Paddy

Having recently posted a cat picture, I thought I’d better post a dog picture too. Above is a photo of Paddy the Labrador taken at a rare quiet moment at the end of the lost year of 2011. I call it a ‘lost’ year as it was a blur of exhaustion, mainly on account of the highly-strung animal in question making his chaotic way through puppyhood. He would have been about fourteen months old when I took the picture.

I used a Nikon F80 loaded with Adox CMS 20 document film/microfilm, which I later developed myself in dilute Rodinal. Shooting with a wide aperture as I did here somewhat defeated the purpose of using a very fine-grained film, with much of the frame given over to lens blur – but I like how this shot turned out.

When my wife died in 2013 I had to decide whether I could cope on my own with a full-time job, a high-maintenance dog and two cats. With the aid of doggy daycare I thought I could do it, and I may have been able to make it work over the longer term had it not been for Paddy’s chronic gastro-intestinal problems. With ever more frequent and lengthy bouts of illness the dog became a second full-time job that I could not indefinitely sustain. Via my vet I handed him over, with the heaviest of hearts, to a local Labrador rescue charity in the Autumn of 2019.