I continue to avoid sorting through several hundred photos of Venice, this time by going out for a walk with Wilf the dog and two of his friends Baggins and George.

I’ve written here before about Wilf’s neurotic character traits. He’s been examined and observed by a number of vets and dog psychology experts who have diagnosed his excessive obsessive tail chasing as various things such as epilepsy, and come up with various ways to cure him – none of which have worked. Fortunately with some recent work his tail chasing seems to be getting better, which is promising.

He’s also been diagnosed as exhibiting “extreme fear” when taken on a walk, which results in him not wanting to get out of the car, or leave the house unless it’s to get in a car. All this leaves Wilf as a bundle of pure energy (typical of the Staffordshire Bull Terrier breed) who gets little or no exercise.

When the opportunity to walk him with other dogs arises, it’s always worth a try – he seems less fearful when other dogs are around to take the lead (pardon the pun).

Here’s a rare photo of Wilf enjoying the great outdoors:

After the walk, we take Baggins and George back to my studio and attempt to get them to sit still for five minutes so I can photograph them. Once again I had issues with the optical triggers on the Vivitar flashes – you would think I would have learned by now and given up.

Meet Baggins:

Baggins is the Brother of Bailey and Simba, who I photographed a couple of years ago – back before Wilf had developed the worst of his current psychological traits.

And this is George, who lives with Baggins:

Two dogs at once is difficult in the extreme – I hoped to get a photo of them together but all my efforts were in vain. Sit still you buggers!!!

When I do eventually process and post my pictures from Venice, you’ll see I’ve developed an apparent obsession with panoramic photos. This seems to have continued after my return, with this one resulting from the walkies with the doggies.

Click on it for a larger version, go on, you know you want to.

Someone said to me the other day I should update my website more often. Sounds a lot like hard work to me. Here’s a picture of some wedding rings (I’m getting married, scary…), and a dog in a Saucepan. Boiled Miniature Schnauzer, delicious.

Wedding Rings
Wedding Rings

You may notice the watermark on the Wedding Rings photograph, unless you are blind in which case what are you doing on my site?    This is an unfortunate necessity due to the sheer number of people who think it’s ok to steal a photo from my website and use it as if it were their own work.

If you want to use the wedding rings photograph,  why not ask me,  I’m not a totally terrible person and I might even let you…

Wedding Rings
Wedding Rings

Wilf the dog has a weekly socialising class as it’s important for dogs to spend time in the company of other dogs. Since I’ve just spent a sphincter tightening amount of money on a new camera and some new lenses, I thought I’d go along and see whether the new kit would immediately endow me with David Bailey-esque skills. It didn’t.

Still I don’t feel bad, as I do have another kidney, and everyone knows that it’s important to spend all your money and not save any, because of something to do with tax or something like that, I’m sure it’s true. So there you go, the simple fact is I LOVE MY NEW CAMERA and that is that. Unfortunately my bank balance has shrivelled up into a tiny little husk and is a shadow of it’s former self.