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So I got an email from the people at the shelter where we adopted Amy asking if they could put me in touch with the person who adopted her sister Molly, so of course I said yes, and we met up at Saxon Woods this afternoon to reunite them. That’s Molly (previously Ashley) in the harness with Amy (previously Allie) above.

They obviously recognized each other, even though they probably haven’t seen each other for at least 6 months, and had a whale of a time chasing each other and romping about. I almost felt a bit sorry for Faith, who was a bit left out, but she seemed quite happy to join in a bit and watch them go crazy the rest of the time.

Apparently Molly was brought up from the same shelter in Georgia a few months before Amy and was adopted about 5 months ago (we’ve had Amy for 3 months). If you do a little searching on FB you can find all these pics of Amy (who was called Allie, remember):

It’s weird ‘cos it’s definitely her, but she is so chubby in these pictures! And it brings her age into question- one of these graphics says she’s two and a half, but Pet Rescue said she was 18 months.

And here is a pic of her sister Molly (who was called Ashley) from the same FB page back in March that has the text:

“Ashley was rescued (along side her sister (our adoptable Allie) and her final destination is NEW YORK! Ashley unfortunately had heartworm disease and needed treatment before she could travel, but she’s making her way next week.

Wish her farewell and safe travels!”

So Amy could be a little older than we thought, but who knows. Even though she is king of the castle in the woods, right now she’s exhausted after almost 2 hours of playing with her sister and just wants a nap 🙂

Amy Pond has been with us for three months today (time flies!), and I’m starting to feel that I don’t have to keep tabs on her every moment while we’re in the woods, so today I took my camera to enjoy the fall colors.

I was mostly using my Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4 (the 8 element, slightly less radioactive version) on a tilt adapter…

But I also had the Sony Zeiss 16-35mm F/4…

Amy Pond was very good and stayed with me and Faith even while I was distracted by my photography (so most of my pictures have one or other dog in them, or both!), Faith and her are running more and more together while they’re out, so it was a lovely morning walk 🙂

I was cleaning out one of our kitchen cabinets this morning, but unbeknownst to me there was a shard of broken pyrex shaped very much like a scalpel blade wedged in the crack at the back which managed to slice a deep flap out of my left middle finger 🙁

Jackie drove me to Westmed Urgent Care where they saw me very quickly (apparently they like to triage cuts swiftly in case they are bad enough to send you to the ER instead), and I can’t say enough good things about the PA, Kristina DiDomizio, and the rest of the team that saw me! They were fantastic and got it cleaned out, numbed up and stitched quickly and efficiently and were pleasant and friendly throughout. I often forget how lucky we are to live 5 minutes from a facility like this (and that we have the insurance that we can use it).

Pics of the finger etc. below, but I’ll put a couple of cute pictures of the dogs first so you can avoid them by not scrolling down if you’re squeamish 😉

I told Jackie that this is God’s way of telling me I should not be doing housework on a day off!

June has just bought herself a new computer along with a very nice high-refresh-rate gaming monitor, and she’s added a second, smaller screen for notes and messages while she’s gaming (especially useful when she’s DMing her weekly online Dungeons & Dragons sessions)-

But she’s still got a little way to go until she reaches the true ridiculousness that is my quad-monitor photo-editing set-up 😉

Faith is 99% healed up after her run-in with the coyote, but needed a little TLC…. the feathery bits on her back legs (which we call her “hairy jodhpurs”) had gotten all matted as we had been unable to brush them while she was healing, so she’s been to the new groomers in town for a little spa treatment 🙂

She’s been bathed and combed and trimmed, and is now all soft with nary a mat or tangle in sight- so of course now we can head out to the woods in the rain, where she will no doubt find something nasty to roll in and get all muddy and gross. Oh, well, it was nice for a few minutes 😉

Just a few random pics from a nice afternoon 🙂

On our walk in Saxon Woods this morning, when we were on the lower part of the trail, Faith and Amy were off in the woods romping about as usual (see yesterday’s post). However at one point Amy came haring back with her hackles up, and I heard a yelp and a bark and then Faith came back the same way. I looked them both over briefly and all seemed fine, but on closer inspection when we got home and could look properly under all Faith’s long hair we found a couple of gashes- so off to the vet for a bunch of stitches and Faith will be in the cone of shame for a week or so 🙁

We think it must have been a coyote, I have seen them a couple of times over the years and someone told me today that they have been spotted there recently. Not sure if they chased it or Faith was defending herself (or Amy), but hopefully they’ve learned their lesson!

Scary, but thank goodness she’s OK and we have a great vet who saw her quickly and fixed her up. And I’ll have to try and keep them a little closer to me in future!

I’ve been waiting for Sony to release the A7V (the amazing A7III was the camera that got me to switch from Canon to Sony), but it doesn’t look like anything is coming very soon, so in the meantime I decided to try something a little different …

In May this year Sony released the FX2, a full-frame, mirrorless camera in their “Cinema” line, mostly aimed at video creators. But even though it it a mostly video-centric camera, this post got me thinking that it could be a good fit for me for still photography. It has the same sensor as the A7IV, which is the same as in my A7Cii; I got the A7Cii over the A7IV mostly because of the newer and better auto-focus system it had, but it does have some definite downsides- it is small in my quite large hands (the “c” is for “compact”), such that I added a small extra grip, and it only has one card slot (which definitely makes me nervous when I’m being paid for what I’m shooting). The FX2, as well as having an really nice, bigger grip and dual card slots also, being almost two years newer, has a slightly updated auto-focus system (you can see a full comparison between them here). So I rented one for the holiday weekend.

It’s a odd beast, not being used to the Sony Cinema line of cameras, but there is enough that’s familiar in the menus etc. that I felt pretty much at home straight away, and it only took a few minutes of tweaking to get it set up with back-button focus etc. the way I like it, and I took it to the woods this morning with my workhorse Tamron 35-150 and the dogs to see what it could do.

And I have to say, I really like it- it feels really natural in my hand and, though the tilty viewfinder is really a gimmick for this kind of shooting (and the eyecup really doesn’t work with glasses), it was great fun and easy to adapt to. And it seemed to even take pretty good pics of Amy, who for some reason is tough to shoot on my phone camera- not sure if it’s because she’s never still when we’re out or if her shiny coat confuses the camera, but this did a nice job in general.

So, we will see how it handles church on Sunday (I already used it for the Evensong last night) and whatever else goes on this weekend. I know I’m really not using it to the best of its abilities, but who knows, maybe I’ll try shooting some video with it too …

…here are our two silly beasties, Faith and Amy Pond 🙂