What day is this, anyway?

Total confusion in my mind as to what day it is, due to the long weekend here in Canada. Having our regular family “Sunday” night dinner this evening has just added to my not having a grip on the day of the week. Son-in-law Bill and grandson Mark went to open up the lake cottage and to spend most of the weekend there, so the usual Sunday dinner happened today. I’ve spent much of the day when in earshot of the radio wondering why the programming was all wrong, and as I’m just getting ready to shut the studio down for the night, I realized that it really is a blog day after all.

I did a lot of photos this weekend, mostly for my horse/riding clients. Went out to the barn to catch the outdoors jump lessons which were quite exciting on a number of fronts. Weather was very gusty and kind of changeable, which often “puts the wind up the horse’s tails” both literally and figuratively, and which in the course of a few lessons that I shot, had some horses and riders parting company. No lasting damage done, luckily, and I do have some spectacular shots of the process. I never used to be able to get “wreck” shots as I was always too horrified at what I was witnessing to keep on shooting. This year I’m trying to get them as the riders often take a perverse pleasure in them and want them for their collections, and really, it keeps me occupied and the outcome is the same (for good or ill) whether I’m photographing it or not. Nobody gets to see their wrecks, though, until show season is over in the fall.

Someone gave me the heads up that a new horse was going to be introduced to the herd in Alpac’s pen at mid-day, so I had to head over there at the appointed time in case of some good photo ops. Often there will be action and posturing as everybody assesses the new arrival and where he will fit in with the crowd, so it’s worth being there with the camera. Turned out not to be much of an event, which in the overall scheme of things (from a herd perspective) is good. The new boy was greeted by a couple of the other younger ones (he’s just four), and mostly ignored by the “big kids”. I got a few good shots of Alpac (which I will incorporate into the Goth series I’m working on of evil-looking horses) telling the youngster who is “king” when the young guy got a little too far into Alpac’s personal space, but all in all it was a peaceful entry. Alpac is pretty much a benevolent dictator to his herd, and generally speaking all he needs to do is give his evil look and things go the way he wants. He’s been off work for a couple of weeks due to a leg injury, and is starting to look like he needs some exercise, which I hope will happen soon. Vet visit is on Wednesday so I hope we’ll get the leg sorted out.

Most of the non-barn part of the weekend was spent working in and on the back yard, trying to get ahead of the weeds (already seems hopeless) and doing some planting and preparation of various beds. I caught a good shot of Mickey while I was lurking with the camera trying to get some bird shots. Never did get the birds I wanted, but I like this one of Mick. He’s generally very hard to get good photos of, which I don’t understand as he is a very handsome boy, but somehow he usually manages to do odd things with his ears and look as if he has no neck. That being the case, I’m happy with this shot. I might give him a better background if I feel ambitious at some point.

Mickey is the first Boxer I’ve had in over forty years of owning the breed to have cropped ears. All my Boxers are companion animals and their ears are left natural, but Mickey was a show dog in his first home, and ear cropping is still fairly standard in that world. I was Mickey’s third home before his second birthday, all due to changed circumstances with his previous situations, not a reflection on him or his personality. He is a very dear boy, happy, affectionate and eager to please, and we are lucky to have him. This shot shows his characteristic expression of alert watchfulness.