Category Archives: Dogs

The Last Push

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After spending some time cooling in a stream, Tisen and I make the final push home from Edward Point.  We make it to the first place we got lost on the way out.  When we get there, it’s completely obvious that a lower trail completely avoids the downed trees that caused us so much trouble on the way out.  We make it around the whole area with only one lift for Tisen in a spurt of steep rock steps.  I cannot resist looking to see if the trail was obvious from the other side.  It was not.  I have an excuse for at least one of my wrong turns.

I’m almost afraid to stop again.  Tisen is moving well and looking energetic.  I’m moving well now that we’re going uphill, my knee only complaining when we go downhill.

We make it back to the first natural overlook and I know we’re home free.  We take a break there, just to be safe.  Tisen looks at me with an expression on his face that I swear says, “Yay, Mom!  Look at us!  We’re almost back!”  Who knew a bit bull could look like a cheerleader?

A couple pauses to take a few quick shots from the overlook while we gather our energy for the last push.  The trees start rustling, the sun disappears, rain drops start to fall.  I realize I have nothing to cover my camera with and hope that it doesn’t get too wet.

I text Pat and let him know that we have survived and are on our way home.  I had updated him earlier when we were lost–one of the advantages of hiking on Signal Mountain is that you still have a signal.  🙂

When I start packing up Tisen’s water, Tisen pops up like he’s been waiting on me all along.  I smile.  I don’t know if he remembers what the last part of the trail is like, but it involves a lot of jumping up onto high steps and rocks to get back to the manmade overlook at the parking lot.  It’s a lot to ask of a tired dog.  I prepare myself for the possibility of having to lift Tisen many times in the last quarter mile.

Tisen springs up every rock and step like a young pup.  He is clearly excited to be getting closer to home.  He charges ahead when I pause.  When he’s behind me, I have to be careful not to kick him as I step, he’s so close on my heels.

We make it to the park.  We make it up the final hill to the car.  Tisen catapults himself into the back seat and lies there panting.  I rush to change my shoes so I can get us moving.  The breeze is still blowing, cool and slightly damp, although the rain has stopped.  I smile to myself as I put the car in drive:  we finally made it to Edward Point.

Bluff Trail

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Having made it to Sunset Rock, instead of going back the way we came, we looked for the more popular trail back to Craven’s House, Bluff Trail.  However, the map was a bit confusing as to whether we had to go back down the trail we’d come up to get to Bluff Trail or if it was at the same elevation as Sunset Rock.

There was a trail leading in the correct direction from Sunset Rock, so we decided it must be the trail we were looking for and headed on a treacherous route along the cliff.  It ended about 100 yards beyond Sunset Rock and we were forced to double back.  When we returned to Sunset Rock, a man with a young daughter was there.  There were two choices:  go up or go down.  I decided to ask the man which direction they’d come from.  They’d come down the trail we were eye-balling.  Turns out, we could have gotten to Sunset Rock by driving o the top of the staircase and walking about 1500 feet.  We walked over 2 miles to get to the same place that the man and his daughter had walked about 500 yards to.  It’s almost depressing, but we really enjoyed the walk.

In any case, we deduced that back down was our only option.  We climbed the “stairs” back down to another junction and then headed parallel to the bluff.  We were treated to occasional glimpse between the trees of a view of the valley.

Tisen liked this trail a lot.  He came into his own trotting along, right next to a cliff.  I was more worried than he was. Any time I started to freak out that he might fall over the edge, I’d call him and he’d look up at me with an expression that clearly said, “you’re not good at math.”  Maybe he’s right–he never did slip over the edge.

The rock formations on Lookout Mountain are pretty amazing.  Giant Rocks have fallen into unexpected places, decorating the landscape in places where it seems they must have been air-lifted in by helicopter.

The rock formations are a  beautiful.  They are sandstone, with intense layers that create interesting caves or have splits and vines and/or moss, all depending on where you see these giant reminders of a time long gone.

I don’t know what exactly is so attractive about these giant boulders.  Perhaps it’s because where each one appears, it’s as if time has stood still for centuries.

Tisen was less impressed with formations and more concerned about ensuring he had a way out.

Perhaps this is why Tisen had a magical ability to always end up in my frame?  His obsession with being in front led him to pass me whenever I stopped to shoot.  I’m not sure what was driving him to always be in front, but he ended up walking into my frame almost every time I stopped to get a shot.

Sunset Rock

Posted by dkrashb on

Lookout Mountain is both a backdrop and a center piece for Chattanooga.  It’s full of tourist destinations and local favorites; quiet neighborhoods and busy streets; civil war history and quiet countryside.  It offers fantastic views and shaded woods.  It all just depends on where on Lookout Mountain you go.

This past weekend, when we were trying to decide where we wanted to hike, my husband’s criteria was that he wanted to spend less than an hour driving round-trip and he didn’t want to hike more than 5 miles.  My criteria was that I wanted there to be a view and I wanted the trail to be doable in my fivefingers shoes.  Lookout Mountain was our perfect compromise.

We’ve gone up to Point Park on Lookout Mountain many times.  We’ve walked the paved trail down to the overlook at the point.  And, off in the distance, we noticed people sitting on Sunset Rock.  Today was our day to sit on Sunset Rock.

We decided to start at Craven’s House.  There are several trails from Craven’s House that can get you to Sunset Rock.  We chose the longest route.  Even so, it was not much more than 2 miles to Sunset Rock.

We took a trail called Rifle Pits Trail.  I’m sure there is an explanation for why it’s called “Rifle Pits,” but all I could think about was rifles spewing out shells and leaving behind the casings like I might spit out the pits from Kalamata olives.  We did not see a single shell casing, however.

This trail was partially an old road, which made for easy walking.  However, when we got to the Gum Spring Trail juncture, we turned and started climbing a lot of steps.  While it wasn’t so difficult as to be daunting, we were a little worried about Tisen.  These were mostly large stones positioned to form stairs, not actual stairs.  But every time I stopped to check on Tisen, he would run into the backs of my legs, he was so tight on my heels.

I made it up the steep section in 1 piece–it’s a miracle I didn’t trip over Tisen and fall off the cliff.  And the view from Sunset Rock was spectacular.  Unfortunately, it was, as usual, the wrong time of day to be shooting, but I did what I could.

Speaking of shooting, does anyone know how to train a dog not to walk into the frame when you stop to take a picture?  I had to trash about 50 images because of a Holstein-like blur running through them.  While we’re talking about unexpected visitors in the camera frame, let’s talk about my husband.  I think we’ve reached a point in our photographer/non-photographer relationship where he’s tired of assisting.  I didn’t bring my tripod or any extra lenses (for once), which meant he didn’t feel obligated to carry anything for me.  But, he still felt obligated to walk through my frame.  What do you suppose that means?

Wild Things

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One of my favorite past adventures was in Columbus, Ohio shortly before we moved to Tennessee.

One of the curious things about living in a place the vast majority of one’s life is the propensity to take it for granted.  For me, making friends with someone who was more connected to the Columbus scene introduced us to some experiences we would have missed completely.

These images are from one such experience.  Our friend learned of a behind-the-scenes tour available at the Columbus Zoo and organized a group of people to divide up the fee.  Even better, much of the money went to a Cheetah rescue program.

The animals we met were the animals who travel with Jack Hannah when he appears on television.  Jack himself was off at his Montana home, so we didn’t get to meet him.  I don’t think any of us felt like the experience was diminished by his absence; after all, it’s the animals who are the stars.

What was so cool about the experience is that these are animals who are used to educate people about endangered species and who have been handled enough to be touchable.  How often do you get to go to the zoo and pet a Lemur or cradle a baby Wallaby?

There are two things about the program I particularly like.  First, they are very serious about trying to save the extremely endangered Cheetah.  Not only do they operate a breeding program, but they also use the funds raised to donate Anatolian Shepherds to farmers where Cheetahs are still wild.  The Anatolian Shepherds protect the farmers’ flocks from the Cheetahs and, inversely, protect the Cheetahs from being shot by the farmers.  It’s a novel approach to solving a root cause that’s win-win.

At the Columbus Zoo, you can buy a children’s book about an Anatolian Shepherd raised with a Cheetah and those funds go to help save the Cheetahs too.  This is a somewhat ironic twist on the plot.  At the Columbus Zoo, instead of scaring the Cheetahs, the dogs provide comfort and confidence to otherwise skittish cats.  I don’t recall the story of what made them decide to raise the first cheetah-dog pair, but the result was a happier cheetah, so they have been raising puppies with the captive cheetahs ever since.

The puppy friend we met along with the cheetah babies there that day was a frisky yellow lab who didn’t seem to quite understand his place in the food chain next to his best friends.

The second part of the program I particularly liked was the number of rescues who were part of it.  The tortoise, the puppy, and the Python were all rescued critters.  In the case of the tortoise and the python, the Humane Society wasn’t equipped to deal with them.  The python had been released in a Columbus Metro Park and was at risk of freezing to death when it was rescued.  What a beautiful snake it is!

Crossing Bridges

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I love my dog.  I love him for many reasons, but today, it’s because every day he reminds me that we can learn, we can grow, we can be completely different than we were before.

How many times do we hear people say “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”?  As someone who strives to learn every day, I know first hand how hard it can be to undo decades of habit to do the thing I will myself to do.  Many days, I feel like it’s an impossibility.  Then, I have days when I do things like fly off a mountain in a hang glider and I know that anything is possible.  But, sometimes I walk away thinking that maybe flying off a mountain in a hang glider doesn’t ultimately change anything at all.

That’s where Tisen comes in.

Tisen has transformed himself from a nearly-dead street dog to a urban-dwelling, middle-class gentleman who likes to hike.  He wants to make me happy.  That’s his bottom line.  While I’m not sure I could handle a person being so into me, in a dog, it’s kind of nice.

When we went to Savage Gulf Natural Area to hike the other day, we encountered something called a suspension bridge.  The dreaded structure was not the kind of suspension bridge you drive over, but rather a flexing, swinging, bouncing rope-and-wood bridge meant for no more than 2 pedestrians at a time.  These bridges make me nervous; I have no idea what they are like for a dog.  For Tisen, it was clearly a gauntlet of terror.

First, he would not step onto the bridge at all.  I walked across first to give him a reason to cross.  Then Pat came behind, encouraging Tisen to come with him.  Tisen considered climbing down a sheer rock cliff to the stream below over walking onto the bridge, but Pat managed to get him up the entrance ramp to the bridge.  But there, he stopped.  It wasn’t until Pat had crossed and Tisen was left standing alone that he decided he’d better cross.

He made it all the way across the gulch (which really wasn’t so far below as to be completely terrifying), got to the top of the exit ramp, stared down at me with his longing eyes, then eye-balled the ramp down to me and decided he’d had enough.  He turned around and went all the way back across the gulch.

We managed to coax him back across and all the way to land on the other side.  We completed our hike to Savage Falls and then wondered what was going to happen on the way back across.  When we got to the suspension bridge, I went across first, Pat coaxed Tisen up to the bridge, and Tisen led the way across looking like he’d been crossing suspension bridges most of his life.

In about an hour, Tisen transformed himself from a ‘fraidy cat to a top dog.  He’s my hero.

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The Trouble with Relationships

Posted by dkrashb on

For those of you who have not been visiting my blog for long, we have a dog we adopted at the end of January who likes to carry squeaky toys with him wherever he goes.  Because he was previously mistreated, he has issues with food.  So, getting a new squeaky toy every once in a while has been a more effective reward than traditional doggy treats.  This has resulted in some unexpected growth to the family.

Many weeks ago, we had an “incident” where Lamb disappeared.  She went missing for two weeks.  About the second week, ‘Possum also went missing.  We were suspicious.  About a week after posting the story of our Lost Lamb, Lamb turned up again.  She was hiding under the bed.  ‘Possum turned up about a day later, mysteriously reappearing without any explanation.

Interestingly, since that incident, Lamb and ‘Possum were rarely seen together.

In the meantime, new members of the family seemed to be getting out of control.  I decided I needed to do some new portraits since it’s been a while since I last shot the entire collection of Tisen’s collection.

Unfortunately, quite a few members of the family were out in the car, but I did manage get a group portrait of Red Dog, Minnie, Eddie, Baby Beaver, ‘Possum, Lion, Big Dog, Duck, Goat, Lamb, and Blue Dog.  In the car were Squirrel, Mr. Beaver, Puppy Luv, Tiger, Jack, and Hog.  I’m thinking you can probably figure out which ones are which.

What I didn’t expect when shooting was the revelation of some really strange relationships.  As it turns out, apparently Lamb and Duck have something going on, but ‘Possum is not over Lamb.  This was revealed to me in the middle of the shoot when Duck and Lamb unexpectedly started to run for one another and ‘Possum got in the middle of it.  In fact, ‘Possum grabbed Duck by the throat and, had I not intervened, Duck would have been a goner.

By taking a photo of the event in action every few seconds, I managed to get 18 shots that I’ve strung together into a video.  It’s a bit  . . . uh . . . rough, but you’ll get the idea.

It was a lot of fun to be shooting and have two of your models suddenly expose previously undetected emotion.  Even better, a third participant decided to be extremely jealous.

At least I know where to look if Lamb disappears again!

Cloudland

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We made it back to Cloudland Canyon for the 3rd time a weekend ago.  We managed to hike the West Rim trail after going there once completely unprepared to hike and once just to show friends the views from the parking lot overlooks.

This time, we went prepared.  Well, semi-prepared.  I decided to wear my monkey feet (as Pat calls them)–my black five fingers shoes–since they’re by far the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever hiked in.  However, they’re not so good on sharp stones and there were plenty of those.  That led to Tisen and Pat having to wait on me while I picked my way over the trail.

The other issue was that I opted not to bring a tripod, but I had a polarizer on my wide angle lens since we were hiking during some of the worst light of the day.  I love my polarizer when I need it.  I does wonders to cut out the bright reflections and remove glare from a scene.  However, there are two problems with a polarizer.  First, a stop and a half of light is a pretty high cost to pay when you are tripod-less.  Second, a polarizer works best when it is used at 90 degrees to the sun.  When hiking, one does not have control over what the angle to the sun is.  So, sometimes it does it’s thing well and sometimes it doesn’t.

The part I didn’t think about before taking off down the trail was whether I would want to remove the polarizer and, if so, what I would do with it when I did.  This meant I either had to shoot with it on or I had to recruit Pat to hold it for me.  Given that it was mostly overcast that day, I probably would have been better off without it.  I had to scrap many photos because of movement blur due to slow shutter speeds.

But enough technical talk.  Cloudland Canyon was beautiful that day.  With big puffy clouds appearing and disappearing as sunshine streamed around them one minute and rain streamed from them the next.

We got wet more times than I counted.  This was another thing I was unprepared for, rain.  It was so hot, I had no need for a rain jacket–the water simply steamed off of my skin.  But, my camera wasn’t that hot.  Fortunately, I had packed a wide-brimmed hat which worked well to shield my camera each time it rained.

Tisen did amazing on the trail.  He stayed much closer than he has in the past and stopped when told to stop.  He could teach Pat a thing or two.

After completing the 5 mile hike around the West Rim of the canyon, we got a nice shower on our way to the car.  We piled in as quickly as possible–the rain started to pour down hard about the time we were ready to go.

It was a great day.

Big Sky, No Fireworks

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This is supposed to be a post about photographing fireworks.  The gallery of photos is supposed to contain shots of glorious fireworks going off over the Lookouts’ stadium in downtown Chattanooga.

Sometimes things just don’t work out how you plan.

As my regular readers may recall, I previously went to Gibbs Gardens on a field trip with the Photographic Society of Chattanooga.  This time around, the field trip was right across the street.  In fact, it was on the very balcony of the One North Shore clubhouse that I shot from while dog sitting a few weeks ago.  But, it was intentionally scheduled on a night there would be fireworks at the Lookouts’ stadium.

Picking this evening for a photography event in the clubhouse was perfect in more ways than one.  First, the Lookouts have fireworks frequently enough that they don’t draw a crowd, so no one was going to be upset that the clubhouse was reserved like they would have been on July 3rd or at the conclusion of Riverbend.  Second, the organizer (who happened to also be my shooting buddy on the Gibbs Garden trip) somehow managed to pick a night when the clouds did really interesting things but didn’t rain out the fireworks.  And finally, it was a double header, which meant the fireworks were bigger and longer than usual.

I made arrangements with Twiggy’s parents to watch Tisen for the evening since Pat was on a road trip to Nashville.  Tisen could have a date night in one corner of the condo complex while I was busy shooting in the clubhouse in the opposite corner. Pat would pick Tisen up when he got home around 9PM.  All was set.

I wrapped up my day at the office as early as possible, slung my 5000 pounds of gear on my shoulders, got Tisen on a leash without knocking either one of us unconscious, and then we headed over to the park for a quick lap with Twiggy and her mom before I turned him over.

As a side note, carrying a backpack with 4 lenses and a full frame camera in it plus a tripod while doing a 2/3 mile walk with a dog in 95 degree weather does not leave one feeling fresh right before an evening event.

I made it to the clubhouse balcony and met a fellow photographer with the same camera.  He showed me how to use the in-camera HDR feature while I was there.  I have one image that was done using in-camera HDR, one that is not HDR, and the rest I used 5 exposures post-processed using Photomatix.  See if you can tell the difference.

Shortly after 9PM, I called Pat to find out if he had gotten Tisen yet.  It’s a good thing I did because he had completely forgotten and had just left Nashville.

I packed up my 5000 pounds of gear and, like any overly anxious parent, went down to retrieve my dog.

Down Came the Rain

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There’s been an interesting development in the weather of late.  We went from ridiculous heat and drought to rain, rain, rain.

When at last the rain came, I went from relief to disappointment to worry.  The first day, when the rain drops started, I felt myself exhale.  Finally, rain!  But, it lasted only a half an hour or so and rained so hard it seemed like of it bounced off the dry earth and rolled away in the gutters.  The steam rising off the asphalt left us in a steam bath and the temperature barely dropped.

The next day, it rained more.  The temperature dropped dramatically and the sky took on an ominous tone.  The 10-day forecast was predicting rain for all of the next 10 days.  The relief in the temperature was welcome, but when the skies unleashed a torrent of rain that caused our roof to leak and the streets to flood, I started to worry. Coincidentally, I had volunteered to lead a bird walk for beginning birders before work Wednesday morning.  I scheduled it “rain or shine”.

This meant taking Tisen for a walk before the bird walk.  I tried to get him out of bed at 6AM.  He heard the rain on the roof and just rolled his eyes at me and stuck his nose under his blanket.  Tisen is not fond of rain.  Fortunately, his dad was home and volunteered to take Tisen out later while I was on my walk.

It did rain during the walk.  In fact, it started raining about the time we started walking and then kept raining harder and harder.  No one seemed to mind except the birds–they were suspiciously absent.  Although, we did see a couple of Osprey soaring over the river.

It rained like it was never going to stop from then on out.

The following afternoon, I managed to take a break for lunch.  I looked out the window and saw it was only sprinkling, so I thought I’d better take Tisen out right away.  He grabbed Blue Dog and off we went.  By the time we got downstairs, it was pouring.  I figured we might as well go for our walk in the rain, but Tisen had to be convinced.  He took two steps out from under the overhang and turned back around and started running for the door.  I managed to get him headed back out with much coaxing.

When at last we returned home, all three of us were soaked.  As soon as I let Tisen off his leash, he went running into the house with Blue Dog in his mouth.  He carefully laid Blue Dog on a towel left on the floor from drying Tisen earlier.  I had to laugh.  Since Tisen gave the big towel to Blue Dog, I had to use the only dry dog towel left in the house, which was an old hand towel.  Poor Tisen was still wet hours later.

When Wrong Goes Right

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We have been taking a break from hang gliding for several months now.  It’s one of those things–first we were taking a break so our knees could heal.  Then, Pat started working every weekend getting his new guitar-building business going.  All work and no play was getting old.

Then, when Pat’s family came to town to celebrate Pat’s milestone birthday with us, we managed to talk his sister into going for a tandem flight.

Talking someone else into doing a tandem flight is different from deciding as a couple that it’s something you want to do together.  There is a completely different sense of responsibility–probably heightened by the fact that this was Pat’s baby sister (never mind that she’s now in her 30’s and more than capable of making up her own mind).  While I felt obligated to make her aware that there were risks, I didn’t want to scare her out of it because it’s one of those experiences you keep for a lifetime.

As we headed out to the mountain for Pat’s sister’s flight, I had one of my mental glitches that caused me to take us completely the wrong way.

As we drove as fast as was allowed in the wrong direction on a lonely 2-lane highway, we spotted a large dog staggering toward us in the middle of the lane.  We also noticed it had a collar, so we swerved around it and started looking for houses, assuming its home had to be close–it was barely able to walk.

Pat’s sister immediately wanted to stop and pick up the dog.  I think we were all thinking the same thing, but we didn’t want to steal someone’s dog.  As luck would have it, we soon realized we were going the wrong way and needed to turn around.  By this time, we realized there were no houses in the vicinity and there was no way that dog had gotten there on its own.

When we got back to where it was, it had collapsed in the middle of the road.  We blocked traffic with our car, got out Tisen’s water bowl and gave the dog water.  Then, we managed to urge it to get into our van, although Tisen wasn’t so happy about sharing his ride.

Since our safe-harbor dog shelter didn’t open for hours, we went ahead and took Pat’s sister to the flight park.  When we finally got Pat’s sister signed up for her flight, we asked if anyone wanted a dog.  It looked like a poorly bred Mastiff.  Her hips were so bad, she could barely walk.  She was dirty and smelled like she’d been lying in poop.  She had ticks and probably fleas.  We were certain she’d been dumped.  No one was interested.

Pat’s sister took her flight full of joy knowing that the dog was safe. She said the tandem flight was 2nd to rescuing the dog on her list of things that made her trip.  She wasn’t alone in her thinking.