“Better to get up late and be wide awake than to get up early and be asleep all day.” – Anonymous
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Dogs Drinking Slowly
If you read my previous post, you know that I brought a high-speed camera home with me this weekend. This morning, I took some movies of the dogs drinking from their water bowl. It is pretty fascinating to see how they roll their tongue back to create a large surface area on the water, dip it into the water, pull it up slowly, then gulp the water they’ve pulled up from the bowl. Here are three movies of three of the dogs.
All movies were shot with a Vision Research Phantom V7.1 color high-speed digital camera. I was using a Sigma 24-70mm F-mount lens. All movies were shot at f/4. I used two 250W Northstar lights. The movie of Sailor is in super slow-motion, at least compared to the other two. It was shot at 1000 frames-per-second with a 100 microsecond exposure time. You’ll notice that it is a little washed-out. That is because it was dark, so I tried to lighten it up some by adjusting the brightness and contrast after the fact. I’m not very good at this stuff yet, so the pictures aren’t as good as a pro could get them, but you can sure see the act of drinking!
Update: I uploaded a new movie of Sailor that is exactly 1000 frames long. This means that everything you see in this movie occured in 1 second in “real life”. I count three full slurps of water in 1 second!
For the movies of Daisy and Bode, I changed the frame rate to 500 frames-per-second (so they move along a little faster). And, the exposure to 200 microseconds, giving me a little more light to work with. Now, you can see that I have some parts of the scene (the white on the dog, for example) that are overexposed. I could have fixed this in the camera if I had been paying more attention. (A feature called Extreme Dynamic Range). But, they are what they are from a quality perspective. I’m learning and will get better!
The movies are in Quicktime format using the h.264 codec. If you can’t view the movies, download and install the latest version of Quicktime from www.apple.com/quicktime. And, they are about 32MB in size, so give them some time to load.
Hope you enjoy!
Posted under: Dog Stuff • Stuff You Gotta Know! • by Rick on 07/04/2006 at 08:13 AM
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Friday, June 09, 2006
Bart Being Bart
In case you missed it, check out this article on Lynne’s blog:
Posted under: Dog Stuff • by Rick on 06/09/2006 at 01:55 PM
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Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Keeping a Dog Yard Green
We have a back yard that is about 3000 square-feet of Kentucky Bluegrass. And, we have had between 7 and 10 dogs over the past 11 years and their outdoor area is the back yard. Many people have asked me, over the years, how I keep such a beautiful green yard with the pressure of a lot of dogs living on it. Here is what I do…
Posted under: Dog Stuff • Stuff You Gotta Know! • by Rick on 08/03/2005 at 11:33 AM
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Heidi is Gone
It is about 7:30 on Tuesday night the 12th of July, 2005. Heidi is gone. We had her put to sleep tonight.
At over 12 years old, she had already lived about 50% longer than the average Bernese Mountain Dog. (That would make her well over 100 years old in human terms.) In recent months her hip dysplasia really caught up with her. She lost her ability to walk. We had to steer, carry, push, pull her everywhere. (Now I know what tails are for on a dog). When her front end started to go, and when she lost control of her bladder and bowels, we knew it was finally time to say goodbye.
I’d like to write a really nice eulogy for her. I’d like to remind people of her service as a therapy dog. I’d like to share her courage and will to live. But, tonight, I’m really too sad.
You can see some photos and read a little more about Heidi at Heidi’s Web Page. I’ll post a photo I took of her today, later.
Update on 7/13/2005: Here is a photo of Heidi as a puppy.
Posted under: Dog Stuff • by Rick on 07/12/2005 at 08:23 PM
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Monday, May 23, 2005
Hailey Loves Winter
Now that we are well into Spring, I often think back to the snow of Winter. When I think of snow, I think of our puppy, Hailey, who really loves snow. The snow at the cabin is gone now, but just a few weekends ago there was still enough snow to make Hailey happy!
Here are a couple of online movies to show you what I mean:
Another of Hailey’s favorite things is finding sticks in the woods and carrying them home to chew on. Here she is tackling a really big stick.
Posted under: Dog Stuff • by Rick on 05/23/2005 at 03:35 PM
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