rosie and Gracie had in common was their fetching ability.  Or more precisely, lack thereof.

They were great at retrieving.  They would bring anything to me.......one time. 

If they found a ball they'd bring it to me.  Okay, you wanna play?  I'd throw the ball..........and they'd look at me;  if they could have talked, I'm sure they would have said something like this, "Why did you fling that over there?  I just brought it to you!"  Sometimes, they would go get the ball a second time, but they wouldn't bring it to me, they would bring it to a spot where they would lie down next to it as if to say, "I need to keep it far from you so you don't pick it up and heave it again."

And I would very rarely throw a ball at them, expecting them to catch it.  The chance that the ball would hit them in the head was far more likely than the chance that it would be caught.

And then there's Gus.

He's the best throw-it-again-so-I-can-fetch-it, toss-it-high-so-I-can-catch-it dog I've ever owned.

He's so uber-focused on the ball--he never takes his eyes off it, he leaps to catch it, he trembles if I make him wait before I throw it.

Because of his leaping ability, I thought it would be fun to teach him to catch a frisbee.

I was sorta wrong.

I bought the frisbee last month.  The first time I showed it to him, he backed out of the room.  I'd leave it on the floor and he would avoid it.   Anytime the kids and I needed a break from him, we picked up the frisbee and Gus would promptly disappear.

Until this weekend.

On Saturday, my daughter brought the frisbee outside and put it on the ground.  Gus eventually picked it up and started running around with it in his mouth.  Eventually, it got to the point where we could throw it and he would bring it back to us.

Then we finally figured out how to throw it so that it would hover properly to give him time to jump up and catch it.

And this is what happened!

And this!

It's Not Me, It's My Camera!

Lately, I've become obsessed with learning how to take a good picture.  A clear, crisp, focused picture.  Not blurry, fuzzy or hazy.  Or too dark.  Or too bright and washed out.  You may have noticed, I'm having trouble.

It didn't help that when I was recently going through my photo files, I found a folder of pictures that my daughter took last year, with her camera.  Amazing photos, every last one of them. 

There were dozens and dozens of shots of my dogs.  In color, black and white, sepia.  At rest and at play.  Full-body shots and head shots.

Paw shots.

Eye shots.

Nostril shots!  Tee-hee.

It was nice to see the pictures of Gracie.  Oh, how I miss her.

Gus misses her, too.

I'm clicking through the folder and then (gasp) I see this.  This is the food photo I've been trying to take, where the focus is on the food and so unbelievably clear and sharp and the background is just a blur because it's not food and it doesn't matter.

So I eagerly asked my wonderful daughter:  how do I set my camera to take a picture like this?  She took a look at my camera settings and my sweet, precious camera-goddess angel of a daughter rolled her eyes and said, "you can't do that with this camera." 

My imagination added "you imbecile!" to make her transformation into Cruella DeVille complete.

Oh, well. 

Here's another fab recipe accompanied by the usual ho-hum photos.  It makes 4 servings, if you can find large, 8-ounce-ish boneless chicken breasts you will only need 3 (one roll-up will satisfy most appetites at this size); if you are using smaller breasts then you will need 4.