Happy dog, simple life

basset hound sniffing
Amos doing what he does best.

This was Amos, my trusty and loyal companion for about eight years. I regretfully had to put him down about six months ago because of a back and spinal problem that kept him from walking and had no easy fix. It’s a common problems for dogs with long torsos and short legs, like the basset.

I recently rediscovered an eight-year old Facebook post about him. “Amos has discovered that he can push certain buttons and get my immediate attention, regardless of what I’m doing at the time. The first is to pull on the corner of the bedspread, which pulls anything on the bed onto the floor. The second button is to chew on the legs of my desk as I type. Finally, he can chew on my shoes or my ankle. That ALWAYS works. He is training me well.”

I like to think of him in his prime, when he was young, or at least younger than before. I know Amos was a happy dog, and I think it was because he had an intuitive understanding of what it means to be happy. In his case, it did not take much: sufficient food, a soft bed, someone to scratch his ears and a daily walk to satisfy his need to get out and stretch his legs. He was happy because he had simple needs, a lesson I often forget.

I probably have over a hundred images of him in my files, but this is one of my favorites. It shows him doing what he does best: walking along sniffing whatever another dog left behind for him.

The photo makes me wonder what makes an image hold your attention for more than a split second. In my case, this image reminds me of a long series of great memories that he has left me with. But for others, the image might not be so captivating, as they don’t have the collective experiences that we shared.

Still, I tried to shoot with a few general guidelines that help make any image interesting. First, keep the composition simple, in part by eliminating as much extraneous information as possible. I knew in advance what I wanted and had spent enough time with him to know what he wanted. That leads me to my second point, work with your subject to gain trust. And finally, as any street photographer might tell you, get as close as possible. I pushed a small point and shoot camera into his face as he was sniffing along and came away with this image, one of my favorites.