Cold fingers, cold doggy, and the look

        The screen shot below is from my watch that was tracking my walk through the forest the other day. I did one mile but then arrived home and decided to get the chores done. I literally forgot to turn the 'Walk' tracking off.

The orange line on the left was me taking sleds of hay out to the mules and putting the hay in a protected area.  The stuff off to the right was me caring for the pony. 

I bring the old fella warm water three times a day and keep his hay feeder full at all times. He gets special 'calf' hay which is easier for elderly equine to eat and digest. Little Richard is somewhere between 33 to 35 years old.

The blue in the middle? My activities in the house, doing the bird feeders, and apparently doing things indoors. 

I must be a very restless sleeper too as when I woke up in the morning, the walk tracking was still on and I had 3 miles of 'walking'.

Note, I do not sleepwalk, so I must be a very active and restless sleeper.

I finally did get off the farm. The temps moved up to 9 F or -12 C. Charlie gave me such a mournful look that I decided to take him with on a walk near Weister Creek. I had an idea in my head to take a shot of a trail through the trees, snow, and open field both still and ICM. 

Most of the tutorials for Intentional Camera Movement discuss not taking shots in bright situations as they don't work well. 

So a bright sunny day with bright white snow was probably not going to work. Of course when I am told not to do something with photography I like to try and break the rules.

Below is the wide trail through the stand of trees. In the summer, it is a walking trail only and in the winter it is a snowmobile trail. This runs alongside Weister Creek which attracts trout anglers all season long.

Below is Weister Creek trail in the summer 
shot in Infrared. Going
through this particular spot is very 
scenic in the summertime.

It took about 20 ICM shots before I found one I could probably use. I didn't care for the full blown blurred look as I wanted to 'picture' the trail too.
I blended two shots together for the end which I ended up really liking.

Maybe my ICM will not be full blur but a nice pleasant way to direct attention. Plus! I did it a full blown sunny day. I did have to use a Neutral Density Filter to get the exposure to slow down to 1/4 of a second.

I froze my fingers and got one shot I can live with after about 20 tries.

It was unfortunate that Charlie stood still by me while I did this as he got cold too. So I picked him up and walked back to the car where we were out of the wind.

The goofy dog then decided to take the trail and ran happily forward. He is so familiar with the trail that we take often that he just assumed we were there for more walking.

I let him go and in about a half a mile he stopped and started doing the cold foot hop. We were done and I carried him back.

I know all about booties, blankets, and coats. Charlie back feet are tiny compared to his front paws which are meaty and thick [for digging]. I should have known better that anything below 19 or 20 is too cold for long snowy walks for him. 

But the guy gave me such a look when I was gathering my stuff to leave I couldn't resist. 

We did drive around to check out some other scenes and then drove home to cuddle.

The hardest thing about having a pet is how much my heart strings can be pulled by them. It is hard to see his face turn grey. 

He is suffering from missing Rich too. Rich was always here for him. Being alone is difficult for him. Definitely separation anxiety.