Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

One Word

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Love, loyalty, courage, kindness, forgiveness.  These are just a few of the words that pop into my head when I think about the qualities I see in the hearts of my canine companions.

When I chose the name of this blog, my intention was to learn from my furry pals.  Learn to live more in the now and less in the past.

To embrace and enjoy the simple things in life, and not to worry about something that may or may not happen.

To be enthusiastic about learning new things, and exploring new opportunities.

To not let obstacles deter me from the path I’ve chosen.

To be thankful for the gifts in my life and not worry about what others around me have or are doing.

IMG_0019 To not worry about what others might think of me and allow myself to enjoy the things I enjoy.

There’s a saying that goes something along the lines of, Help me to be the person my dog thinks I am.

In other words, I want to learn to live my life with a heart like a dog.

When I first read about the one word project on Gizmo’s blog, I knew immediately what my word should be.

This week I contacted Melanie from Only a Breath, she’s agreed to make free buttons for anyone participating in the One Word project.

It took me a while, but I finally figured out how to add the button to my side bar.  You’ll see it about half-way down the page.

My word is:

OneWord2013_Heart150

And that means that I intend to put my Heart into everything I attempt this year, to be loving, loyal, courageous, kind and forgiving.

To think with my heart and not with my head, even if that means I get hurt along the way. To live up to the name of this blog.

I’d love it if you took this journey with me, but I understand if you choose not to.

Either way, I’m living this year with my heart, how will you choose to live?

What would your one word be?  What kind of traits do you see in your furry pals that you’d like to emulate?

What’s Yours Is Mine

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A few weeks back we had quite a discussion about using photos from the internet as well as from fellow bloggers.

I’ll be the first one to tell you that I don’t make the extra effort to protect my photos with a copyright mark.  I have a copyright caveat at the bottom of the blog and that’s as far as it goes.

This isn’t a hugely popular blog with tens of thousands of readers so I don’t worry too much about someone stealing my work.

Besides, how easy is it to take a photo and cut a copyright out?

20120108-freighter-1 No, this isn’t Delilah, this is Freighter from the 2 Brown Dawgs blog. The blog information was in the grass just below Freighter’s feet.  I cut it out.  (This photo was used with permission from 2 Brown Dawgs.)

The whole copyright issue dawned on me this past Follow-Up Friday when Beth said, “So if I understand, what you did was just add the copyright line in text on the photo? I get that…in fact, I’ve figured out how to do it with Pixlr, which i think is similar to PicMonkey…So I should just add text to any photos I post on the blog and that will deter unauthorized borrowing.”

Except that I’ve just shown you how easy that is to get around, right?

I think what you need to do to protect your photos, is to add a watermark to it.

Dictionary.com defines watermark as “A figure or design impressed in some paper during manufacture, visible when the paper is held to the light.”

The obvious solution is to add your text to your photo in a place where it can’t be cropped out.

S9 Copyright Nobody would want to gank this photo, would they?  But it does take the cuteness factor down.

Copyright S9 If we manipulate the text, we can add it, but make it so faint, it’s hardly discernible.  Can you see the mark? Hint: it’s right across the top of Sampson’s head, between his ears.  (I could probably have gone a bit darker.)

Now the question becomes, is it really necessary to take this type of precaution with our photos?

And to go a step farther, what about our words?

During that discussion many weeks back the term “Creative Commons” was mentioned by Lexy from Gone For a Walk and Pamela at Something Wagging This Way Comes.

If you don’t know what Creative Commons is, quite simply it’s your permission for how others can use your work.  I took some time yesterday and added a Creative Commons button to my side-bar.

My Creative Commons says any of my photos or words can be used Non-Commercially as long as you give me credit.

Is it too easy?  Or am I too trusting?  What types of precautions do you take with your precious work?

 

Let’s Pretend

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Today we once again join our friends at 2 Brown Dawgs for This ‘N That Thursday.  Some days there’s a little of this or a little of that, but not enough for a full post.

Thank you 2 Brown Dawgs!

Courtesy of 2 Brown Dawgs Blog

Courtesy of 2 Brown Dawgs Blog

Let’s Pretend

Let’s pretend that I’m like Jen at My Brown Newfies and that I actually think in advance to buy props and stage a Valentine’s day photo shoot.

Let’s pretend that once I’ve taken the photo, I can actually use a graphic image program to tweak that photo just a tiny bit.

Are you getting this?

Good!

Let’s pretend that this is a really awesome photo showing my dogs lying together in the shape of a heart.

Go ahead and laugh, I'm a writer not a graphic artist.

Go ahead and laugh, I’m a writer not a graphic artist.

Are you done laughing?

Okay, then I promise I’ll do better next year.

Unless I don’t.

Snow challenges

Sampson and Delilah have a little yard routine they do when they hear or sense someone or something outside.  Our yard is pretty large and normally they run out the door, down the deck stairs and up along the fence line. I call this synchronized running and if they ever offer it in the dog Olympics, I’m entering my two.  (One day I hope to capture it on video, because it really is amazing.)

IMG_3974

Then they station themselves at some point along the fence and observe or bark at whatever they please.

And there are other days when they burst out the door and one runs the fence line, while the other one runs up the stairs.  I guess this is their Hawaii Five-0 “you go this way, I’ll go that way” approach.

Our back yard is mostly hill.  Up hill as you may or may not be able to see from the photo.  The dogs can get back there either by running the fence line or by the stairs in the back.

After Charmo hit, there was no place for the dogs to potty, so Hubby used the snow blower and made a path around the house and a small area off the deck, but he didn’t blow along the fence line.

IMG_4051 While the snow is beginning to melt, there is still a lot of it!

IMG_4052 These are the stairs up back, I haven’t had a chance to shovel them yet.

So the other morning when Sampson got his dander up and charged out the door I said, “Where you gonna go?”  Then I laughed as I watched him run from one side of the house to the other via the snow blown path.

This morning however, I noticed Delilah tentatively (VBP) picking her way down the fence line.  Apparently the snow has melted enough for her to attempt the backyard.

Hold tight, I’m still working on that video. 🙂

Many thanks from our friends at the 2 Brown Dawgs blog for This ‘N That Thursday.

Do you plan photo shoots for your dogs? What kind of programs do you use to watermark or tweak your photos?

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