Blaze the Vizsla (Strobes,Dogs & Rock'n Roll)

Ski tuning

2012-01-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

Water turns into snow, snow turn into ice. Tune your skis for safe skiing!
Although racers will prefer icy course instead of fluffy snow, most of the icy hills are created by "gorbies" who would benefit from sharp skis. Well, I guess I you slip instead of carving your skis sharp edges are not a huge help.
Today I shot the first series of ski tuning educational stock photos about ski tuning.
I was quite surprised about the number of stock photos on this theme. Close to none. OK: one !
Not sure about the demand for it , but there is no demand for non-existent stuff anyways. Having a set of ski tuning equipment laying around, I have decided to put them to a good use.

North pole(ish)

2012-01-26T16:30:00.003-07:00

Went by McKinnon flats today. The river looked like a North Pole impersonator, huge ice-blocks everywhere pushed up even on the shore and we checked out those on safe ground. The sudden change in temperature must have been the creator of the landscape. Although he checked it out, Blaze was not quite a huge fan of the ice , probably he got cold paws from them, he rather took a good run in the forest, threw some points and marked well the territory. I took bunch of crappy photos on my side. I just noticed by the end that my settings on the camera were off. Anyways here are few shots:

Anything different now?

2012-01-25T14:14:00.001-07:00

Ok, here's Blazes's "diploma"

and here's what he had to say about that.

Is there anything different now? No.
From my personal perspective there's no difference.
From Blaze's perspective: "Whew, I hated those rings!"

Is he going to be a couch potato from now on? Nope. He is going to carry on with Obedience.

Rollercoaster

2012-01-22T20:24:00.000-07:00

Yeah, that's Calgary weather. One week of windchill passing the -39 C mark then roll it up to -1 C. Advil and Tylenol are making good sales around here for sure for headaches. A nice walk is a good idea, tires the muscles, cleans the lungs and frees the mind. For and extra workout carry a 70-200 F2.8 on your cmera with a flash attached on top. Before walk I cleaned Blaze's ears but I think I removed the hearing machine too with the Q-Tips as for some time he was quite deaf for any command, we had a bit of " Are you talking to me?". Or was he under the weather too?
Anyways, I must say I'm pretty happy with my Tamron 70-200 F2.8 , bit slow on focus but tack sharp even handheld, but to be honest I rarely use the tripod, if needed I just use Joe McNally's "Da Grip" It works just perfect.

No dog , replay

2012-01-21T20:06:00.003-07:00

Nature photography is all nice and good , but I 'm really bored of it. Today I decided to haul out some vintage skis and ice axe and try to compose my shots around them. As the upper Kananaskis valley was still under clouds and fog I had to stay at the lower part of it , where I couldn't get close enough to some really nice cliffs. Anyway it wasn't that bad for some trial shots to see where I'm at.I used for light an ABR800 on Vagabond Mini, wireless release and 17-40 F4L lens, except the sheep, which was 70-200F2.8.

Rewind

2012-01-20T17:52:00.000-07:00

Just came across some photos from 2009

Well, Blaze is Blaze,that have not changed

Sometimes I miss the ski racing stuff. Only the sport part of it though.

Blaze with the competition. Those were the time when I still believed that the best dog will win. Ha! I laugh at myself. When you think that professional sports are loaded with politics and you switch to dog shows to get rid of politics you just hit a concrete wall with frozen face. Dogs will make up about 30-40% , max , of a conformation dog show.

I strongly believe that the Europeans have banned the Canadians to compete at their shows for good reason for a while. Most of European countries will not award a Ch title to a dog under 18 months of age, some countries require even older dogs. I totally agree with them. In Canada you can have awarded the Ch title in few weekends for a 7-8 months dog which basically can turn into a not to attractive adult dog. All you need is to hire a good, well known handler. Especially in Alberta.I'm really not fond of the conformation ring.

Not major news

2012-01-20T14:06:00.001-07:00

While Romania goes through the biggest protest waves since 1989 there is absolutely nothing in the news. We care about Libya,Syria,Afghanistan,Iraq,sunken ships, etc, no there is no interest from the media towards Romania. Never really been. You see, there is no major oil source there, no drug production, nothing really interesting. Just some corrupt government, corrupt by definition and by the big corporations of the world interested to turn the country in another consumer society. There are 20 million people there readily available to sign up for credit cards and mortgage loans.

In 1989 Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife departed their dictatorial throne loaded with first class led, after being captured in a quite short time without foreign aid or major external military invasion, brought in front of martial law and executed in a military style without hesitation, ending the era of one of the strangest communism in the world. They left behind lots of stories, mysteries and one huge good thing, what nobody ever realized at its full extent: a country without any debt. Zero, nada, niente, semmi, nimic. Freedom was served and a fresh start could have taken on with no debt. But by 2011 the debt was $ 143 billion. This is the governments debt though as personal debt is one of the lowest in the world...for now. It is still a cash based society, but the foreign banks are working on it big time to change that.

Since 1989 , thanks to the "western input" the majority of factories went out of business, mines were shut down, agricultural production limited by the EU, GMO seeds forced into the country, mega-malls built and filled with imported goods. So here we are , freedom is on folks. The government received loan after loan, which partially ended up in personal accounts of politicians and influential people, millions vanished who knows where. Not sure how much of those loans were really needed, but the "west" was generous. There's nothing better than an indebted country.

But somehow the people are not that dumb there. No siree. Patience has reached its end and the people are on the streets. Again. They want the corrupt government gone and a cleanup. Lets hope this time it happens.

I never really thought about it, but Romania seems to be the only country in the post WWII history to execute its dictator without any external input. You need guts for that.

SOPA/PIPA

2012-01-18T20:49:00.000-07:00

It's all because of Metallica. Yup. You see they were the first to speak up against Napster as people, ok, some people downloaded a song here and there of theirs. People, musicians and their record companies they don't even realize, maybe never will in the fog of greed sticking all over their eyes and minds, that Napster actually revived music. That kid from his basement revived the whole industry, just to have musicians and their executives to crew themselves later by getting greedy , just like freakin' Wall Street.
So yeah, Napster was for the "hits" but for lotsa lotsa old stuff, rare stuff. Half forgotten bands got listened to again and they started touring again. Music crossed the ocean and through the iron curtain, off the black list, out of blue kids had access to music that went beyond what the locos were stuffing down their throat. Euro disco broke into America and , hell , just listen to it now, gosh, whew, eew; American blues and rock went across the ocean and suddenly Aerosmith sounds more than a dried out lake. American kids are going to rave and European kids are singing blues in English. All because of Napster.

Yes, music turned into a Wall Street. It's nothing but fake artists and their endlessly deep pocketed executives who want to go on Italian cruises. Yes I'm pissed, pissed for awhile now. You see David Guetta flies to his shows with his private jet, piloted by high precision by two German techs. Because he want to be sure that he will land for sure to that show and cashes in half million for an hour for something what I would call whistle and tribal drum mixture. And freakin' Metallica, who are the biggest sellers of all time without being able to write 3 decent songs. I just passed by a Sandman Hotel the other day. Yeah, I almost s..t myself laughing. Above the door was "Enter" sign. Enter Sandman , Got it? Cheap beds, cheap songs. Do I listen to Metallica? No.Scroo-em. Pardon. Whiskey in the jar, the remake of the remake of remake. Irish traditional song, anyways.
Anyways, sure, go ahead and reinstate FEUDALISM mr. political geniuses. We're on the way for sure. By all means and in all aspects. Well, Bruce Cockburn said it well: "they call it democracy". Hey, how bout shutting down the internet totally. Maybe people would talk to each other again. Yeah, talk. No text, no like, no email. Friggin' talk. yappadeedoodledoo.

On the big scale of things, yes, music should be like...um, church. You see, the priest yaps for an hour or so for FREE then people drop a penny , a tweny, fifty ('r u nuts?), everyone making their own decision how much God is worth today for them and what's is the price tag on this weeks forgiveness . Now just transfer the idea to the movies and to the concert halls. I guess Lady Gaga would be a cleaning lady then, not offering precious advises to the White House with 'r special visits. John Mellencamp would not complain about the paparazzi's anymore and he would not ruin the sound of his warm up band (Tom Cochrane) so he can sound "better", or Lenny Kravitz making us wait for an hour. If it would be by donationshe would show up for sure on time and I don't have to think about a million better ways to spend fifty bux. Yeah, let us decide how much you worth buddy. The Church didn't go broke for 2000 years, people keep on shoveling up dough for forgiveness , music will stay alive too.

The music and movie business is just like the Wall Street today: crooks.

I'll just whistle and stomp. Is that copyrighted yet? Maybe my genes soon by Monsanto....

No dog, but camera yes

2012-01-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

No matter how much we love our family and well, yeah, zee family dog, we need a day away from them to recover, recharge and refresh. That was my yesterday. After dropping off to work my kiddie at a mere 150 km from my house, me & my longtime buddy took off to zee mountains with some cameras, lenses and strobes in the search of "miracle". The weather was not miraculous at all as the snow was pulling in and we had a flat light with some gray sky and reduced visibility. Great , so there's no lite-aid. but there were at least 7 ours to kill with our cameras (hope that's not a crime).

Here's a view of the weather on-hand. Thankfully we had some strobes and some wireless remote in the back of the van to use in our shots.

Here are some of the photos I've been taken.These as well as other photos of mine are going to be available to purchase from my online store shortly at www.tanko.ca.
The absolute secure application will allow to pay and instant download the purchased full resolution photos ready for prints up to poster sizes.

A long day

2012-01-07T21:33:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time of the year. My daughter started her job. That means that the whole family wakes up at 5:45 and drives here to the closest....ski hill to coach little kids. Then we have what, 8 hours to kill. So we took of towards Louise. There were only like -2 C at Nakiska, which gradually changed to -15 C by the time we hit Louise, and there was even snow there, unlike down here in the city. A quick stop by Banff turned up few mule deer bucks and with a hunting dog in the car rolling down the window to shoot some frames is equal with pulling a trumpet and play some high pitched solo. So after some awkward frames I gotten out and approached on foot, rolling few silent words towards myself about leaving the house with a 24-70 F2.8 L lens ONLY. Because carrying a tele in the bag would push up the gas mileage substantially on my Uplander. So here I am checking out the bucks, while they're checking out me and I'm trying to figure out if they like me or not.

After few minutes of "just between you and me" with Big Boss seemed that I cleared the gun-test. I was clean.

Meanwhile these two unnamed youngsters were checking out each-other and I quickly went lower on my knees for some shots.

They checked me out too and looked like I'm clean again so they went off to buck business. By the I was about 10-12 feet from them and laying completely on the ground listening to the fight noises. Beside the antler knocking sounds they were basically squeaking like an old door.

Looked like they had all the time in the world for WWF and with the cars piling up they moved further out in the field. Seemed like a nonsense to bother them anymore so back to the van and off to the road with a disappointed Blaze, held down by two humans to not to jump out from the van.
A quick stop at Castle Mountain was great to stretch some feet and tire some dog.

By Louise the mercury was down to -15 C and with the past months + 10 C it felt like the North Pole so we went for some warm up to the Chateau. It turned out that dogs are welcome in the hotel and we strolled along the long corridors of the hotel warming up with some tea and Blaze cashing in big time on attention from people.

Um, in the center of attention.

Blaze challenging a giant stuffed bear (watch that tail!)

Last Christmas shot ?

Can we take this couch with us? It's comfy.

Out on the lake the weather was not quite proper for photos with gray clouds and a flat light, even my strobe seemed to be useless. Blaze tried out one of the windows on the ice castle, cut just right to the proper height for a vizsla. He ended up with a bunch of snapshots with people too " can I take a photo with your dog? Sure!"

BW

2012-01-05T18:52:00.002-07:00

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of BW photos. There are two b&w's: the one called"screwed up" frame and turned into a b&w to save something out of it and the other one is shot on purpose to turn it into a bw. Although it may seem the easiest of all photos, b&w is actually one of the hardest. As we don't have any color the emphasis is totally on lights and shadows. Less details are required for b&w as too much detail might turn the photo in a chess board and the focal point could be lost totally.A bit higher contrast is advised though compared to color photos. And yeah, the blacks should be blacks not dark grey. Sepia lovers: watch that yellow level !

Take a look at my playground

2012-01-03T20:54:00.001-07:00

"I'm a natural light photographer"

2012-01-03T19:38:00.001-07:00

I read that often on photographers web page or advertising. Well. yeah, natural light is the best light out there, no questions about it. Our eyes are "calibrated" to see everything in natural light. Photographers were/are used to it as the main source of light for their photos.Unfortunately the days with proper lighting are quite limited per year as well as the hours of the day when the light is proper for shooting. I have been a natural light photographer for way to long. Then one day I started to carry around my flash all the time, then a strobe head and a mobile power pack. Then everything changed. I was not relying anymore on the time of the day and of course, the weather. It's uncomfortable, I tell ya. Beside carrying some heavy camera and lens, now there is another few pounds of lighting, cables, umbrella, soft box, wireless triggers, name it. The result is still not guaranteed and there is more chance to ruin some equipment on daily basis, which of course cost some dough. The wind loves the umbrellas and we have plenty of wind around here. People will trip on stands inevitably, never mind the dogs. Still, I find that the whole sweat is worth it. There are some shots lately that I would not have been able to pull off without some extra lighting aid. Of course you can use some reflectors (they love the wind too) and various filters. For now I stick with my strobes. Sometimes I use the sun as key light , sometimes my strobe is the key light.It depends. More lights I use , less time I spend in Photoshop. Sometimes no matter how long you cling on to Photoshop, the result cannot match the effect of an extra strobe.Lately I stick my stand in a backpack, together with my power pack and the strobe is raised above my head like an antenna 2-3 feet. I must look like some captain Nemo crew member.

Photo recovery in Photoshop

2012-01-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the photos are not really coming along as I wish them to look. I have the choice to throw them out or play around with them in Photoshop for a while. Not all of them will come along even then, some will resurface in a decent way.
Click back and forth between these two to see the difference.Although I would call the outcome a great shot, will do it's job for the family album.

Add caption

First hike in 2012

2012-01-02T19:50:00.002-07:00

With spring weather holding on we headed west of town, out to Kananaskis Country, or K-Country , for some more calorie burn-off from the past week or so. Two stops in two different locations and few km walk in both places was plenty to tire out the humans and dog.

Last shots of 2011...photobooth style

2011-12-31T17:05:00.002-07:00

Wrapping the year

2011-12-29T21:52:00.001-07:00

As the year is going to end pretty soon ( but not the world despite various theories) here are some , and I mean SOME, of the photos we took of Blaze in 2011.

Burning gas

2011-12-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

Today we mostly burned gas, than walk. On average probably people would take their visitors to Banff, Louise, Canmore, Downtown, um, stuff like that. I said" you wanna see Alberta? I'll show you" So I take them a lot to the prairie. Let's be honest, prairies are a vast part of Canada. You go East of Calgary and you will drive for hours and hours, days on the prairie. For years I said " there's nothing there". Then, lately I started to discover little things out there, nothing grandiose, just little this and that what actually makes the prairie not that repulsive after all. Just don't ask me to move to Saskatchewan then, I still need the mountains within reach.
Today we went down the Cowboy Trail as they call the Hwy 22, yeah , we saw about half million AAA steaks dotting the foothills, still grazing around. That's Alberta too. I bet you would not bore anybody with it. I did. 250 km worth of asphalt, cows and yellow grass. There is little snow at the moment on the ground. Actually I like the Foothills, endless hills rolling in the late afternoon sun are having a relaxing effect on me. A quick stop at a seemingly insignificant pile of rocks and lone tree yields a mini adventure. We all cheerfully exclaimed "look a giant bonsai tree!". Blaze points at the nearby cows and it takes some firm commands to hold Mr. back from some banzai. With that restriction implemented he pursued his usual workout: up and down like a gazelle on the rocks. " don't stop me, don't stop me ,have a good time, good time, don't stop me" ( funny how almost every moment can be described with a song). We quickly gathered under the "bonsai" for some shots in the swirling wind and off we went to count the cows on the hills. It wouldn't be me if I would not have carried a strobe and a power pack with half frozen hands. I just got so addicted to it lately. I really like how the natural and artificial light work together and creates some altered reality. Well that's the hidden side of "the camera never lies" thing.

Canon 17-40 F4L

2011-12-28T12:56:00.001-07:00

Although I had no intention originally to purchase these lens, an opportunity came along and I switched basically 1:1 my old 70-200 F4L to a new-like 17-40 F4l.. Although I was reluctant of its capabilities compared to my 24-70 F2.8L (2.8 is addictive, just like full frame) I must say that with proper light/lighting brings along decent photos. It's not going to equal a 2.8 ( my original intention was to acquire 16-35 F2.8L) but will satisfy the needs of an advanced amateur shooter. Wide open brings quite a bit of dark edges, closed to 5.6 yields decent shots. I wouldn't call it a pro lens in any ways, just a strong advanced amateur tool and light weight to carry around. Color rendering is pretty nice, but not on par with my 24-70 F2.8L.You can cram a lot of landscape in the frame and offers lots of fun up-close. With all that I'll still keep my mind open for the 16-35 F2.8L in future.

A hike a day keeps the doctor away

2011-12-27T10:04:00.001-07:00

With our extended spring weather there is nothing better than burn off the holiday calories with some hikes. The dog had nothing to say against.

first shots

2011-12-25T21:22:00.002-07:00

Few of the first shots in my newly developed space , of course who: Blaze is my model,as always. He's kind of rusty in posing as we have not shot anything at home for a few months now. It took about 20 minutes until he got comfortable and collaborative. He's kind of agitated lately, as if it would be spring ( well feels like spring these days) just crazy marking all over the parks.

A Christmas swimming

2011-12-25T17:03:00.001-07:00

There is a first to anything , even in a dogs life. With weather sitting at 8C this afternoon we took a stroll in the park with the entire family. Blaze was uber-happy and we loaded up on sunshine and fresh air, never mind the burned calories from these Christmas feasts. We ended the walk by the river, the sun was warming up the shore pretty nice and Blaze went down for a drink...and more. I just leisurely threw him a twig (like a teaser) and here he went off for a short swim, two,three. A quick shake a fast run and he was happier than I can describe it here. But see it yourself below.
This time for a change I went with my 70-200 F2.8 lens, on camera flash and shot wide open.

A walk in the park

2011-12-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

For an active resting out the previous day party and to walk off some gin-tonics we headed to the closest park, an entire 3 minutes drive from our house. The late afternoon sun came out from behind the clouds just in time to offer some long shadows on the leftover snow and wrap the forest in mystical lighting. Blaze as always ran his mind out and marked as many trees as possible.
I followed the true advise " you can take photos only if you have a camera on you"
Here is some of the snapped frames:

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-22T23:24:00.001-07:00

It's that time of the year.
Wishing for all humans and their their four legged friends a

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Orange

2011-12-17T16:17:00.003-07:00

Today as I was cooking up our 15th anniversary breakfast ( the number of full years completed in Canada) , as promised pancake&maple syrup, I was dicing the fruits for the fruit salad with Blaze at my feet with the usual begging eyes . I threw him a piece of orange " check that out buddy!". I was sure he will spit it out. No. At the end he gulped down half of orange. Well, he must know that vitamin C is good in winter. There are various theories about feeding a dog, some they swear on dog kibbles, others on natural food. We're part of the second club. Also as my in-laws are saying our previous dog, Betty (GSP) who stayed with them after our move to Canada, was eating grapes right off the vine (just like that) and never had a problem.

Chicken soul for the immigrant soup

2011-12-16T17:06:00.002-07:00

We bought this bush few summers ago for our backyard. Weplanted it nicely, we put some fertilizer, this and that, watered it and it wasnot doing well. We had to dig it out and re-planted it, did everything possibleto get it going, it’s recovering but still not doing as well when it was in itsoriginal spot down in the foothills where it came from. It will take some timeprobably to have it back nice and green.

You see an immigration story is similar to that bush. Youyank your ( yyy?) roots out and it takes some time to recover. Some will dowell sooner than others. Some will take a long time. Some will always just hangin there. For some just show the $$$ it’s going to be just fine. Some will goon with the blues for a long time. But for all there will be a moment when theywill ask themselves” Why did I needed this at all?”, “ Why in the friggin’ lifeI had to come here?”

We bring with us some good and some bad. We receive somegood and some bad. We’re going to love to hate it and hate to love it. It’sgoing to feel like a huge roller coaster ridden with closed eyes.

Many will say “ I hated it there (the old country)”,therefore is good here; or “it’s bad here, therefore was better there. Theywill refer to “them” as “idiots”. “Them” as the old country men and/or the newcountrymen. I‘ve heard that many times” Aw, all those idiots back home”. Yes,all who stayed are idiots. Sure, I’ve heard enough of “ All these idiots here”.There you go, here and there, we’re all a bunch of idiots.

Over the years I ended up with the saying “ Everywhere isgood, but the best is nowhere!”

No I never hung a Canada flag in my backyard or above mydeck, neither painted one on my forehead or cheek on July 1^st, aswell as never had a “RO”, “H” or ”EU” sticker on the back of my car. Ibasically almost quit listening to Hungarian music and I read all the books inEnglish. One day I woke up that I started to think in English, well, OKHunglish. The accent cannot be erased. Not even from thinking. I don’t evenwant to suppress it anymore; I don’t even care about it or being ashamed of it.Believe me my wife is continuously correcting my Romanian and some of myRomanian friends even laugh when I say something “stupid”. I care just as muchabout that too. Look, I speak on daily basis 3 (three) languages, sometimeswithin minutes and sometimes to the wrong person. I recall my first visit home.I mean to the place where I was born. We were sitting around the table andtalking. My daughter was buggin’ me “daddy, daddy!” I got nervous “ What, don’tyou see I’m having a conversation? It’s not nice to interrupt me!” “ Yes dad,but you’re speaking in English!” I was stunned for a second, I didn’t evennotice. Everybody was smiling and listening, obviously not understanding what Iwas saying, but they were nice and polite, maybe they were just smiling “huh,he lost his mind...poor guy’.

So yeah, home is where the heart is. It wouldn’t be me if Iwould leave Frank out of this “on the bus!” ( Joe’s Garage) . For me is “ from 130^thturn right at 711, right again, first left then right again, sixth or seventhon the left”

So where is the soup in all of this? Few years back at theyear-end banquet of the ski club where our daughter was training one of thecoaches shared this story about a kid from our old country.

“ So what did you ate last night? Soup! And at dinner? Soup!At lunch ? Soup! The day before? Soup!” If you’re from East Europe, you’ll knowwhat I mean. We eat a lot of soup! Of course homemade, popping a Campbell wouldbe a heavy sin.

So yeah, Happy Soup Everyone! ( Jut copying Gion Ghomeshi’s“Happy Thursday !” or whatever day it is).

And the dog? Well, it's a Hungarian Vizsla and he doesn't understand Hungarian commands.

What do you mean by "ulsz"?

U Got the Funk-Prince unleashed

2011-12-15T21:41:00.001-07:00

Slightly deforming what Forestsaid I would go like “ Live concerts are abox of chocolate, you never know what you’re going to get”. It is so true. Ihad been to very crappy concerts when I had high hopes ( Meat Loaf, LennyKravitz, Sheryl Crow) and very goodones when I expected crap ( Avril Lavigne), then a bunch of lukewarm ones (Clapton, Fleetwood Mac, Santana), I fell asleep at few ( Jethro Tull, BarenakedLadies) then I just couldn’t get enough of some ( Roger Waters, John Fogerty,Elton John, Cher), I danced at a single one ( Rod Stewart) I highly regarded some ( Joe Satriani,Supertramp) and then I just lefty from some( Crue Fest, Scorpions, Meat Loaf,Lenny Kravitz).

I arrived to Prince with zeroexpectations. Yup. Let’s open the chocolate box now.

He started after a decent 20minutes slip, not a biggie. The scene was one of the best I saw. The lightshowall nicely designed too. Two TG’s : no smoke in the Dome ( you know what Imean) and no exaggerated volume ( so we know what song is on). Some guys just crank it up...and lose it.

After a single song (well a nice 12 minute one orsomething like that) I already knew: I’m staring at a pro. Let’s face it:Prince is no Alain Delon, has no remarkable voice, plays the guitar ok, danceslike a dude down in the corner disco, has a few good songs and at the end heblends it all together in a great show. This is where the “pro” comes in. Heknows how to put it all together. I mean he knows what funk is. Simple, well drummed loops.You no likefunk, don’t go to a Prince concert. He played a nice 2 hours and he chantedabout 500 times “Calgary”. I was close to puke up from that. I mean yes it’snice to say “Calgary is the most awesome city in Canada” and firing up the mob,here and there some artists will say that, except Bryan Adams who simplyexclaimed ”Cowtown!”. In every friggin’ song the refrain contained “Calgary”last night. That was kinda turnoff after a while. So we had some first classfunk, some electro-drum-pop, some Purple Rain and even a Bob Marley songconverted into a ballad sung by the guitar player lady. By Gion Gomeshi of “Q”: “ Prince can do anything” . He was referring to jazz, I heard last night“Chalghareee”. OK, he tried hard and worked hard to bring us in party mood, hemade us sing right in the first song, he pulled off a nice show after all. Weeven watched his booties blown up HD on the big screens as he pulled off adance solo(ish). He tried hard to entertain us, here and there a bit too hard.I understand him. With all the new GaGa’s coming up it will require some workto bring some eighties in focus again. No, he didn’t play any of my fav’s “ The1 U Wanna C” , “Colonized mind”, “Fury” , none of them was fired up, no newmaterial left his lips. He just served classics and “Chalghareeeees”.And yeah, one of the cheapest tickets I ever paid. Kiss takes the top spot on thatwith “tweny bux” (they worth 5.99)

Anniversary

2011-12-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

15 years ago this day of December 16 we landed in Calgaryafter some 20 hours on planes and in waiting rooms. A warm welcoming –30 C hitus in the chest like knife.

The taxi stopped in the dark back alley and we refusedto get out. The driver was bobbing his head that this is the hotel we werelooking for. We booked the room over the phone for 10 days for steal deal of $15 per night. The Lonely Planet tourist guide that I bought for $ 50.0 inBudapest recommended it. All we saw at the moment was a brick wall and a door on it, somepale bulb above with a halo around it in the cold night. We were looking toeach other with my wife over our daughter’s head with suspicion. We barelyarrived and we’re being robbed or something. After some resistance I took thecourage and got out from the cab and into the building with the driver in frontme showing the way. Comfortable was not quite the word I would use to describe my momentarystate of mind. For whatever miraculous reason it turned out that we’re at theright hotel and we're not getting robbed after all. I was expecting the hotel doormen to open up the cab door, not ashadowy back alley stop. I had no idea that time that there is no car traffic on 7^thAve in the front of the hotel, just the C-Train and buses. The reception areawas loaded with bums, German tourists and us. No kids beside our baby. We did check in and got in the elevator with some not so inviting people. I cheerfullysaluted them “ Good evening!” They looked at me and slightly raised theireyebrows, but did not reply. After we finally opened our room’s door andflicked the light switch it wasn’t too bad, the room was clean, two queen bedsand there were only 2 or 3 bullet holes in the window looking over the OlympicPlaza. Same look over the daughter’s head. Anyways this was America, theCanadian section of it so to say and some bullet holes were expected here andthere but not quite as fast. The only other uncomfortable thing was the room’s temperature. It sat atabout 10 C. After unpacking some stuff with cold hands I took the elevator backdown to the lobby and asked with my faint English slightly rising over the livecountry music filtering out from the lounge about the rooms temperature. I wastold that I had to turn it on. So we did and went to some deep sleep to wake upat 3 AM to some suffocating hot room. After cracking the window (not with bulletsthough) we turned on the TV. I didn’t understand a word they were saying. Itwas in English though. I said to myself: “Welcome to Canada!”

Ribbon photos

2011-12-10T17:00:00.001-07:00

I've been behind with Blaze photos lately, especially showing Blaze's final achievement and his champion status. Today we had a trip to the mountains and that's where we finally shot some frames with his group placement ribbon, which brought him the final points for his Ch. title. I think it's the best location as he loves it out there. That's where Blaze is Blaze.

It's great to make new friends in the middle of nowhere

Champs do blow bubbles ,no? It's a special talent.

With the new favorite humans, our visitors.

That's an artificial rock, yup, empty inside. Paramount was filming in the area, probably they left it behind.

Exercise finished

2011-12-07T21:40:00.001-07:00

In September I wrote this note about Blaze starting rally obedience classes. Well, he did not. He started Obedience Novice classes. What do I know anyways, I'm a man. I went to the first and the last class. Now, at least I went to some, but did not made me any more obedient. As far as Blaze goes he did improved a lot. Today's final day and test turned up a score of 194 and put Blaze in the front f other dogs from this class. We got a mini rosette ( as if it was a real test) , a certificate and a nice prize: one more leash.I took few horrible photos, some of the worst ones in a long time.

Blaze was looking at me continuously " Can we go now? It's very boring here"

The one minute sit and wait. Most of these dog training spaces are pretty junky, usually the back of a pet supply store, pet rehab or similar. They have mostly the feel of a storage than a training facility.

Now the lay and don't move.

Oh, Nietzsche !

2011-12-04T20:44:00.001-07:00

I never really got hooked by any famous saying, quote or motto. Whatever Einstein, Marx, Kafka, Kant, Rousseau , Gore etc.. had to say after half bottle of wine or a short smoke of pot never really touched me. There are a few good lines by Roger Waters, Frank Zappa, the oh so great Forest Gump and this guy I just stumbled over yesterday:Steve Bloom. "Steve who?"You might say. He is a wild life photographer from South Africa. Well, all he said is : "You need to be determined to put up with discomfort to get the right picture" I kinda have a feeling that I know what he's talking about.

Sorta that too.

You know you get out of these smart spits whatever you want to steer your brain towards to. ( Shoot doz dat sound English at all?)
You see we're all so proper and careful deez days to be seen as a perfect person. We talk properly , downtownish some " We pass them a high ball and we'll see what they're going to do " or " Oh sure, when we cross that bridge". You wonder why the economy is stagnating" Cuz a company has 30 managers and 15 workers and they avoid to make a decision by any means before they set up a proper "blame route". So if the Starbucks Coffee hits the fan stays warm after that too especially on the CK shirt. For everything else is YouTube. Who the hell has the courage to push that fly into the bosses soup from the rim?
Properness is so XXI century. Gotta look like Angelina or so and gotta spend at least an hour in the front of the mirror to look like " ah, I just threw some rags on hon, thanks !" Nah, I don't use Herbal Essences from Wal-Mart , this is double distilled baby elephant tear, freshly off the plane hon, yeah, yeah , he ate only organic savannah grass. Oh no, it was not that expensive at all, you know my hubby just sold few of his companies and he invested half of it in this French condo complex in the Alps, the Brits are tearing up the asphalt to buy a unit in it. After he signed the papers we took a run down to Tanzania for a quick photo op at the base of Kili. There was this boutique, ahh babe, you should see... I had to order it, they limoed down the bottle to me, ah, just smell it, can you feel the African breeze in it? Oh , those baby elephants are so cute, you know, we sponsored few of them, nah, hub writes it off from tax. Gotta help those cuties, they're so ... cuddly!

So how bout the bud who shows up at the door with a six-pack of lukewarm house brand then we throw on the Q some smokies and we laugh our butt off in the backyard? Cheap talk , some noisy Southern rock from the cheap stereo, we're all smile.Sci=Fi.

Whole wheat half calorie , proper smiles , watch what you say and to who, might come around and pop into your ear that you said that about those. Keep it smart, look smart, your phone is smart, your car is smart, your TV is 3D and you leave at 9:30 as you're busy. Tomorrow we fly down...

You never leave your comfort zone and everybody's getting the wrong picture. The inner misery can be dressed so nice. All you need is dough. You have enough of that friends will come around by the dozens like flies on the dog do.

"You leaving hon? Ah, let me give you a hug !"( air hug, air kiss, no touch leave those baby tears intact)

The Mutt thing

2011-12-01T09:15:00.001-07:00

Today is Romania Day. Well, the new-old Romania Day. It usedto be December 1^st , then the Commies changed it to August 23^rd, then when the Commies switched to the free market it has been yanked back to December 1^st. Yeahhe Comies. After Ceusescu and his bellowed wife Elena shared some bullets(‘mnot sure if they were asked what they wished for last supper), Romaniaturned 180 and then started swirling all around like crazy to find its way.It’s not easy as for centuries, beside some short intervals the country wasunder different occupation slash heavy influences. The Turks won the longestpresence award with a mere 500 years . The switch was fast to Russianinfluence, then 45 years of self sustained whatchummagonacallit. Or was it selfsustained at all? Now my very good theory is coming up shortly in another note.It’s going to be) 8^O.

The other day my daughter asked me the obvious ”What am I?”question. “ My mum is Romanian, my dad is Secler, I was born in Budapest andraised in Canada”. My answer was simple “Hon’ you’re a mutt”. You see all comesdown to dogs ! Well, Blaze is pure breed, excuse moi! She has a great sense ofhumor. ”A Mutt! Ha,ha,ha,ha!” Turning the discussion to serious I told her”Girl, you chose what you wanna be. Don’t let others to tell you !” “ You arewhat YOU is !” Let’s not leave Frankie out of this. I’ve been told all my lifewhat I am : in Romania I was Hungarian, in Hungary I was Romanian, in CanadaI…used to be an immigrant. Used to? Well it’s been 16 years –give or take so…
OK. Ideclare myself a Secler in exile.

Hungarians in Romania. There are few million Hungarians inRomania in the land of Transylvania. At least used to be as many of us afterDecember 1989 bought a one way ticket , packed up ( well myself a half full backpack)and left without waving back. You see Transylvania, as just about lots ofEuropean countries had a rich history of screw ups and get screwed. Oops, did Isay country? Jeez I guess lotsa Romanians are raising their fingers now. Ha!Yes it used to be, OK, it’s a country which has been attached back and forthbetween Hungary and Romania. No Transylvania is not Hungary and is not Romania.It’s a country which gave up independence 500 years ago in a moment of despairand never been able to regain it. Duh.

I don’t know how Romania Day is celebrated these days, but Ido recall the old times, when people happily taking off a paid day from workwent on streets waving the Romanian flag, the Commi flag ( red ) and carryingthe portraits of Ceusescu, his wife, Marx, Engels and Lenin. Now about theselast three I just about laugh off my rear end. You see Marx and Engels werewealthy people and Lenin went to university to Paris.They were drinking wine and preaching water. Lenin, returning from France freshly brainwashed by the other twos ideas he wanted a little glory. So he gotit.That was a liftoff , it all spread from there.

You see people do like to wave flags and pour down thestreets chanting. You just have to find a reason for it. Here in Calgary wecall it “The Flames” . Yes it’s hockey. The flahgs are different the uniformsare different but from far it all looks the same to me: a bunch of flag wavingpeople crawling down the street , chanting. In Europe we call it “Soccer” ,sorry “Football”. Soccer is here in N.America as football is another game. Gofigure. Hockey is hockey though and we celebrate by drinking , yelling andpizza. The first two were the same back in the time , but people were eating“mititei”. It’s a Turkish influenced Romanian burger-sausage crossover with 3types of meat ( beef,pork&lamb) with loads of garlic. It takes seconds to eatit ( it’s really good) and the garlic will come back for hours. Therefore wepush it back down with wine & beer.

It wasn’t easy to be a nationality in Romania, especiallyfor those who cared about it. Now the big picture is Quebec – Canada with atwist. If you were too much Hungarian the Romanians will hate you. If youbuddied up with them the others will hate you. The thin line between was hardto keep in balance, but some of us managed to do it. I was one of them. Imarried “in”, happily. I have a nice balance of friends from both sides and Ilive from the area some healthy 10,000 km or so. The hate was greatlyorchestrated by the government based on the divide and conquer, which is not new atall in human history. It is greatly applied in all societies, withoutgeographical delimitations. Its just has been applied in different ways.

Nowadays Romania’s name is pretty run down internationallyalthough I have heavy thoughts about those who did this (In another lengthynote about this soon). Adding that to the newly found “freedom” and pathfinding to the future of the country Romania is having hard times. The excommies are still alive and well, they’re called the “new capitalists” , thenew generation has no well defined path to follow, the EU is pressuring themheavily for clean-up. Add to that the Gipsy soap opera and there you go – chaosat it’s best. For centuries they were led. Now they have to manage themselves.It’s not easy, especially when the multi-national corporations are pouring inlike crazy applying a new kind of slavery.

I cannot deny my origins, although I left roughly 22 yearsago the country, I still have, and will always have, mostly great memories ofthe land and the friends and family that I left behind in the hope to find myown path and identity. Although I travelled extensively the country my memoriesare leading back mainly to two cities: the one I was born and the one I went touniversity.

Romania is a great country; it’s one of the last nests ofreal unaltered traditions in Europe. For some that might look funny, ridiculouseven, ancient so forth. But take a second of your time, sit down and think ofit; what kind of tradition you really have? Or we are just melting into a greatpot of shopping and iSociety without, basically not much else, trying to forceeverybody else in that pot. Not even funny.

Happy Romania Day my friends !

At your service

2011-11-22T08:07:00.001-07:00

You remember how Blaze was giving to Halloween trick-or-theaters bagged chips in his mouth? We just bought a box of sweet potato chips from Costco. The opened box was sitting on the top of a chair. So Blaze got on the chair, picked a small bag and took it to grandma. " Here, can we share some treats?". He never tried to open it himself. He patiently waited to get his share. Good puppy !

You've been with...another dog?

2011-11-21T20:19:00.001-07:00

I work in a place now where is a ...dog. So we buddied up. Today, especially, he ( the dog) just wouldn't leave me alone" pet me, pet me" he was getting in my way badly, cutting me off from work. So I did give him few good scratches. But he was just pushing it. I had to barricade myself basically. When I got home Blaze was , of course outstandingly happy...'till he sniffed me. Then he looked in zee eyes , just as a ...dog can look. There were ?!?!?!?! in his eyes. " You've been with another dog!? How could you ?! I trusted you!"

Step of the day

2011-11-19T08:10:00.001-07:00

The step of the day is: Fred Astaire. At least that 's how Blaze walked those 50 steps this morning to do his job then without a sniff took the shortest way home. That what happens when the temperature reads: -21 C (and feels like -30 C with the windchill). According to the Weather Network this is just a two day show and by Monday we'll be better

A slight change

2011-11-18T15:56:00.001-07:00

Well, I have been mixing up the content of the blog lately, adding more than just " Blaze went for a swim today", therefore I added to the title an extension. After numerous considerations I settled with the "Strobes, Dogs & Rock'n Roll" . Few years back the "Strobes" would have been "Skis" , but at the moment somehow I'm still not attracted to skiing as I used to be and I'm really into the flashlights.
Rock'n Roll has been part of my life longer and stronger as any of the other two so it has to be there. If you ask me what is Blaze's favorite music, I tell you - The Beach Boys. Is is something that has to do with water sports? I wouldn't know , cannot see into Blaze's brain if he figured out yet or not that the Beach Boys used to be some kind of surfing music.

Yes, it sounds like the other saying, but is not. You know it's different to say "seasoning" and "reasoning".
So let's rock'n roll

Donate!

2011-11-17T18:54:00.001-07:00

Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia is asking a personal favor;"Donate!" . Five bux, ten, twenty, whatever you can. He's good for 25 million what he made off Wikipedia, but the company's future is unsure without people chipping in. I feel sorry.

Donation has become such a big thing these days. Just about everybody is having a foundation and asking for dough. Not long ago wha'his name Kanye West whiner/singer had his foundation shut down as the incoming and outgoing dough was like 100/10. Or he forgot to pay somebody's cut. Or both. The headlines went " The Kanye West Foundation Gets Shut Down After Four Successful Years". Of course it was a success.

Now why I have a second thought about donations ?

Just shortly after December 1989, the Romanian revolution donation started to come in. We could watch on TV how long lines of trucks were pouring in the country , loaded. The output of those trucks were just about the same 100/10. Those who were involved in the distribution of goods, you know close to the fire, opened stores and sold the donations. Yup. Wealthy people popped up here-there. Now, some stuff did reach people too, it's time for me to be realistic. Like shampoo.

Shampoo is good , right, keeps the hair grease free. So there is this guy, highly educated, washed his hair with the freshly received shampoo daily as we are civilized people from now on. Few weeks later his scalp started to peel, right down to bloody scars. So he went to the doc. Free healthcare you know and all. Doc asked him whatta hell you put on your hair man, these are chemical burns. So he said:shampoo! Okidoki doc asked him to bring in the bottle. Our guy went home and brought in the bottle. Nice big bottle all kind of things written on it in foreign language and a photo of a nice sports car. Doc slapped him on the scars : " man this is car shampoo!". So ya, imagine those donations. We needed freakin' car shampoos for those Dacia's, Lada's, Volga's , Trabant's ,Skoda's. First thing after the tanks pulled over we will wash our cars. Very thoughtful. So the other day when I was listening to the famine thing over the radios, I called my buddy and asked " I wonder if their getting the car shampoos too? What they going to wash with it?" Answer came "The goats".

Now before you raise your eyebrows about my sarcasm, before you call me an idiot and especially the guy who washed his hair with car shampoo an idiot, think. Why in the good earth was the car shampoo donated at all? Okay , the guy couldn't read that language , but he figured "shampoo" is for "shampooing". Was it a donation or just overstock , a write-off? Just before you call him stupid, think, how many westerners are falling for "miracle pills" and having cancer from them? I don't see a difference.

I don't want to undermine all good intentions, not all the foundations are made equal. Just had a second thought triggered by the Wikipedia one.

And what does this have to do with the dog? Um, I don't really wash blaze with car shampoo, he have seen shampoo in 3.5 years 3.5 times anyways, river water and snow does all for his fur, so basically nothing.

Does dogs sniff more pollution than us?

2011-11-16T19:36:00.001-07:00

Nah, cannot keep zee mouth shut. That would mean that I lay flowers on Ceausecu's and Kadar Jancsi's grave.

Now that we're getting on the cold side of weather here in Calgary I see more and more cars idling in the morning on driveways. Blaze is sneezing a lot when we pass by these vehicles. I was wondering being way closer to the ground how much more gases he's inhaling than me and how that affects dogs, especially in bigger cities. Now generally speaking Calgary is having a fairly good air throughout the year, especially our area as despite the high-speed road on one side of the neighborhood we have a huge park even closer to us. On other end being such a windy city exhaust gases are blown out fast from the city, mainly towards the prairie. The park being upwind from us and the road downwind we are having fresh air incoming all the time.

I recall a story about pollution from the time I was in University . At the time of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster we were a short 7-800 km from the plant. Our luck was that the winds were blowing north-west bound and we were south-west from the plant so most of the radioactive dust went away from us. Yes. I have checked, I don't emit green lights at night. But my story is about something else. Returning from school to the dorms I found my roommate with windbreaker on, hoodie on head , windows closed , curtains closed...and smoking like a chimney. I couldn't see through the room. When I yanked the window open we had and argument. He was trying to keep the radioactive dust out. I was trying to survive the next 5 minutes. The Cesium has a 30 years half-life, so I asked him how long is he planning to stay indoors.

Smore pix

2011-11-15T22:22:00.001-07:00

I guess I should just shut up and crank up the photo quantity and quality. Lemme see if I can...
Now here some "leftovers" from dino-land.

Happy... as a dog?

2011-11-14T09:12:00.001-07:00

Somehow Blaze always poses as a serious dog. My mother once asked me " why is that dog is always so serious in the photos?" He seems like we just took his toys away. Well, us people we always smile in photos, as that's how's prescribed , no? Maybe in Blaze's world he has to pose as a "serious" dog. The fact is he is always happy. Well, at least 99% of the time. He's happy when we leave the house, he's happy when we come back, he's happy when we're awake, he's happy when we go to sleep. So why we cannot be like him?

I read recently two articles in two different National Geographic magazines. One was about India. The reporter and the photographer, as required, tried to emphasis the misery and the poorness of the area. 'Cuz that's what we want to see and read about, no? But they got slapped this time with
"We are poor, but not desperate!"
The second article took us to Mongolia, where again the emphasis went on the same thing, plus pointing out Ulan Bator as one of the most polluted cities of the world. Well, they can write and photograph what they want as we are not going to run down there to check on it. The local people on other side are blaming the dip in the quality of their life on the arrival of Western Civilization to their country. And there is a photo of a guy using his iPhone in his yurta. You really need iPhone to heard some yaks , no?
The thing is that western civilization is taking over slowly the world by implementing the new rules of happiness. ( two p's , i not y). 'Cuz brother we have it all and we're happy a s a dog, aren't we?
We always wake up with a smile on our face , we sleep deep and well for at least 8 hours at night and we look in that squeaky clean bathroom mirror every morning with an ear-to-ear smile " yeah bud, that's what I meant by worry free life!" . Then we carry on to read all the happy messages from our iPhone's screen.
" you're bank account is overflowing with dough"
" your investment just doubled"
" you just bought another investment property for half price and your tennants are keeping it squeaky clean, prepaying 6 months ahead "
" You got all your taxes refunded"
" Your mother in law just sent you flowers"
" your ex left with hands in her pocket , leaving you all the belongings"
"your teenager kid just made you breakfast and washed the dishes after cleaning up 'r room"

Should I continue, sarcastic sob as I am?
Nah.
I'll just get in my really affordable brand new car and drive relaxed to work, waving happily to fellow drivers, shoving them "yeah, yeah , it's your turn, I'll wait, I have time, no hurry here bud, I leave room for you too on the street, my boss will be happy any time I'll arrive to work any given day. My colleagues are all sweethearts, they'll answer my phone until I get there "

Yeah, spread the joy, show the world how to be happy. :-))))

Blaze posing as "Happy as a human"

What's in his mind ?

2011-11-13T09:45:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I wonder what the heck is in Blaze's mind when he is posing for me ( yes he does) and looks at me like this ? As a human I cannot figure it out. How much is he aware of ? How close is a dogs thinking to us , humans? Are we just imagining things?

A photo what is not possible anymore

2011-11-13T09:14:00.001-07:00

My yesterdays visit to the Badland Hoodoos concluded that this photo is not possible anymore.

Why?

The environmentalists decided to protect the geological formation by surrounding it with solid steel.

The place is dug up beyond belief, steel walkways, fences and viewing platform are being poured in solid concrete all around. They are kind of right and not. I was always mesmerized by people who really needed to climb on these formations and had to touch it with their hands. Touching is believing. It was a really rare occasion to have a shot like this, where the weather collaborates and there is nobody in the frame. Pretty soon the mushrooms are going to be safe from climbers with the price of tons of steel and concrete.But it's going to look like a Mad Max scene.

Destroy in the name of conservation.

Kill in the name of freedom.

Fly me to the Moon

2011-11-12T21:51:00.001-07:00

Having a gloomy, windy day with temperatures around Zero Celsius the majority of people would cuddle up in the front of the TV with some good food and drinks, not thinking of shooting any photos at all. Stubborn being my nickname, I gathered the family in the van and drove 417 km to help the oil industry and possibly shoot some flat useless photos. Turned out to be a nice trip for all of us, happily freezing our hands (with gloves in the van safely lying on the seats) and experiencing moon-like landscapes. The ABR800 flash ran on Vagabond Mini definitely saved the day. I'm not sure how much Blaze cared about the conditions, he had time of his life, and extraordinary dogventure in a new place.
The destination was the badlands of Alberta. Surprisingly we were not alone to crawl over the moon-like landscape in this weather, here were quite a few people.

The day started bad as Blaze after a few steps panicked and refused to walk furthermore on the see through bottomed suspension bridge. Not forcing the walk we carried on with our trip.

Yes I took some human photos too.

Tool of the trade: the ABR800 ring flash

Blaze looking back with nostalgia to the place of the big adventure.

Obedience

2011-11-12T20:46:00.001-07:00

So how exactly obedience works?
You point to the top of a cliff where YOU cannot climb without aid and say " Blaze, up!"
When on top continue with" Blaze, sit!"
Then " Wait, don't move!"
Here:

Now with the dog sitting patiently on a 10 x 10 inch area, I have time to shoot in the exposure , reset the light, so on so forth. Then a simple" Go!" will free the dog and send him off to the heavenly adventure of defying gravity:

And what the dog has to say about all these?

"Guys , this is freakin' awesome!"

Remembrence Day

2011-11-11T08:37:00.001-07:00

It's Remembrance Day here in the Northern Part of Americas. To be honest , I don't really have too much in common with. Although I'm from the old continent, I had nobody, as far as I know , fighting in any of the wars in my family. For me the Remembrance Day leads me back to is December 16, 1989.
I still remember it clearly .We [ me and my girlfriend (now my wife)] were traveling from Iasi to Botosani , that's Romania, by train. Never heard of them? No worries , they never heard about Red Deer and Lethbridge either. People were quite excited around us in the wagon and we asked whassup? We've been enlightened that Ceausescu has been captured and there is a revolution going on. Oops. Well informed people, that's what we were. You see this is pre-iPhone and CNN era. We were students and we cared just about that much about the politics and news. Just about that much I care right now too. News and politics are for bored people. Bored we've never been, we'll never be. So my girlfriend started to cry instantaneously, I was shocked too. Couldn't really cry though. We couldn't believe it. Sci-Fi just happened. The Revolution went on just about everywhere, major fights and bullets were fired and tanks patrolled some streets of major cities. To be honest beside the crowds on the streets and smashed store windows not much happened in smaller towns. Yeah, that's so international, isn't it? With every revolt we have to have those store windows smashed. There and here too. You see people are people, no matter where you are, what language we talk and what level of country we live in ( G8 , third world etc...). The windows have to go and the cars has to be set on fire. tribal dances will be bounced around the fire and moonshine will flow by the gallons.
You see, mankind was quite rebellious and violent over thousands of years. Wars been fought by the gazillions. Which one I should remember? Now, for the last few decades we quieted down and the most violent thing happens in our daily life is that we slap those stakes hard on their other side on the grill and wipe that SmartPhone screen on the side with vehemence. God forbid I slap my dogs rear end as I might end up in jail. Talk to the kid with raised voice, you'll end up with Social Services.
Si signore. Les Question ist:
Where do we go, where do we go from here ?
Meet you at the Blue Cafe: I could listen to this song 10 times in row.

Walk-Me !

2011-11-10T16:33:00.001-07:00

Blaze have been bugging me for few days now. He comes to me and looks to me "like that". I'm keep on telling him "OK bud, I'll walk you!". People around me telling me " he's been walked !". Nah. He wasn't. He needs THE walk. Since day one I take Blaze to mini adventures-walks. Well, of course, he loves to walk with anybody form the family. No exceptions. But everybody walks him differently. With me is like " little talk, lots a walk" .I don't give him much commands, just as much to keep him in "limits". So with temperatures hitting 14 C today I took him by the river. Now those 14 C feel hot in the van, all-right in the forest , but by the time we hit the open area by the water the draft built up quite a windchill. So I kept the wet paw mission to a few throws of dummy. Still, we got the pup wet and therefore pushed the last swim to last-last swim. Wet fur has to be ran off so Blaze took that as a second mission and went for it. Sometimes I admire how can he run that fast between the trees and not hitting any. His eye-paw coordination must work pretty fast. It's like watching slalom skiing at World Cup. Those skiers think almost as fast as stock brokers when they decide to buy or sell. Impossible to think that fast. You know why the stock exchanges screw up the entire world. There's this young guy pushing buy-sell buttons with the speed of sound and with the slight bend of his wrist he can send hundreds of hard working people on unemployment. If you ask me,well, close those gambling places down and the world is going to be a better place. There was a time when production influenced the stock prices. Nowadays the stock prices are sending production to hell and back.

Blaze, at 7 months old doing what he's doing now too, happy jumper.
Not much changed with that.

Photo books and magazines. Yay or ney ?

2011-11-04T23:06:00.000-06:00

I can say without any hesitation that I went through hundreds of photo-books and thousands of magazines in the past few years, mostly thanks to the unbelievable rich inventory of the Calgary Public Library. While people seem to replace pot with iPhone.Ipods and Macs ( well a healthier and safer version of drug for sure,,,or is it?) I must admit, I have none of those. Now tell me , can you just pop in to Dollarama for a minute to buy some cheap somthn without tapping the screen continuously? Or attending an event , concert, movie, name it and leave your little screen aside? I took my daughter to a Joe Satriani concert last winter and after few minutes of siting there I asked her" ya' see that?" , wiping the air with my thumb and index finger, just like you wipe your nose on a -30 C day secretly when you stepped out without some tissues in your pocket. The 2,500 seat room was lit up by hundreds of mini screens. Sooner or later the saying will go " have a life, leave your iPhone in the drawer for an hour".
Well, I still enjoy the old fashioned printed books and magazines. You know like in the old times, go to bed and with my reading glasses on enjoy few pages of reading in the yellowish light . No Kindle, no iPad, just printed pages. Hear the sound of pages turned. I know they can add that too on electro magnificio. Not the same. Hey, how 'bout moisturizing your fingertip, you know , old style, yup, with your tongue, to turn the page? Now, that's a readers disease. Ah, and the zillions of microbes invading my body freshly off the page which was touched by wo-knows-who before I lifted it off from the shelves of the library. How about that?
All right, let's leave it there with the diseases. Let's get to the point. Zee book itself. So, about 90% of books I came across about photography were quite bad, the author either featuring examples taken by others, either very bad shots, or very bad shots taken by others. Even photos , which were taken in a totally different way that is explained below the shot. I just went through one of those books, PIXIQ edition, something like " Pro Studio Lighting". I tell ya, if you can take a single light in a soft box shot portrait and burn out the white background for a high key image, please reply to this and call me an idiot who knows nothing about photography and laugh in my face as hard as Blaze does in cat faces. Well, the book was featuring all kind of shots like that. My favorite still remains the first two books of Joe McNally . The third one was kind of "let's ride some fame" . Sorry. But if you had as great time as I had reading the first two I must say we had just read the two most instructive photo books on the planet. And no, no direct instructions are given. Just plain storytelling, as in a Bill Tarrant dog training book. Adding to that a two day live presentation by Joe, I must say I had it pretty much all going in the right direction. You know how the song goes " I see the light".

Yup, I still get tons of books and magazines through my hands and in front of my eyes. "Cuz in order to appreciate the good ones you gotta leaf through the bad ones.

As far as magazines go , the American ones are waaay ahead of the Canadian ones in photo quality. Seems like most of the Canadian magazines simply don't care about the quality of the images they print. Horrible snapshots and bad color correction is "normal" for them. One of the highest quality of shots I see is in "Trends" magazine.It's architectural photography. It's absolutely well shot and well printed. "Zoomer" in Canada brings along some good shots by Bryan Adams , who also is the editor in large for the magazine. Beside being such a great singer he is an awesome photographer too.

What dogs believe in ?

2011-11-02T19:50:00.000-06:00

Dogs are not religious. At least not in a sense. we are / are not. I talked only twice about religion to my daughter. Once, when she asked me why did I put her in Catholic school if I'm atheist and I answered "that's why". " I cannot offer you any kind of religious education". Second time, when I made a religious comment about " there was only one perfect man and he got crucified, I don't feel like being crucified , therefore..." , yesterday. So she mentioned right away that to me " Dad , this is the first time ever I hear you bringing along a religious reference". She's right. I'm a bad Catholic. Raised as one , went to Catholic school after regular school and with that it all stopped there. Yes, I see the ten commandments as really true and necessary, as long even one person in this world keeps them. Religion is so...outdated. Belief is different and very personal, but the religion itself I see it as problem creator, instead of being problem solver. They still kill in the name of it.
I go to churches, to visit them as monuments. Some of them are really nice. But it stops there. I respect the people who find peace of mind there though. Religion is everybody's own personal thing and it should stay there. No need to convince others about it and no need to commit any kind of crime in the name of it.
So what is the dog's belief. It's us. They believe in us, that we will take care of them sincerely . Dogs like honest people. But unfortunately they can take over their owners bad personality too. So I say " Don't tell me who you are, show me your dog". Or the other way around " Don't tell me who you are, my dog will tell it to me". Why Blaze will stick to some people and just walk by others ? He knows.

Last swim ?

2011-10-30T21:03:00.000-06:00

We had a nice Halloween Party last night, ended somewhere 1 AM-ish. By the time we hit the hay was 2 AM-ish, so today was a recovery day, well , I worked less on my basement. The best thing to do when you're worn from these late night dancing parties is to go for some nice fresh air. So we did, to Blaze's great enjoyment. McKinnon Flats is fairly close (in Canadian terms) , back and forth is "just" 70 km. Temperatures hit +16 today ( snow for tonight in forecast , blah), so there was no reason for not having a wet dog. With all the open spaces by the flats there was no reason to not to have a physically worked dog either, so Blaze went for it.

Is that obvious somehow?

Now with all that behind him Blaze had one more thing to do: sit somewhere , um, where is hard to sit, generally speaking, as for him was not that much of an effort.

Some help for moving the light is always welcome.

Hitting the end of October in Alberta could mean anything. Snow might come ( hope not) around and stay endlessly. If we're lucky good weather will stick around longer. In 1999 for example the first snow day was on New Years Eve.

The Food issue

2011-10-26T08:36:00.000-06:00

After decades and tons of greasy steaks and smoked sausages I came to a point where Earth started to revolve backwards and introduced to my family the no meat day and fish day. It's a start. We'll see how far we reach and if we can hold up to this. Blaze pinched in with chugging down few sticks of raw carrots. It's a huge thing as my idea of vegetarian was pork jelly and sliced bacon not too long ago.
When it comes to Blaze's diet we try to feed him as much home made natural food as possible. Almost daily. The result? A mean lean Vizsla with endless energy , a stable bowel movement and yeah, less to pick up. Yup. When he is on full natural food we have less in the bag. That shows exactly how much non digestible filler is in the dog food. No I don't just throw him some leftovers. We prepare for him the food. A good balance of meat and veggies is getting mixed together and basically beside onion he consumes a nice variety of food: sweet potatoes, yams, celery, beet, brown and white rice, parsnip, squash... should I continue? An all natural plant extract formula takes care of white teeth at the end.
At the age 3.5 Blaze shows very little sign of aging, we have people asking frequently the question: how old is your puppy? I attribute that to the healthy lifestyle Blaze lives. We just have to follow ourselves his path. Literally. Walking the dog means, walk with the dog. More is better.

A coincidence

2011-10-25T16:25:00.000-06:00

When I was looking for a title to my last post the word Waltz popped up in my head and I didn't exactly knew where it came from. Today I realized that Sydney's ( Blaze's Puppy) official name is Blackbullet's Waltzing Matilda. I guess that's what echoed back in my head.

The Last (show) Waltz

2011-10-24T20:44:00.000-06:00

We're all thinking differently probably when it comes down to parenting. Myself, I carried on what my parents did: wishing that I will do better than them. This is just about my thought about parenting too: wishing that our daughter will do better than us. "Better" is a very difficult to explain word. Again, we all think differently what "better" means. For some "better" means the corner office in downtown, the stocks, the fat accounts so on. That's part of it, I must admit. For me "better" means that our daughter will do as close as humanely possible to carry out a dream. Because the corner office was not a dream for all. It just became a reality and a shake-in-to-what's-these-days-is-considered-to-be-"da man". A dream is what you carefully nursed in your mind starting at a very young age and be able to be true to it all your life without giving in to the investment properties and playing golf, just because everybody does who is "who". Ya know what Frank said " You are what you is". If you don't get it ... probably you don't like(d) what Frank had to say. And he said a lot ! If you don't know who's Frank forget it. Read no further. Turn on the golf channel.
Well it does come down to dogs too. How? Here:
Blaze got his boot whipped by his puppy at the last dog show. Yup, one of his 10 months old puppy, Sydney, whopped Blaze's boat , too carry on all the way to group fourth. It took Blaze over 3 years to get that position as a wrap up of his Ch. title. We sent off Mr.Blue to this trip with a pro handler ( Larry Clark) as " you better get that point or stay put forever with what you have" (Blaze) . So you can imagine that I had to run for a shooter of Rom when I saw Saturdays results.'mlike Blazz, pull your fur together man!
Sunday was a relief day seeing Blaze coming together. Larry said it wasn't easy. Sydney looks great and there are bunch of candidates in this group for top 4 dogs. Luckily Larry knew his stuff. Whew.
Ya see that's with dogs too, puppies doing better than their dog-dads. Good to see. Good to see a great new generation of Vizslas in Alberta.

Um, no photo. It requires some detective work. It's been taken, has to be found, show photographer does not even have a web page. Larry "send her an email". Great. Sure. Um. Yeah. Where? dogshowphotographer@alberta.ca ? Dialing 007...

In Kananaskis with Grandpa

2011-10-16T20:03:00.000-06:00

Well, I must tell you. If you have family living at least in the same country with you, appreciate it. Having them at 10,000 + km it's not that great. A visit cost an arm and a leg and the amount of formalities and fees required for a trip are ridiculous, even in 2011. While you can jump in your car and drive around all Europe without any stop at any border-crossing, getting in Canada is a pain in the boot. Sometimes I wonder " holy clap, what the flippin' hell is going on?". The Calgary airport is cool, modern up-to date technology loaded space. And? They will not update a flight schedule until 5 minutes to landing time. Then it turns out the flight is late 2 hrs ! Turns out the plane left that much later from beloved Heathrow. Didn't they catch up on that for 9 flippin' hours? Or is a 007 secret? Technology is a great wonder of our century, if anybody cares to use it properly, or at all. Try to talk to a human who works at the airport beside taxi, car rental, tour buses, Starbucks and Tim Horton's. There's no information center. There's nobody. Sometimes I wonder who's running the place ? Seems like a futuristic ghost town with the smell of caffeine and cheap sugar. Anyways, somehow the plane landed sometime and we've gotten out after paying the hefty parking fees to a robot. Next thing ya' know we're headed to Kananaskis Country, as the part of the Rockies are called West of Calgary. My daughter is happy, she has grandparents close by for a while. Blaze is happy, 24/7 human companion, double the number of humans he can beg to for bits and crumbs and by the time he made a round with "scratch my back" he can restart the scratch tour. And ya. He can totally fool me when I come home from work "Nobody walked me today". Yeah Blaze I know. When was last time you've been out, half an hour ago?
Anyways , today my daughter had her first major drive on Hwy, a full 80 km, Blaze had a dip in iced water, twice was enough though ( with a female voice coming out of the forest " look , there's a dog in the lake!!") , we all had fresh air ( I tell you fresher cannot get than this !) and few snapshots. The Lake had an incredible color today. It's always fantastic but tody it was like they "renovated and repainted the water" . Stunning green.

Wonderful fall weather

2011-10-16T09:01:00.000-06:00

This year we experienced some unusually wonderful fall weather in Calgary. The trees have turned yellow slowly , not a sudden frost and it's over style. I should have used my camera more often than I did lately, but my priorities went to wrap up my basement development, to create a decent space for...shooting photos. But we still found some time to sneak out for a walk and some late fall swim for Blaze. We even made him to completely cross the river again. Not a biggie for him, he is in excellent shape from all the swim he did this summer. Something must be in the air as Blaze points just about every walk , he must know that is hunting season. This year produced a change in his field behavior, he is more calm , focused and steadier as ever. As for run buddy, run for a scent is still a nah. I don't think he will ever do that type of search. On the contrary he seems to do even more thinking and sniffing.

Galileo Camileo

2011-09-30T15:46:00.000-06:00

A substantial drop in temperature and rain is forecast for tomorrow, but with today's 27 C I took the puppies ( human and dog) to a walk n' get wet to the river. Blaze got wet by swimming and we by a kind sharing by Blaze, shaking himself while positioning himself to equal distance between us. By the time we got home Blaze's eyes were quite on the tired side so after he crunched some real bacon bites ( from the European Deli) he went to hit the hay and I can lower myself to the basement to hit the drywall taping. So we're all hitting somthn.

This was taken with a Toshiba Camileo SX900 from Costco, quite visible drop in quality form my other photos , but will write about that another time.

The compulsive non-listeners

2011-09-29T14:37:00.000-06:00

Yeah, call us the "compulsive non-listeners", that's us. Here's some of it. Last night my wife took Blaze to the Tubby Miller novice rally obedience class No.2. Well, with all the 6 mths old puppies and and not-so-trained dogs Blaze seemed little out of league. After the novice class there is an advanced class. 10 bux a pop. So my wife asked the trainer " can we stay?" . The answer was " No, your dog is not ready!". Ya know , if a man is telling NO to my wife that means a reinforced YES to her, so she stayed. Turned out that half of the the "advanced" dogs knew less than our Vizsla. Now, you know just because certain breeds are really calm and not really moving around a lot that does not really mean smartness by all means. They just more stationary. On other end Vizslas are having 300 psi blood pressure, staying more than 0.001 seconds in one place will kill them with the hell of boredom. That doesn't really mean they're dumb. They are just very mobile. Sometimes I really wonder about how little some "professional" dog people know about dogs generally speaking , maybe they're too involved ? And that comes down from hunting to conformation judges all. So my wife did not listen and came home quite upbeat and happy after the advanced class performance of Blaze. Funny to say , but not listening sometimes brings along good things. If we would have listened to our daughters grade one teacher " not bad for an immigrant kid" , she would not be a full French IB student with honors now. If I would have listened to her ski coach "you know she's not on the strongest physical side, why don't you try community soccer?" she would not have qualified and participated in the Alberta Winter Games and would not be a Level One ski coach for little kids now. If I would have listened to Canada Immigration after they turned us down twice , I wouldn't be blogging in English, maybe in Hungarian , Romanian, German, French...but you know I'm being pretty much a mule about "no". That comes down to photography too. I'm not a professional photographer. I just take photos. The definition of professional photographer by I forgot who is " Earns at least $ 100,000 per year and employs at least one assistant". Who dude, that's nice dough. But I've heard too many people crying their pillow wet about how hard is to become one and how impossible it is. Impossible is not in my vocabulary for now. I always bring up the guy from Denmark, Yuri Arcurs. When 10 million photographers cried themselves to sleep each night , he picked up a camera out of blue, learned how to shoot and sold millions of stock-photos per year. Now tell him the "no" world. So I pulled my pants higher bought some new equipment and started to shoot. The first ten photos accepted on Shutterstock popped a champagne , the first sales another bottle, the started to shoot some more. I'm not high volume yet , but at least I figured out how to make a photo accepted by stock agencies. OK, take iStocphoto off the list , they're axes since the Calgary owner sold the company to Getty Images. But that's another story and another challenge to jump over. For now we just don't listen. We face the bright light and swim upstream.

Photo by Csaba Diglics

Trigonometry - Part Deux

2011-09-28T14:52:00.001-06:00

With the weather still on the nice side, we went down to our usual walk by the river, but to add some variety we headed to faster waters and higher banks. That added some jump into and out from water and a recalculation of the approach angles to the floating dummy. With the first throw Blaze had to pedal a bit faster in the rapid water to catch the dummy, but by the second throw he knew where to head out to meet the dummy in the right spot. It took him just one throw. If all fails with hunting and stuff like that we can solve trigonometry quizzes for dogs.

No foolosophy

2011-09-27T15:35:00.000-06:00

Two things are really true about dogs and kids equally: you have them as you raise them and they are your little "monkey see monkey does". You see I'm a pretty much yes - no , black or white guy. Maybes and will sees are just duckings, delaying of the final outcome. That pretty much was handed down to Blaze too. As we repeated yesterdays walk and swim I tried to fool him and get him to swim without throwing the dummy. I pointed out to the water and sent him to search. Nothing. I threw few rocks. He looked at me with that "whatcha want from me?" So he came heel and sit there. No effort made him go to the water senselessly. Soon as the dummy flew out he pushed the water as a speed boat. But I gotta get him to search without the dummy otherwise there is not going to be UPT title. We did some other tricks as one of us crossed the river and hid a bird then called Blaze to search for it. It worked. Maybe we should put emphasis on that again.
Same upbringing theory applies to behavior, food and the rest of things. You don't expose your kid/dog to various situations , later on they will back off from those activities. Leash and off-leash time has to be in balance too. Too much restriction will sweeten the forbidden fruit. I keep Blaze as much as possible off-leash and little more. He never ever thought to run off from us. You have to trust them and let them go. They will learn that they get that "off-leash" time always and they will not run away.
A thing I changed my mind over time is "don't throw food from the table to your dog". I always share with Blaze. Even if it's a tiny bit of crumble, he will greatly appreciate it. As a result he never ever counter surfed or jumped on the table for food. Yes he will sit as close as possible to the source, but no touching . If too close he'll get a "back-back" command and he will move his rear end further back. He's not touching as he knows he'll get some from me. Funny as he can chew on a tiny bite for long time to show "you see I like it" or just chug down a big piece of red meat. He is exposed to all kind of foods, basically everything, so we don't have a " he's allergic to hot dogs".
I do the same thing with my kid. I tell her " if you want a glass of wine just ask for it. Or a beer. I give you a good one, don't go for the junk". So far beer is yuck and a little red wine has been tasted. But most and most of all , I (we) spend time with them. Not just "go play". We play. That brings along bonding and good times together. I tell you that has so much more value than any treat. When they grow up (if Blaze ever will) they will recall the time spent with them not the treats.

Word of the day

2011-09-26T14:38:00.000-06:00

The word of the day is still: SWIM. With generous temperatures these days a nice walk by the river is healthy and relaxing. Might as well get that dummy into the water and get the pup to retrieve it. He loves it lately. Well he always loved it but left the dummy here-there, everywhere. Now we have a "front" and "hand" with every throw. With Blaze being nice 'n tall , not much bending needed to get the dummy from his mouth. Easy on the back .
The not so generous word of the day is still: HEEL. Loose leash from the van to the water. It's been only a week or less since this is strictly enforced and Mr. is doing just great. The number of corrections are less and less, unfortunately ( for the pup) the marked trees on the way are less too. I can see it in his eyes. I get the evil look here and there. But my heart turned to stone and I look back with a " You better listen bud" to him. Then he gets the 10 throws and then the time off. People occasionally would stop on the man-bridge and watch him swimming.

RDOG day in Bowness Park

2011-09-25T21:18:00.000-06:00

Fall is just great this year, we hit 28 C today and it seemed that the whole city was on the streets and parks, at least Bowness Park was so packed we barely found a spot for the van to park. There was a Responsible Dog Owner Event going on with various organizations holding presentations and some allowing participation as well. We went for two: rally obedience and CGN. Blaze went through the rally twice and we took the CGN test. As this was not a CKC event we got a certificate of participation which was more like an evaluation test, not a formal CKC certificate one. Still, it was nice to see where we're standing with Blaze in these two type of tests. He is a fast learner, as long we learn our part he will do his. But is always like that no? Dogs are their human buddies "dog see dog does" partner. The CGN went just fine and the rally obedience one was way better the second time.He'll be good at it with some training, which is under way.

Tubby Miller with the Newfoundland rides

Waiting for our turn in CGN

The"crowd walk"

Supervised isolation

Perfection

2011-09-22T13:53:00.000-06:00

Having the dog straightened out a little bit does not mean that we're holding grudge. Down by the river we went as weather is just great these days, a prefect fall. From car to river he has to walk heel and with the corrections learned yesterday it all went very nice. Then 10 great throws of dummy and some perfect hand deliveries Blaze earned a free run time in the forest to dry up and stretch some legs. Then some off leash heel walk . All like in the big book of dogs. We met some extremely nice french lady with a fearful dog. She was attacked by some malamute cross in an off-leash park and bitten quite heavily. Although she growled first at Blaze, the tone has lightened fairly quickly as she realized that Blaze was such a clown and tried his best to cheer her up. He can be quite a silly boy sometimes, hard to not to smile.
Now with an all tired and peacefully resting pup I can look after my never ending tasks around the house.

How long is dog memory ?

2011-09-22T12:45:00.000-06:00

Well, the Pros say punish the dog within seconds of fact as they don't know few minutes later what they did and why they get sent to kneel in the corner of the room. Well,I tell ya, they know exactly hours later too. When I walk into the house I see on Blaze right away if he did something wrong or not. If her did i find the "result" right away and call him there. Well , that walk resembles the slowest football re-play on TV. As he's inching towards me I tell him "closer" , I get few more inches of movement, "closer" , few more , then when finally he arrives to the crime scene I have a talk-to " what did you do?" by pointing on the "body" of crime. Today soap and some recycling. He did not consume the soap , just unwrapped it, even though is the natural goat-milk one, wasn't good enough to chew on it. The biscuit box was in pieces though. Then comes the sit. lay, don't move series of commands. Maybe few nose slaps, well I barely touch him , but still he behaves like "ouch , that hurts", what an actor, sometimes is enough a finger raised in the air and he knows, "he's bad". Now he's laying there with a sigh , "whew, I got over this one easily" keeping an eye on me " maybe we'll go to the kitchen after this" ( now that's where the short memory kicks in). Today's bad behavior was exactly the result of the fact that I ran out of dog treat. That's the last thing he gets before I depart to work. I gave him few kibbles, but looks like that's not qualifying for "I'll be good till you home". So he took revenge. He never goes for a big thing, just some small cheap stuff just to let us know about he's opinion.

Rally Obedience class No.1

2011-09-21T21:10:00.000-06:00

We started rally obedience classes today with Tubby Miller. The first five minutes were like '"gosh, not sit and heel again!". Fifteen minutes later " what was that?". Half an hour into it "Um, yeah". By the end of the class " Well, time to learn!"

Are they listening ?

2011-09-19T21:55:00.000-06:00

It wasn't too long ago when I posted about switching to WordPress as Blogger was driving me nuts. As they were listening, they started to kick up things. I really like the new photo viewer, you don't have to click on the "go back one page" in your browser , just click on the photo and the next image will come up from the post. Cool. Here's few more of Blaze. I used my same outdoor light set, but instead of the cheap head I carried the ABR800 ring-flash. A lovely thing to have attached to a Vagabond Mini. Recycling time is fairly fast when I crank the flash on max and using it bare without any umbrella spits the light fairly far outdoors.

A casual walk in the Bow.

Blaze's "threatening" walk. Do we need glasses for him?

Pointing at?

Planned shooting

2011-09-19T08:46:00.000-06:00

So ya, I'm taking lots of photos. Great. "They" say take a lot of photos. Well I've just realized that it's not going to hold forever. You gotta plan your shot if you want proper results. So my first task came into my mind yesterday. You wonder? Of course Blaze. So here is the visualized frame: dog running through water, facing the viewer, water splashes thick and high on both side of the dog, dogs eyes perfectly sharp with at least one but preferably two paws in the air while you see the water opening in front of him just like in the front of a speed-boat. Not a biggie huh? Just go out , throw a dummy we're all done. Time for a beer. Sure. I've scanned the internet for a frame I would like, so far nothing came up, not even from stock sites.

First I have to put in order few things:

Dogs eyes perfectly sharp while running towards the viewer - hardest thing to focus on, by the time the camera focused the dog is out of frame
Big, thick splashes - as far as I observed those are coming along when the dog sets out towards the deep water with the excitement of retrieving , water depth about a foot. The return is usually half speed or less, no rush. Therefore I have to be on the other side, or standing in water
Lighting - I need at least one, preferably two light-sources at 45 degrees on the dog and splashes to create proper texture and dimension in the frame
Framing the shot - I need a nice full frame, no cropping preferably at the end to maintain full resolution of the frame. Good luck with the dog on full speed.
The background - nice natural background, no people, trucks, buildings, preferably fully land or fully sky
Exposure - F 5.6 would be the best for some texture and separation in the same time
Water - nice clean water, Alberta water is perfect on a preferably sunny day for nice blue-green color
Directing the dogs run through a certain corridor
A collaborating dog
Lotsa time on hand

Let's see.

Orange dog , oops. Some filter needed or play withe white balance.
Dog looks like just saw an alien.

Nice eyes, are you gonna attack me?

Nice reflection in water, forget the dog.

The splashes I need, wrong angle. What about the clarity?

Cats

2011-09-13T21:46:00.000-06:00

I thought there is the same law for stray cats as for dogs. Seems like only dog owners care though. The neighborhood is loaded lately with cats on the loose and I almost had an accident because one of them.
I was driving home from the store tonight , dark already outside, when a "born to rally" fella decided to cut me off on the road. That's a favorite driving style around here. Oh yeah. Nobody behind me on the road for 3 light years distance but people would decide suddenly that they want to drive in front of me. Usually very suddenly. Sometimes I wish I would drive a big Hummer with some nice thick bull bar on it and turbo charger...hmm, bull bar...so this guy cuts me off and there goes the black cat full speed 90 degrees across the road cutting all of us off. So "Paris-Dakar Guy" slams the brakes to save a life and on my turn I slam on my brakes to save my own. My groceries are rollin', my eyes are rollin' , my ears are pounding and I'm a bull myself (no bar though).
So ya, cats. Love 'em. Blaze too. Is it noticeable?

What's the frequency Blaze?

2011-09-12T16:45:00.000-06:00

According to some research the frequency of shaking out water at this size of dog is about 4.3 Hz, which would be 4.3 shakes per second.

Classic example of first curtain flash sync. I shot this at 1/60 . The flash registers Blaze at 1/200 the shadows are created by the movement in the time after the flash was over and before the second curtain closed ( 1/140 second). So you can see the speed of Blaze in that time interval. If the flash would have been set on second curtain the shadows would show up on the opposite side (behind Blaze).

The cheapest light set up

2011-09-11T21:36:00.000-06:00

We drove, yeah all of us, giving advises to our daughter who drove the van and pushing imaginary pedals (us), to McKinnon Flats with Blaze of course for a swim 'n shoot some shots. I put together the cheapest and lightest outdoor light kit from my gear. The battery pack was the most expensive part of it , the Vagabond Mini, my new favorite lighting power source. I chose a cheap AC Slave Flash mounted in a screw in flash and umbrella holder from eBay ( $ 6.95 , free shipping from Hong Kong) and a mini 12" shoot trough white umbrella ( same source $ 5.00 free shipping) all mounted on an aluminum light stand from Vistek. The remote is a Yongnuo 301P ( $18 from eBay). Why Yongnuo and not PocketWizzard? I tell you why, the other day my buddy's Elinchrom Skyport was acting up outdoors , we had to use my Yongnuo cheapie which was reliably working continuously, duh. So now I have two triggers and three receivers.

Anyways, here's Blaze as always a reliable model. As you notice the flash brings out the colors more contrasty than just natural light. Unfortunately the little AC Flash head is not very strong and I had to shoot with Blaze within 6-8 feet from the light. All and all better than no light at all and a very light set up for a walk instead of carrying a mono-block or the ring flash. Of course in the case of a commissioned shoot I would definitely carry the heavier stuff. So why not stick a 4 AA battery operated flash on the camera instead of carrying few pounds? Here's why: a better flash , like the 580 EX will push the price of a mono-block , but in my opinion will never reach the same power level. I'm not a fan of on-camera flash and if I put it on a stand I'm carrying something extra anyways. So might as well I go with my setup.

All and all I think the sitting photos of Blaze came along pretty good and my experiment of motion images ( some areas in focus and the rest blurry to add the motion effect) are OK, need to work on that. Today I used my 70-200 F2.8 Tamron.

WordPress

2011-09-08T21:31:00.000-06:00

Ok, beside the larger storage space and somewhat crisper layout of WordPress I really couldn't find a layout which would blow me off my feet and say "that's it I arrived". So far all the better layouts are up for sale around 68 bux. It's not the cost, but for 99 bux you can actually get a proper web page. So for now I'm running parallel the two blogs and we'll see if I can find a reason to switch completely.

Trigonometry

2011-09-08T16:47:00.000-06:00

It's interesting how Blaze thinks when he sets out to retrieve a dummy. He will take in consideration the flow rate of the water and he will not even try to swim to the dummy directly, unless of course it's a lake and there is no flow. Then he will go straight out. In the river he will go right away diagonally using the flow speed and swimming out in the same time diagonally on a very precise angle to meet the dummy based on his"calculation" of angle. He never misses. He'll use the flow in the same way back to the shore.

The Return

2011-09-06T19:01:00.000-06:00

That sounds heavy "The Return" . Actually I saw a good Russian movie with that title. It's sad movie, like all good Russian movies. You don't watch Russian movies? You should, some are really good like the "Kreytserova sonata". No, there's no car chase in it and there are no drug dealers caught by uber-smart politzei. Or a good Hungarian-German movie like " Mephisto". I know they're not new releases, that sucks. Anyways back to The Return. Yo' highness Monseigneur Blaze has arrived home with his higher upper sniffer from show of the shows, where it was dat...um, Kamloops. Larry totaled him to 4 points. Could have been 6, of course, nah not Larry's fault, basically ours, or anybody's after all ? Here zee story: We took Blaze to a single class to Auburnmist Training Centre this year. (We used to go weekly in the past) It happens that it's owned by a nice lady who is judge too. Well that lady happened to be the judge on one of these Kamloops Days. Now in the rule book says that the judge cannot touch ( or see?) your dog for 6 months prior the show day. In the same class we were referred by another nice lady to Larry's classes with a " Larry would looove to handle him". Catch 22 huh ? If we wouldn't have gone to that class we would not have come across Larry's but we could have had the 2 points. But we wouldn't have sent Blaze to this show without Larry. Now that's Catch 22.
So picking' up Blaze was fast and easy, as soon as I drove in Larry's yard I've heard through the kennels Blaze's excited woofing " They're here!". The pick up was over after some butt tearing tail wiggling and we took the shortest road to the river, some 40 km from Larry's place for some old fashioned fur wash. Some 10-12 dummy retrieves and a nice and fresh "smells like wet dog" car freshener assured me that I left a tired pup at home and now I can concentrate on my daily job of retrieving the price of these points.

In Memoriam - the hike with a purpose

2011-09-05T21:37:00.000-06:00

This was our first hike without Blaze this year. Joining another family we hiked in the Ghost climbing area, just north of Cochrane, after the worst drive I had for a long time on a backcountry road loaded with foot deep potholes. Basically it was a Quading with a Honda CR-V. The hike itself was about 17 km and led to the base of the cliffs where a friend had a fatal rock climbing accident 8 years ago. That was the time when I was seriously getting prepared to return rock climbing. The bad news stopped me from my plans and I gave up my climbing dreams forever redirecting my sporting activities to skiing. We had a hot day for hiking with very high level of UV radiation, even my camera had problems handling it. Crossing barefoot the small crystal clear river was great relief for tired feet. Although the elevation gain was not humongous, exactly 300 m , the weather and high UV made it felt worse, reminding me that my twenties are gone, even my thirties and I'm not too-too far away from the end of forties either. Nevertheless I carried my camera and took photos, of course.

See one of John Ionescu's achievements here:

The highlight: although quite tired, my daughter told me at the end " we should do this more often (hiking in the back-country)"

Transferring the blog

2011-09-05T14:53:00.000-06:00

I am thinking of transferring the blog to Wordpress as it seems that the quality of the page is higher.
Here is my entire blog transferred, I still need to customize the page though, it's just a raw transfer for now.
calgaryvizsla.wordpress.com

Dog shows and junior ski racing

2011-09-02T21:24:00.000-06:00

Dog shows and ski racing are sharing a chunk of 90 % common rules. Believe me.
Let's see some:
Rule One: "hurry up and wait". Never fails.
Rule Two: " scoop deep in your pocket". By the time you're neck deep in it you'll stop complaining about the money. You cannot complain about things you don't have.
Rule Three: "learn how to lose". There are Xzillions of participants, there is only one winner.
Rule Four: " the winner can hold on for a long time to the position" therefore next rule
Rule Five " don't give up, you'll be numb soon anyways and you don't feel any pain anymore"
Rule Six " if you quit you'll miss the 3 seconds worth of adrenalin rush in the front of the score board"
Rule Seven " You will feel horribly tired on the drive home even if it's not you who competed"
Rule Eight " You will blame 'Politics' sooner or later"
Rule Nine " there are always 'big shots' in the game"
Rule Ten " your love towards your kid or dog will never be shadowed by their results"

Conclusion: " success is temporary , love is forever "

No dog

2011-09-01T21:03:00.000-06:00

Blaze is away for about a week for a Kamloops dog show with Larry Clark. It's strange that nobody waits for us at the door in the afternoon with wiggling tail.
So when I took Blaze to Larry's place and the first thing he did (Blaze) to pee on Larry's Big Red truck. Oops.
Then Larry took him to a kennel until they leave. As far as I know lengthy good byes are not very good for the pup so I cut my visit short. But before I left I took a last look at Blaze. He was stunned. He looked at me with this " Pardon me, I guess this is a mistake. I'm not supposed to be in this kennel."

The NAVHDA thing.

2011-08-28T22:17:00.000-06:00

It's the third year I volunteered as a field photographer at the annual NAVHDA test. Basically what I do is that I tag along with the judges , handler and gunmen in field crawling through the tall grass and trying to take decent shots of just about everybody in the field. This year I had the pleasure to see Blaze's puppies working in field, no less than three of them: Sam, Ridley and Sydney. It was the first time I met them and as far as I can tell they turned out great puppies. As I say " my kind of Vizslas". Strong bones and muscles , nice size of head sitting on muscular neck and last but not least deep chest on all of them. The voice: deep and strong, just like Blaze's. Just about the right body structure for Alberta.

Blaze with Sam. I though originally that is Ridley, but its Sam. Look at his chest sitting by Blaze. And Blaze is far from a miniature Vizsla.

As far as I noticed most of the field judges are misjudging Vizslas. They are hard to compare to GSP's and Griffons. First of all I'm all surprised that the judges don't know that Vizslas are short chase dogs. No, they're not "see ya I'm off leash" or "Monday" dogs. They like to keep themselves within short distances from their owner , they will never leave far enough to have you out of eyesight. They will work the field slower , stopping and sniffing often instead of running excessively. For example Blaze has a long nose and he will run way less then other pointing dogs. The judges will see that as "less desire for work". Unfortunately there are very little Vizslas in the prairie provinces and the judges are having very little experience with this breed. They judge everything based on GSP's and Griffons. Nothing wrong with those two, don't get me wrong but they have different temperament in field. They are "long chase" dogs. They will run way ahead of their handlers and they have a higher threshold for sustained physical work and pain. As former GSP owner I can relate to both GSP and Vizsla breeds. The Weimeraners seem to sit in between these two breeds.

Anyways is good to see an uplift in quality in the local Vizsla population. To be honest I've seen few Vizslas in the past around here, that I had to ask " is that a Vizsla?" I wasn't sure about it, they were so tiny, fine boned and small headed. If you Google up Hubertus Vizslas, the world's most known line you'll see some resemblance in Blaze of them or the other way around. Of course, Blaze's pop, Ozzie is a Hubertus, related to Yogi, the only Vizsla ever to win Crufts. Looks like this line has strong genes which were handed down to Blaze's puppies too.

Meet the little Barkers

2011-08-27T21:54:00.000-06:00

Today we met not one , but three of Blaze's puppies: Sam, Ridley and Sydney.
It's late to process the photos of all of them, I'm up since 4 AM and I just got home at 9 PM , but here's
one with Blaze and Ridley. Funny one, proud dad and a teenager boy posing together :-)
I used an ABR800 ringflash ran on Vagabond mini with a little white umbrella for softer light on left, the sun
on right. Tamron 70-200 F2.8 lens on my trusty 5D.

Implementing the regulation

2011-08-26T07:45:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned before, Blaze is trained to not to do business on our lawn anywhere around the house or other peoples yard either. The rule has been kept by him for a very long time now, years. Unfortunately there are people who think that it's pretty normal if their dog uses other peoples well kept lawn. I hate that. We put lots of energy to keep our yard tidy and I would imagine that others would appreciate that. Not really. Our front bushes are being marked for a while now by some visitor. I was keeping an eye out to see who is the rule breaker. The answer came yesterday evening, when Blaze started to bark like crazy looking out the front window, beside the entry door. There was Mr. Anonymous doing business on our yard. So we let Blaze loose. He took care of the rest, chasing the beast off . The owner came agitated and she's been explained the rule. Hope they understood. Both the human and her mutt. Now Blaze keeps a close eye on things through the window. Keeps him busy ?:^).

Another day, another swimmm

2011-08-24T21:43:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately the Toshiba camera I used to film this bellied up on me after two short uses. The zoom button was working on a very moody way (yes-no-maybe) and finally the whole thing froze up while recording was on. The only way I could stop it was to get the battery out. So I took it back to Costco. I got another one right away a Sony, advertized as HD. Unfortunately asking details in Costco is like inquiring about the breads freshness. The only way to find out details is to purchase it. So when I got home turned out thet the camera is "regular" definition, which means "crappy" image quality. I'm used now to full frame photo cameras and I compare everything to those. Sigh. A filming camera running with similar quality is 2 grand and I'm not a filming guy anyways. Well, the guy at Costco said "try it out and if you don't like it bring it back".

The "bokeh" thing

2011-08-24T19:16:00.000-06:00

Here is a description of Bokeh from Wikipedia.
In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light." Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting—"good" and "bad" bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions.
Bokeh is often most visible around small background highlights, such as specular reflections and light sources, which is why it is often associated with such areas.However, bokeh is not limited to highlights; blur occurs in all out-of-focus regions of the image." Are we on the same page ?

Here is an example at F4

And here at F2.8

Little furry things up in trees

2011-08-24T13:40:00.000-06:00

Lately Blaze developed a great interest in little furry animals up in trees and down on the ground: squirrels, chipmunks, hares and should I say it? CATS ! Oh boy is he ever all over cats ! As he would know my feelings about them. OK I like nice cats, just like nice dogs. I just cannot stand the neighbors fat cat doing business in my backyard.
So there are the squirrels squeaking down to Blaze just to tease the hell out of him and he's just running around the tree with his tongue sticking out and squeaking back to them.

Testing.But not the dog.

2011-08-23T21:27:00.000-06:00

If you start shooting seriously sooner or later you want to go 2.8. Yes that's the maximum F stop you want on all your zoom lenses. Why ? Try one, you'll see the difference. I had my Canon 70-200 F4 L for a while now and I totally love it. The I got my Canon 24-70 F2.8L and I loved it even more. There IS a difference. Having a Tamron 90 mm F2,8 for product and macro I am totally pleased with it. The cost was about half what Canon would be. Stepping up with 70-200 to F2.8 is not a cheap step. The Canon will pull your wallet pretty good. So I went with the Tamron 70-200 F2.8 . First shots were awkward as the zoom rotates totally opposite as the Canon one.
Here are some first shots whit it. Lenses are just like dogs, you have to figure them out, takes few days in field.

So far looks good. Gotta get used to it though, auto-focus definitely slower than the Canon, but action photos at vizsla speed are always tricky with the 5D, not the fastest camera on the market, definitely not made for sport photo. Other than that I'm totally pleased with the 5D. Nice huge , bright pixels, the largest in the industry, are very low on noise, not even the new Mark II can compete with that. The colors are just as nice in the early evening sun as the Canon.
BTW the blue sky reflecting into the river was fantastic, no enhancement needed there and the late sun was just making Blaze's color even more saturated. It's pretty funny as sometimes Vizslas seem to be almost fluorescent in the sun. According to Photoshop most of the Vizsla color is orange, some red and a little yellow.
The bokeh is way better at 2.8 than 4 and vignetting will come along occasionally just as with the Canon lens.
Funny that the camera treats the lens as a 2.7. Hm.

Are we clean enough yet ?

2011-08-23T09:26:00.000-06:00

With all the swimming we did lately I think Blaze's fur is cleaner than ever. I don't know how many times he has seen shampoo in the last three years. Um, maybe 5-6 times in total. I believe that nothing is better than the all natural Calgary river water coming down from the Rockies. Or yet better, taking Blaze to one of those cleaner than my drinking water lakes out in the Rockies. They're cold, crisp, clean and Mr. just loves to splash around in them.

Blaze sailing out, I always wonder about the tail high up. It's not waterproof ?

A bit of video

2011-08-22T21:31:00.000-06:00

Out of town, into the the mountains

2011-08-21T22:42:00.000-06:00

So we hit 30 C today for the first time I guess this summer. Boy it was hot. We headed to the mountains chomping up some Hagen Daz in the van. I like to get out there when most of the people are wrapping up and taking their way home. Blaze had a lot of swimming in the lake and river and now he's just plainly flat out.

Um, more dog photos?

2011-08-20T22:25:00.000-06:00

So if you wonder, yes I do edit my photos in Photoshop CS5. If not more some color correction, levels, curves, crop and resize. That's a minimum. Sometimes I just overdo it a little. New stuff can pop up from mistakes and screw ups. That's how Penicillin was invented. By mistake. I like how the North Face slogan sounds " never stop exploring", even if you just dig in Photoshop in the safety of your armchair. After some light hauling and experimenting with studio equipment in field in the morning I traveled light for dog walk with my cheap Cosina 19-35.

Some frome the morning. Good lighting makes a difference.

The walk before the storm

2011-08-19T12:33:00.000-06:00

We went down to the river for some swim and to try out my new portable power pack with an ABR800 ring flash. The walk was cut short pretty fast by the fast approaching thunder storm. By the time I shad the right exposure and Blaze swam a little we had to run to the car.The storm hit with hail shortly we reached home. It all lasted about 20 minutes but the quantity of hail was quite impressive. Later I took a quick walk with Blaze under basically clear skies and oh boy was the air ever fresh ! One of those moments when you take a deep breath and you feel the oxygen reaching the bottom of your lungs.

Jump ! Finally !

2011-08-17T20:41:00.000-06:00

It took some time for us to have Blaze jump into the water from the shore.Well, he jumped , but not like "that". We had a head start on it a week ago, but today we had a breakthrough. We had all 4 paws in zee air and the desired splash at the end. Basically we did nothing but to find a higher stretch of shore and started off Blaze from there to retrieve the dummy.

Natural light photographer

2011-08-08T18:17:00.000-06:00

Most of my outdoor photos of Blaze are taken in natural light for now. Unfortunately pure, unmodified natural light has its limitations in creating edgy photos and offers a proper angle only a few hours a day, given that it's a fairly sunny day.. Next step to go would be light modifiers ( reflectors, light tents) and/or strobes. Now it's going to be hard to set up a light filtering tent and hold up several reflectors while guessing where Blaze is going to hit the shore with a dummy, especially in the case of a river. Small , on camera flashes are somewhat helping , but not a lot either over a certain distance. Carrying few studio lights on dog walks would be another funny thing to watch. I guess the best bet would come down to a battery operated ring flash with reflector or silver umbrella, mounted on a monopod. Soon to be seen.

Backlit (ish) sunset, an on-camera flash at 1/8 power would have made this awesome or a reflector behind Blaze

frontlit sunset, an off-camera flash at 45 angle at my left / or a yellow reflector would have cleared up the big shadow on Blaze's side

a "natural snoot", just a touch of yellow reflector would have give some more definition of the nose without lighting up the shadow totally

backlit, Photoshop enhanced , an off camera flash at 1/8 power in front of Blaze or a yellow reflector would have cleared those black rings around the eyes

The only question remaining here is if blaze would hold the pose long enough for a setup. Ya know, he's a vizsla after all. Second, I need constant help shooting, it's not a one person job to set up all the gadgets and move them around in seconds

Splash ! Same river, different location

2011-08-07T22:10:00.000-06:00

Summer is full on and the best way to have Blaze cooled and worked in the same time is to get him into water. Luckily we're just about 5 minutes drive (lazy me) from the Bow River. Drive a bit more and we're down by Mckinnon Flats, a popular place to just about everything, including some hike and never annoyingly crowded. That's where we headed today for swim, retrieve, frozen bird drag 'n track and some not so popular mosquito bites. I have not really counted up how many times the dummy flew into the water and been retrieved to hand. Lets say a lot.

Propelled

2011-08-07T21:37:00.000-06:00

At 50 (mm)

2011-08-07T10:14:00.000-06:00

A light lens for long walks, the Canon 50 mm F1.4 offers a great sharpness and low light capability. Wide open will yield a very shallow DOF , down to 5.6 will cram lots of details in the photo.

Few photos from the latest dogshow

2011-08-06T12:40:00.000-06:00

...and three

2011-08-05T18:50:00.000-06:00

There's a severe thunderstorm watch over Calgary , but we found just enough time to run down the valley for some dummy retrieving swim and jog on short leash. What should I say: Blaze delivered all the time the dummy to hand. We're just back for 5 minutes and the thunder is right above us. The jog became a daily thing, good for us and good for Blaze. The aim is to run him on short but loose leash on show ring speed.
I hope the counting will carry on for a long time on good training days.

More photos of yesterdays walk

2011-08-05T16:32:00.000-06:00

The perfect day No.2

2011-08-04T22:14:00.000-06:00

Cut'n paste yesterdays text basically. Two days in the row, Blaze, duuude whassup ? At least this time I carried my camera with a cheap Cosina 19-35 mm lens which on the 5D body is pretty cool wide for some distorted photos. With this lens to fill the frame I have to get to 2 feet from my subject.

The perfect day

2011-08-03T21:09:00.000-06:00

Today's training came along perfect by the river. Blaze fetched from the river and delivered the dummy to hand perfectly. Then we did the cold duck drag and that went by the book with perfect sit in front and hand delivery. What makes the difference ? Why today and not on a test day ? What we humans did different ?

What just happened?

2011-07-27T07:57:00.000-06:00

The inevitable happened. I had to handle Blaze in a conformation class. I did just abut everything else up to now beside handling. It was awkward , mainly for Blaze. He was searching for an answer looking in zee eyes "what happened, you don't do this to me usually". Including the treating, as I don't give treats usually to Blaze outside our house. I tell ya, if I've ever seen Blaze confused , that was yesterday. He was so shocked, he even behaved nicely, no fussing, no pulling , just plainly jogging around and in between jogs standing very nicely beside me or whatever I asked him to do. The stacking sometimes looked like I'm trying to create a modern sculpture, but the 1 1/2 hours passed quicker than expected ( felt like 4 hours instead of 6) and Mr.B got his off-leash reward to run off his confusion.

The kind of look I was getting

Thinker

2011-07-24T22:19:00.000-06:00

I took Blaze to this beautiful, super clean lake out in the Rockies today. The weather was pretty hot, something like 26 C ( we're metric in Canada right?), beautiful Alberta skies with just a few clouds up there to make the whole picture just perfect and a touch of breeze to cool the brain. There were tons of people though, even divers took up some adventure in the crystal clear water. Bunch of dogs and some even some "real" dogs, as how I call anything above 12" height. Once we took care of a bij-shih tzu and my friends were teasing me " what, you walkin' the carpet?". Ya see I'm 6-3. In my world a dog is nice around the knees height. That'll be any hunting dog. I love hunting dogs. Mainly.
Anyways, at a certain moment it just happened that we were that many people and about 4-5 dogs swimmin' around in the lake in a spot. This guy was throwing small rocks in the water and his dog just kept on swimming around endlessly looking for whatever might be in there fallin'. Now I used to pull that with Blaze , but long time ago. I tried today few times and he looked me with this " are you jokin' me? " expression on his face. He never went for it. Then I pulled the dummy and he was flying. Ya see, that's a problem. Well not with me.But. Ya sign up for a UPT NAVHDA test and they expect the dog to search steadily for 10 minutes in the marsh. There are few ducks hidden ..somewhere on the other shore 200 feet away. The dog has no clue, the gun goes off , but nothing falls from the sky. Go search buddy.
Now you see, I love that Blaze is a thinker. He has a "long nose" and a soft mouth to retrieve. I just cannot play him by the "rules". I tell Blaze go search he goes , he sniffs but if there's nothing in zee bush or marsh he'll come back and we have the thumb down for the rest of 9 minutes left. There goes 170 bux on zee drain. Basically he's ready for the UPT test, except the flippin' 10 minutes search in the marsh.
Same with the zig-zag in the field. The judges want to see an intensive search in field with a dog running like crazy , covering a nice size of ground. Well, Blaze stops, sniffs, runs a bit, sniffs again, runs a bit. No , he's not a marathon runner and we don't really have a lot of false points either. But that's NAVHDA with the rules.
I took Blaze real hunting. Bang, Bird goes down Blaze brings the bird. Perfect. As the Germans say "Quadratisch. Praktisch. Gut." Um. What are we saying in Hungarian? I guess " Jol van Ocsi, nagyon tudsz" ( kind of " well done buddy, you know it")
Blaze was like " can we hunt here? I love this water, even though is colder but beats the marsh". Well, no, it's a Provincial Park and hunting here is a no-no.

Prairie hot

2011-07-17T21:42:00.000-06:00

There is hot weather and there is prairie hot, if you know what I mean. Standing out there in the heat training dog in field and checking with the giant wind mills the speed of wind with not a lot of air moving, my eyes wander off searching the horizon waiting for Winnetou to show up. But Winnetou never existed, neither Old Shatterhand, Old Surehand or Old Firehand. Although the novel sold over 200 million copies worldwide I'm not sure about its popularity in North America, probably none. Same with Sat Okh's ( Long Feather) "Land of Salt Rocks" which is actually based on a true story and it took place in Canada before WW II, as far as I know never got it's English translation.Too bad. I see these books on the same page as Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, The Last Mohican or Tom Sawyer and yeah, Jules Verne. Yeah, maybe Hairy Potter is huge, but somehow cannot be connected with reality as the mentioned classics.

Anyways, back to Blaze's day in the sun.