What can I say, I love dogs! All season long at the track's, I think people know me as the dog guy. If I see a dog and I'm not rushing off to get on the track, I'm going to try and get a photo of it. It's one of my rules! All my life I've had dogs around. Growing up we had German Shepherd's. Now we have Boxers! My love for dogs go's waaaaay back to my childhood and continues to this day. Since I have 2 dogs of my own, naturally when I started learning and teaching myself photography, my 2 Boxers were my models most of the time while I tried to figure out the camera, settings, etc. Now days, I am very fortunate enough to be able to get great photo's of our dogs, other people's dogs, and more importantly rescue dogs! So on top of our 3 dogs we have, we usually have a rescue dog that we'll foster in the house as well. Getting rescue dog's good photo's are crucial in helping them get adopted! More on that later. This will be a recurring blog about some of the foster dogs we have in our house and other rescue dog's we get photo's of!

   Even while I was deployed to Iraq I managed to find a stray or two, to feed an on a regular basis. After I got out of the Army I ended up going back to do private security. My last month in Country I was probably the highest paid dog sitter in the world! The company I had been working for had just lost the contract for K-9 contract for base security. So that meant all our Dog Handlers were done and had to go home. Problem one, the dogs were staying and the new company taking over the contract would take possession of the dogs. Problem 2, the new company wouldn't be their for about a month? The bomb sniffing dogs still belonged to the company I worked for and had to be taken care of until they arrived. So one day as I was coming off shift I got a call on the radio, our Site Manager needed to see me in his office. It wasn't the first time I had been called to his office, but the other times I had been called in their was cause I was gonna get a butt chewing for something. Him and I didn't see eye to eye on how some things should be handled. I had it coming every time and knew it was going to happen. But this time, I really had no clue why I was being called in. As soon as I walked through the door he says that he heard from the other Supervisors that I was a dog guy? I said yes and started telling him about the Boxer's I had at home and all that stuff! That's when he filled me in on the contract situation with our bomb sniffing dogs. Basically I got volunteered for the next month to take care of our dogs! My only job was to get up in the morning, feed 12 dogs, take them all for a walk. Then come back in the afternoon to feed them and walk them again. It was awesome! Because all day I was hanging out with them. In all reality it was only supposed to be a few hours of work in the morning and then a few in the evening. But it didn't work that way for me. I was out all day walking and playing with them. Usually by the time I got done hanging out with the last dog it was time for me to feed them and walk them again for the evening. It was my 2nd best job ever!

   Dogs have always been apart of my life and always will be until the day I die. Now I'm lucky enough to have skills that I can use to donate for rescue dogs. One of the first rescue's we had for a lengthy amount of time was Buster the hairy Bulldog! Go look at the photo's before you read on. I know right, have you ever seen a Bulldog that looked like this? Neither have I! I would love to see photo's of him as a puppy if I could. Any how, Buster came to us because his original owners (older couple) had passed away. He was kind of overweight and unhealthy, a little skidish with new people. But he got really attached to my girlfriend. I'm just the photographer, she does all the real work with the rescue stuff and deserves all the credit for everything she does. Buster was ok with the other 3 older dogs in the house but not great with them. Randomly and for no reason he would charge at them. So we had to keep the house blocked off. If you plan on fostering dogs.....get baby gates! We have them all over! As awesome as he was and how unique he looked, unfortunately we knew we were not going to be able to keep him. If your a dog person, your gonna get attached to them. But ultimately you have to do whats best for them and your own dogs. As unique as he looked, their was no problem finding adopters for him! So in no time the rescue found an awesome couple up north for him where he was able to spend the rest of his days being super spoiled, non stop, everyday! They even made an Instagram account for him and everything so we were able to follow a long with him. It's truly an awesome thing to see these rescue dog's go to fantastic homes where they can be spoiled and taken care of the way that they deserve. Like I mentioned earlier, getting good photo's of these dog's really help get them adopted. You can capture their personality, use prop's, outside running around playing. The possibilities are endless. So many times you see shelter's just getting cellphone shot's in badly lit rooms of the dogs. Don't get me wrong, obviously any photo's are going to be better than nothing. But with ALL the dog's that are out their and that need to be rescued, I might as well try and help get one adopted faster. That opens up space for the next one right?

  Unfortunately Buster passed away a couple weeks ago. He had very aggressive cancer and by the time his people found out about it, it was to late. As much as it sucked hearing about cause he was such a one of a kind dog, it was a real treat getting to have him in our home before he went to his new people.

https://www.bluestarservicedogs.org/