Tag Archives: Photography

R&R Part II; and not the fun kind!

August 8, 2019 Jackson 4 Comments

Woof my last blog was about rest and relaxation, this time my blog is still about R&R but this time it is rest and recuperation. I must mention here as I have on my Facebook page I was trying to hide the fact I was hurt, but Matt is too observant and took me to the doctor to find out what was wrong. Matt’s truck is a tall one and sometimes I misjudge my jumps. On one of our last trips I fell when I didn’t quite make the jump into the front and ended up on my back. That hurt but I didn’t say anything and acted like I was fine, but oh it did hurt to walk. The doctor took pictures called X-rays of my leg and shoulder. She told us there was no damage to my bones and no signs of bone cancer. Both of us were relieved and Matt said he hadn’t even thought of bone cancer. The doctor said she was worried about that but didn’t want to say anything. She explained to us I have either a muscle or tendon injury and I have to take it easy for at least two weeks.

Well with all that fuss now I am restricted to just potty walks and can only go downstairs from our room twice a day so I stay downstairs for part of the day. Woof, this is so boring, butt Matt tells me it is necessary to help things heal. He does spend a lot of time with me, but we can’t play ball, or go for our walks, or go swimming, or the dog park, or anything! Matt rearranged his room so there is more floor space and moved my bed and added more cushioning to it because he doesn’t want me to jump up on the big bed because it’s high off the floor. I do get massages and treats but it is still boring. The only plus side I can think of is I have more time to work on my photographs, videos, and blog.

I hope we can go on a trip soon I haven’t even gone on a truck ride since went to the doctor’s office. Matt keeps telling me we will go soon but he is waiting for an okay by my doctor. I get tired of Matt’s music too. I would rather hear the wind, rushing water, birds, or something outdoors. Well I do get to go out in the yard and lie down in the sun, but it’s been cloudy the last couple of days so I only get to sniff around the yard and, well, you know what.

You can get all kinds of stuff with my photo on it, or you can even buy photos of mine at www.matthewirvin.com!

Woof, that’s enough complaining and I just have to get better! Oh since I am here at the house all day long I decided it’s time for another Photo Dog Jackson mug Mug Contest. I’ll have some details about it on Friday (8/9/19.) Plus I am making a compilation video from my very first one. I should have that ready next week!

Jackson Ruminates on Ageing

June 26, 2019 Jackson 3 Comments

Woof, I am getting an understanding about old age. Now I know why Matt groans and complains sometimes. I will be turning 11 this August and I am close in dog years to Matt’s age now. I think Matt has noticed I am slowing down a little. He is observant because he told me we weren’t going to play ball or Frisbee until my shoulder stopped bothering me. I don’t know how he found out, I thought I was hiding the fact from him, but he watches over me pretty closely. It started hurting a couple of weeks ago, but I like paying so much I didn’t want to tell him. We are still going on walks and we are taking it pretty easy. When we were at Elk Lake on our trip I tried to entice Matt to throw one of the wonderful sticks that were on the beach. It was a cornucopia of dog sticks and so many it was hard to resist. Matt told me to use that word and I looked it up so it fits, woof!

Matt's truck is high off the ground, woof! — Matt’s truck is high off the ground, woof!

One day on our last trip I didn’t make the jump into the front of Matt’s truck and fell on my back. It really surprised me and scared Matt. He has started helping me jump in by assisting with my harness. That time I didn’t wait for him and I slipped and fell when I jumped up. The truck is higher than most because it is a four-wheel drive. It has a lot of road clearance plus the back of Matt’s truck has always been a tall jump and occasionally I have missed even when I was much younger. On our last camping trip Matt figured out a real smart way for me to get in the back easily. Matt puts his chair back up to the dropped tailgate and I use it as a step to get inside. That makes getting in so much easier. Even Matt has to use a stepping stool to get in so I really don’t feel embarrassed to use it. I tried the stool once but it is too small for me to use.

You can tell how far off the ground the tailgate is. The yellow chair is my step up into the back.

Matt said we will grow old together as gracefully as possible. I still have my job to help Matt and I can do it but one day I will have to retire. Now I know why Matt has discouraged me from jumping like I used to. He told me not to worry or get upset about it. He explained there were a lot of things he couldn’t do anymore but what we needed to do was to focus on the things we can still do and enjoy. Oh and he told me he would find a good place for me to swim as that is a good low-impact exercise and I can chase things in the water, double woof!

Me two years ago swimming in Lake Michigan, photo by my good friend Robin Long.

Woof, it’s time for my nap so I had better wrap this up for now. I need an extra one anyway because we recently got back from a four night camping trip. Oh and don’t worry we all age, Matt is making sure I get all my proper nutrition and supplements to help me as much as possible.

We’re Back!

January 7, 2018 Jackson 1 Comment

Hello, Matt stepping in on this post on Jackson’s blog. I have been busy for the last few months with a pretty big personal project. After Jackson’s last post on August 31 I didn’t check back on the blog for quite a while. It appears from the traffic history the page went down sometime in November and when Jackson wanted to do a post I found I couldn’t access the page. That was in December so when I finally started trying to find out what happened I couldn’t restore from the backups as the system only goes back 30 days. After some excellent customer service where I host my site I was able to troubleshoot the problems and get the page running.

Jackson is working on a new blog entry so we should have some news from him soon. We both hope everyone had joyful holidays and have had a great start to the new year.

Matt

Wrapping It Up (and more to come!)

August 17, 2017 Jackson Leave a comment

Woof, I have been one busy dog! We have been back for a while, but I never did a wrap up of our trip. After we left St Paul we were super busy. We went to visit my friend Nate in a town with a funny name like Wetcorney or Corneywetter or something like that in Wisconsin. Our friends, Nate and his humans Bob ad Paulette used to live in North Carolina but moved to that Croneey place. We had a great time visiting with them.

Our next part of stop wasn’t really a stop, we met up with another of Matt’s friends and we drove and hiked all over this place called Up somewhere in Michigan the only problem I could not figure where up was! I got to see some new places though. I liked the Great Lakes, they are big as oceans, woof! The waves are a lot nicer there, not as scary as the big ones at the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. We went to waterfalls too there is a lot of water in Michigan (and mosquitoes too!).

This is me at Pichured Rocks rocking it in a boat, woof! — This is me at Pictured Rocks rocking it in a boat, woof!

I am swimming in a Great Lake and woof, was it great!

Next we went to Ohio to see my friend Lisa, I had not seen her for a long time and was sad to learn my friends Pugly and Lucky had gone over the Rainbow Bridge I miss them. I was so glad to see Lisa and meet her new furry owners. All of us had fun at her place.

Woof, Matt has so many cousins I cannot keep up with them all and I wonder how he does. When we left my friend Lisa’s house we visited another of Matt’s cousins in West Virginia. I saw some big birds when we were there, Matt said they were turkeys. I have never seen such large birds like that before. The next couple of days we did a lot of driving, Matt went to the place where he was born where he went to a bunch of places and took pictures.

I am glad we came back to Marlene’s place in Welcome Valley. It’s always nice there even though Hobo, her cat does not like me much. We stayed there for a week sleeping and resting and relaxing, woof it was nice not driving, well riding in the truck for a change. After Welcome Valley we left for the Smokey Mountains in the rain. I was looking for Smokey the Bear the two days we spent there but I did not see him

Our campsite at the Great Smoky Mountains.

Then we stopped at Matt’s friend in Asheville. I get to meet Ziva while we were there. She is the boss of Rodney and Valerie, her humans and Matt’s friends. After we left Ziva’s house we were back on the Blue Ridge Parkway and camped at a place called Crabtree Falls. I wanted to ask Matt why the trees are crabby but I was afraid he would laugh at me. We hiked down to the falls while we were there and enjoyed our last hike of our long trip.

Spending the night at my friend Lucy’s place where her human works at Betsey’s at Wilson Creek in Mortimer was next. We stayed for two lazy days so we would not be too tired by the time we got home.

After we got home I still needed to rest and Matt had to do a lot of catching up, after all we had been gone for five months. Now we are both editing our photographs and videos plus writing about our trip so expect to see more soon, woof!

We are off to Tennessee this weekend to see the eclipse (it’s my birthday present from Matt!)

Woof, woof,

Heading East

June 14, 2017 Jackson Leave a comment

Woof, hello everyone we have been busy the last couple of weeks and what adventures we have had. We are now well east in Minnesota visiting friends in Saint Paul.

We headed east after we drove to the end of the US until we could not drive any further and then we walked until we could not walk any further. When we reached the very point of Cape Flattering, oops, I mean Flattery, I got so close to the edge it made Matt nervous. He said the cliffs there were undercut so you could fall from the edge breaking off. We were pretty high above the ocean. I stood there and thought about how far we have come. Living in the truck can be cold and cramped but it has been fun so far. We started driving east after our walk and have seen a lot more but it will still be a while before we get home.

This is Cape Flattery and as far as we could go west!

Before our walk out to the very edge of the US we were in a rainforest. It was a green, green forest. Green enough where I can see the difference. It was wet all over and mossy. It smelled wonderful. I liked when Matt drove up into the clouds and then up above them to see snow and tall mountains. On a hike by a big river we saw big deer. Matt said they were Elk and not really deer. One of them barked at us and Matt said we needed to leave right then. It was real loud, and I think they followed us a little way.

I also wanted to mention after walking to the edge of the continent we went back to my friend Sophie’s house. I got excited when I recognized the smell of her place until I remembered Matt said no one would be there. I really wanted to see Sophie again and also Liz and everyone else but Sophie is my special friend. We left the next day and Matt drove the truck onto a big boat called a ferry, I like riding on those. I have ridden on one before, but this one was bigger and I got to walk around on this one instead of staying in the truck.

So far on our trip east we have enjoyed visiting several parks. We have seen more tall mountains and snow. In North Cascades National Park where we spent two days hiking and enjoying the sights and smells. Glacier National Park was fun too. It was another park that was not all open. We camped on both sides but had a long drive to get from one side to the other. We really started going further each day after making quick stops by other places. One place was called Littlebighorn – woof! I just cannot figure out that name, next we saw Mount Rushmore that place had four big heads of men carved out of the tops of the mountains. Matt told me they were big in more than one way after I told him what I observed. Our next stop was called Badlands, I was wondering why they were called bad, did they do something wrong? I did not want to listen to a long explanation this time so I did not ask Matt about it, woof!

This is St Mary Lake in Glacier National Park I had to get a permit to hike in this park.

Well after St Paul we will be going to a state called Wiscoccon tomorrow and visit my good friend Nate and his humans and after that to a place called the Upper Peninsula.

Bye for now!

2017 Calendar News!

September 14, 2016 Jackson Leave a comment

Woof, woof!

Our new calendars have gone to press! Once again PrintingCenterUSA will be producing our high quality full-color calendars. Check their site out at:

http://www.printingcenterusa.com/printing/calendar-printing

Here are the front and back covers of our calendars and this is the first year for mine so I will have mine first and my human’s second, woof!

Photo Dog Jackson's front cover. — Photo Dog Jackson’s front cover.

Photo Dog Jackson's back cover. — Photo Dog Jackson’s back cover.

Matt's front cover. — Matt’s front cover.

Woof, I will show the insides soon!

The Last of our Scooty Trip

September 2, 2016 Jackson 5 Comments

Woof, woof, what fun we had on our last two days of our trip! We drove for a long time. It was so hot my human said we were going to head for the mountains in a state I have been in some, Virginia. We drove from a place call Binghamton, I wonder if they have ham there and what kind ham is Bing? Woof, maybe Bing is the name of the man that has the ham and there is a ton of it? Woof, I think I may be onto something. Well we drove all the way from Bings place to a place in Virginia called Shiny Doe National Park. I like going to national parks even though at most of those I am only allowed in certain places.

Ruff, one bad thing along the way was we got stuck on the big road that has so many cars and big trucks zooming by, but they were not zooming at all for a long, long time that afternoon. All we could see were stopped cars ahead and behind us. On the other side there was not any cars, the road was empty. Woof, I have not ever seen anything like it. Cars with flashing lights and sirens passed by us on the part of the road you are not supposed to drive on. Finally we started moving again, but we got to our campsite later than we wanted. Instead of afternoon, we got there in the evening but before the sun went down.

Woof, I can almost see why the park is called Shiny Doe because we saw plenty of does all around our campground and all over the place. There were big deer and baby deer eating all that good tasting green grass there. I just wonder when they are shiny? They did not look very shiny to me! We were camped at a place called Big Meadows and they were big. Not as big at that Gray Sun Park in Virginia, but it was big, woof! We got there in time to take some sunset photos, well Matt did. I am having some problems with my harness my human is going to have to work on so I only took videos on this trip. Though Matt does have some tricks where he pulls out a frame of the video to make a photograph, ruff!

On our last day we went to a place called Dismal Falls. Woof, I do not know why it was dismal, it was fun and I got to swim and swim and swim! I was fun and I think it should be called Fun Falls because there is a big swimming pool right below it!

Well we are back home now so my human needs to work on my videos, look for them soon, woof! He says we have some plans for our next trip, but I am not telling yet. I really enjoyed this trip and look forward to sharing photos and videos of it, woof, woof!

Matt here again to explain a couple of the place names:
– Shiny Doe Park is Shenandoah National Park
– Grey Sun Park is Grayson Highlands State Park
and of course the Scooty is a reference to Nova Scotia

Where are the Hamsters?

August 28, 2016 Jackson Leave a comment

Woof! We made it back to the USA after our trip to that big country above us. We had fun in that Scooty place, we drove all over and I got to hike and swim at many different places. We saw places I could not swim, where the water was not clear at all. The water was red just like the earth is at home, that was strange. My human said that was because this thing called tide came in and out so fast it stirred things up. We saw one place where the rivers ran backwards sometimes, woof that was really strange. Now we are in places that look more like our mountains. The water is clear, but right now there is not much water in the streams. Matt said it is because there has not been much rain.

We drove a lot when we left Canada (that is what my human called the place where Scooty is.) We drove through that Maine place because it was so busy and hot. Then we came to a state called New Hamster. It was much busier with humans, cars, and dogs than the Nova Scooty place was. When we got to the New Hamster Matt was getting a little discouraged but he said we were going to make the best of it so we stopped and he took pictures even when it was crowded. Then we started looking for a campground to spend the night and it looked like we were going to be out of luck, ruff. Then at one of the campgrounds we stopped and a nice human told Matt there was a place with plenty of places to camp. We drove through some busy towns along the way, but the all of a sudden it was like everyone left. Well not everyone, but it was more like normal when we go camping, woof! We found a nice place with big tall trees surrounded by big tall mountains. There were trails and clear streams and just a few humans and dogs, just enough to make it nice. One thing that I am puzzled about is where are all the hamsters? Is not this place called New Hamster? Are they new? I saw plenty of chipmunks, maybe they are mistaken and calling them hamsters, woof!

Then we set up our campsite and ate dinner. Then my human started a fire and put my pad next to it along with his chair. It was so nice and comfy. I just love camping; I listen to the voices of the other humans and dogs, woof, woof. Those sounds are almost mystical (I bet you did not think I knew that word or what it means.) Everything sounds muted and pleasant. Then the owls started hooting like they did at the house we used to live in. I like hearing them. One was hooting on one side of the campground, then another answering on the other side of the campground.

This was close to our campground. I did not swim here, but I did get to swim in a stream, woof!

Well we are off again and not sure where the road will lead us. We will find out when we get there, woof!

Matt here again to interpret some of Jackson’s place names:

Of course the Scooty place is Nova Scotia and New Hamster is New Hampshire!

Carpe Cape – Seize the Cape!

August 26, 2016 Jackson Leave a comment

Woof, woof, what a day we had at the cape park. I was so busy having fun I forgot to look for that cape thing. We got up early in the morning just as it got light and drove to the park from our campsite. The first thing we did was drive by a stand where a nice female human took some money from my human. She gave him a map and told him places I was not supposed to go. Luckily there were not many places I could not go, woof! We only drove a little further and took our first hike. We went up a big hill where we could see far, far away. I saw some rabbits on the trail and ran over to them to say hello, but they ran away, Matt would not let me go in the woods after them. I guess he was afraid I would get lost looking for them. I do not know why they all ran from me. All I wanted to do was say hello and ask them a few questions. The next place we went was at a real rocky beach where the waves come crashing in. Waves are strange; they come at you and then go back. It is almost like the water is alive and coming after you. I still have not quite figured them out. I do not get to see them very often, woof! The beach was one of the places I was not supposed to go so I sat in the truck and watched my human take photographs.

This is me at a beach where I am allowed not in the National Park. Even the little waves here were after me! — This is me at a beach where I am allowed, this is not in the National Park. Even the little waves here were after me!

Then we took a hike to a waterfall. I decided to walk mostly in the stream and it was fun, the water was so clear and it even smelled good. When we got to the waterfall I got to swim in the pool right at the waterfall. It was deep, nice and cool. Matt said he walked eight miles, I bet I walked twice that, ruff! Humans are good walkers, but they are slow and a dog has got to do what he has to do, run! We had a great time hiking together and I loved being in the park greeting nature and other humans and dogs along the trail. I did record some videos, but Matt said we would wait until we get home to edit and post those.

Well we are headed back on the long trip home, but Matt says we will have fun and visit places on the way back so we will see you from the road, woof!

PS – Matt here this was the day we spent in Cape Breton Highlands National Park – it is a beautiful place and dogs are restricted only in two places; the beaches and the Skyline Trail. I did a small portion of the Skyline early in the morning while Jackson was in the car parked in a shady spot. The rest of the time we were hiking together.

The Cape!

August 24, 2016 Jackson 3 Comments

Woof, woof! What a great time we have had so far. We have been in Canada four days now and have been to so many places. After camping near the place where the water runs backwards and has big whirlpools we finally made it to the Scooty place. My human calls it Nova Scotia, I think that sounds funny and guess what? We have been traveling by Funny Bay and it is funny! The water gets real high and real low. My human would not let me swim there because he said a thing called tide (is that not a detergent?) comes in and out so fast I would be taken away by it. I would not like to lose my human so I decided he was right so I just looked at the water. It was not clear most of the time. It was so red that even I could see the color! Woof! We were at Funny Bay for two days camping by the water, it was very pretty there. We went by a lighthouse at a place called burnt coat. I kept looking for that coat to see if it was burnt, ruff, but I did not see one!

Then it started raining so we went to a big city, but it was so busy and crowded we left there and found a neat place close to a famous lighthouse named Peggy Cove. She must have been special to have a cove and a lighthouse named after her., ruff. Woof, woof, I did get an ice cream cone when we were driving there that day and it was good, they even put a doggy treat on top!

It cleared off that night and we got up early the next morning so my human and I could take pictures. He said there would be a lot of people there and the best time would be very early in the morning. Besides, having been an art director for my human I know morning light makes good photographs. We spent a lot of time photographing the lighthouse, the village where the humans live there, and along the rocky coast. It was very pretty. After taking the photos we packed up and went to a place called Picktoo or something like that. I really liked the campsite we got in the park near the Picky place it is called Cariboo something, boo who? After we set up camp we went into town to see the boats and village. I liked it; there were friendly people and not at all busy like that big Halley city. Now we are at some place that has a cape, I have been busy looking for and when I find it, I will let you know.

Woof, that is all for now, I think Matt has something to say so here he is!

Matt here I think need to decode a few names here for everyone. Jackson has a hard enough time with our local place names, but when we headed north he just doesn’t quite understand them. Here are a few interpretations:

Funny Bay – Bay of Fundy

Picktoo – Pictou

Halley City – Halifax

Burnt coat – Burntcoat Head lighthouse

Cariboo – Caribou Provincial Park

The Adventures of Jackson and His Human