Went hiking at Radnor Lake Wildlife Refuge area this morning at sunrise. Took along the new Olympus E-PL1 camera. This photo is the first panoramic I took. It was over cast and the light was a bit flat, but the camera performed well and the software for stitching the photographs together was easy to use. This photo was made up of 2 different shots.

Here’s another photograph I took of Russ with my new camera. This was after playing Frisbee in about 98 degree heat. He was tuckered out and perfectly content with his fetching skills

Messing around with my new camera tonight and I took this picture using the “grainy film” art filter. It was taken using the Olympus Pen E-PL1. I think it turned out pretty nice.

No frog was hurt during the writing of this story. Any similarities between the frog in the story and real frogs is purely coincidence. But, the similarity between the frog and a rock is not a coincidence. Neither dogs actually ate a rock or a frog for that matter during the writing of this story.

Earlier in the evening, my wife let the dogs only to find to her surprise a frog sitting on the doorstep. Luckily for the frog, for some in-explicable reason, neither dog noticed it.

A few hours later, before we retired for the evening, I let the dogs out. Having known there was a frog out there earlier, I checked the patio to make sure the frog was not there knowing this time, if either dog saw him he may not be so lucky a second time. I didn’t see any frog and the all clear was given.

They dutifully went out and took care of business. And found a rock.

Our greyhound was the first to come in and I didn’t notice anything unusual about her but the feist on the other hand decided to try and sneak a rock in, a favorite past time of his. Knowing he has an affinity for rocks, I usually scrutinize him closer because he likes to chew on them, especially when he’s bored and it’s not unusual for him to try and sneak them in.

Sure enough, this time around he was carrying a rock in his mouth, a rock that was 1/2 the size of his head.

There was something different about this rock. It blinked at me. Not really understanding what I just saw, it blinked again as if sending some kind of Morse code. I quickly thought back to the days I spent as a boy scout, but couldn’t remember anything that would help decipher the message. The thing is, in Boy Scouts, I didn’t study Morse Code. Thinking for another brief second, I decided that rocks don’t blink and that it was not rock in is mouth, but it was the frog!

The message became evident. It was simple. “Save me”.

I sprung into action quickly flashing a stern eye at the feist and shouted “drop it”.

For once in my life the feist actually listened to me. That’s not usual, he doesn’t typically listen to me, after all, they are related to terriers.

The former rock now frog gently fell to the door step landing on it’s back and both dogs went straight to bed.

I’m happy to report that this morning I went to check and see if the frog was still in the backyard and to my happiness he was not.

We have put a bird feeder in our backyard. Our backyard is about 1/2 acre big and is fenced. There are no trees in it at all. Therefore, we were surprised one day to wake up and see a squirrel sitting below it eating some seed.

Our little dog is a treeing fiest and our medium dog a greyhound. If you don’t know, treeing fiest are used to hunt…yep…squirrels. And if you haven’t been to a greyhound race, greyhounds like to chase little things.

I wasn’t paying attention this morning when I woke up to let the dogs out. Before I knew it, they were chasing after that little squirrel. I’ve never seen either dog run that fast. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a squirrel run that fast either.

The chase was over before I knew and I’m happy to say the squirrel made it to the fence and out of our yard safely before either dog could catch it.

For me, the jury is still out on whether or not to buy one. Each time I think I’m going to buy one, I remind myself that it costs 1/2 of a new set of golf clubs.

I guess the airplane was a PC powered by Microsoft.

Intrigued, I googled. I think I found out what my coworker found. I’m not going to share here so to keep the mystery in place.

But, another item I found is that someone used one of my photo’s on flickr for an article about homemade dog food. This was cool. I forgot about it and the person who wrote the article asked if they could use the photo. It was cool seeing it again on this sleepless night. The picture of Ben , who was our first greyhound we adopted but unfortunately after 2 months had to put him down b/c of osteosarcoma (bone cancer).