The more I know about people, the better I like my dogs.

It's been Primary Tuesday all day today. I'll vent my spleen about that in another post, but right now I want to give thanks for having my Labs to come home to at the end of the day. It's not like I don't love my wife, I do; it's that the Labs (and all make of dogs, I'm sure) give us their unconditional love, day in and day out. There is no quid pro quo with a dog. They're a vital part of the healing oasis I come home to every day.

When they played as buddies four years ago, like big Max did with little Ruby, they both played as pups. "Dragon fights" is what the girls called them. Teeth bared, chuffing and huffing and soft mouthing each other. They circle and pounce, and Max was always the one on the ground, being careful not to step to hard on little Ruby. They'd make you laugh so had at times it was difficult to photograph them.

These were taken four years ago when Ruby was still a pup. Max was really beginning to like playing with Ruby because Ruby was big enough for Max to really roughhouse with. This sequence was taken very late one evening (look at the long shadows).

I tried to find the author of the title of this post. The web says it's by Mark Twain, but there's a lot attributed to Mark Twain that he never really said or wrote.

These were taken when Ruby was three months old, back in November 2008, with my E-300 and 14-45mm kit zoom. They were JPEGs taken straight from the camera and resized with Olympus Master. This was back when I never photographed anything in Raw, preferring to produce and post process large fine JPEG images. They're not perfect by any stretch; just for starters they don't make full and effective use of the frame, they're none too sharp, and there's too much contrast. But they're full of wriggling Lab in puppy mode, and I love that. Four years on and they're more mature now. They still chase one another around the yard, but they don't wrestle like this anymore and I miss it.