Co-pilot is my dog.

Of the six Dublin x Celeste puppies: I kept two, two others stayed in Colorado, and two went to homes out of state.  I had the chance to visit Stella Rose in Monterey California in 2009, and despite getting to meet up with Bella’s family several times while they were in town for hockey tournaments or music concerts, I hadn’t gotten the chance to see her in the flesh since we met her ride home to Daniel in Cheyenne when she was just under 3 months old.  Winter storms had prevented her from going home sooner.

Eager to see how the quiet, reserved, and gorgeous girl was growing up and regretful of missing the event last year, I packed up Mercury and Dublin to attend the 2011 Taylor Ranches cattle branding and barbecue over Memorial Day weekend.

Mercury took the co-pilot’s chair while Dublin decided to work Engineering on the lower deck, and we headed off on the 8 hour drive from Denver to the northwest corner of Wyoming.

I'm giving her all she's got, Captain!

We were several hours outside of Denver before the boys decided that they no longer had to sample the 65mph wind for traces of the dog park or sheep and settled down for the rest of the trip.  They don’t like the windows in my car as much because they can’t roll them down all by themselves like they can in the big Jeep.  Plus, the big Jeep has 4 windows and mine only has two.  I never really appreciated why one would need a child lock on the automatic windows until the dogs discovered the magic black button on the console.

Dublin was the first to teach himself how to open the window and he was also he first to accidentally strangle himself by pushing the button the wrong way while his head was hanging out of the car.  Since then I’ve used the child lock much to the dogs’ frustration. They’ll paw at the button now and then poke me in the back with their nose as if to say “make it work, daddy.”  In my car there’s no magic button so they simply paw at the glass until I oblige.  I also keep the doors locked because Dublin, in an effort to see if any of the things he could paw on the door worked like the magic black button in the other car, found the handle which opens the door and successfully pulled it hard enough to unlatch the door.  He’s either very adventurous or suicidal.  His old favorite trick was to lean out the window so far he’d put both his front feet on the rear view mirror and play superman, blissfully unaware that his harness would prevent him from taking flight.

Our first stop was at the highest point along I-80 at 8,640 feet, which has a nice monument to Abraham Lincoln.  A huge bust sitting atop a rather square pillar like the world’s largest rock PEZ dispenser.  The dogs were unimpressed.

Abraham Lincoln, brought to you by PEZ.

Luckily the rest of our drive up was uneventful, although there were 50-60mph gusts crossing the highway on I-80 between Cheyenne and Laramie, one of which overturned a truck carrying a light trailer which blocked up the eastbound lanes for at least 10 miles.  The WHP was out in force, my Whistler radar detector lit up like a volume meter most of I-80.  Once I hit the turn off to US 191 though, the clouds parted, the cops disappeared, and the sun came out.

The Road north to Daniel, Wyoming

After getting the dogs some fried chicken gizzards and liver at some gas station in the middle of nowhere, we finally pulled into Daniel with just enough daylight left for a little Frisbee in the Pinedale city park with Bella’s mom Kara before dinner, an unexpected attendance at the Pinedale 2011 Graduation, and a late night arrival at Taylor Ranch.

8 minutes of Frisbee wasn't enough payment for 8 hours of driving, thought the dogs; but they didn't know all the fun that was in store for them over the weekend.

The dogs were very appreciative of their short Frisbee session, but after all the fun they had over the next few days, they didn’t even notice that the frisbee didn’t make it back into the car with us on the way home.

Behind the back?

Down low.

Anticipation.

Victory!

I tolerate their subscription, despite the magazine being published by the dirty bears in Berkley … sssssssssss … and the rather granola overtones of some of the articles.  And I have to admit that since I first discovered the magazine in the bathroom at the after-party of my first Frisbee dog tournament, I’ve always wanted my mutts to grace the centerfold with their smiling faces.

What a great concept, two full pages of loved and spoiled dogs captured in those moments that stay with us long after the dogs themselves are gone; the moments we miss when we can’t have them anymore.

So at dusk the night Celeste was due to give birth I snapped some photos of her outside on the hill in the backyard.  It was fortuitous that she was in pre-labor and panting, as my previous attempts to catch her with her mouth open and smiling were unsuccessful.  Neither of us slept that night and twenty four hours and a snow storm later we were back at home with six new puppies.  Two of them have never left.

Celeste on the lawn by AstraeanBorderCollies

Exactly five weeks later, I mocked up an impromptu photo studio in the corner of the den: made from repurposed desk lamps, a bed sheet, and some high gloss (but not pee proof) card stock.  Hold the shutter down long enough and even squirrely little puppies who think they’re getting abducted by aliens will give you a great shot.

Mercury has a sense of humor by AstraeanBorderCollies

In a quiet moment I dashed off a quick e-mail to The Bark with the above photos attached and when each new magazine came, I immediately flipped to the centerfold and scanned every line for my little cuties to be smiling back.  I even checked the smiling dogs gallery on the website.  It never happened.

Then, months later I got a letter from Claudia Kawczynska saying that my photos were finalists for publication in an upcoming Smiling Dog book, pending editor approval. Well, approval came and Mercury and Celeste are both featured in DogJoy: The Happiest Dogs in the Universe.

Don’t worry, if you missed out on having your pooch in the book, you can buy one customized with your dog on the cover. How great is that?  Here’s a preview that includes Mercury’s full page portrait. Buy one! or twenty.

And it’s no surprise. There are few things in life that look exactly the same today as they did sixty eight years ago, but I’m sure you could visit a little farm in Connecticut today and see gentlemen farmers and yeoman farmers alike reprising roles that were played out in the same manner fifty, one hundred, and even one hundred and fifty years ago in much the same way with much the same dogs.

One of the few stimuli ranges that biology still surpasses technology on is amplitude of light. The human eye and brain have an ability to distinguish detail and contrast in situations where even the most expensive cameras can’t hope to compete. Silhouette is a beautiful effect, but it’s also evidence of the camera’s inability to capture detail in light and dark areas at the same time. Shallow depth of field is a beautiful effect to blur out the background and bring notice to specific areas like the eyes of a portrait, but it too is evidence of the limitation of technology. The human eye can actively distort the lens allowing us to see both near and far with high detail and focus at the same time.

One element of vision that we can’t compete with, however, is high speed and slow speed photography. Both offer some of the most amazing photos and allow us to see patterns that we wouldn’t recognize or appreciate otherwise.

Here is a video which demonstrates a new advancement in ultra high speed photography, allowing us to take it slow and see amazing beauty. Enjoy: