I wanted to talk about what goes on behind the pictures that I take. There is one thing in particular that I want to talk about which is my dog. My dog, Luna, a black Labrador retriever, helps me a lot with my wildlife photography. I have taken pictures for basically my whole life but didn’t start focusing on wildlife until after I got her. Without Luna, many of the pictures that I have captured of wildlife would not have been taken.
Shortly after I finished high school in 2016, the dog that I had, a yellow Labrador named Champ, had died of cancer. We had planned on getting another yellow Labrador as we had always had yellow Labradors.
We were planning on waiting until the following summer to get another pup. It wasn’t long after we had contacted someone who told us that they were going to have some pups the following summer that we were contacted again saying that she had two black Labrador retriever sisters. Some people were supposed to come meet the dogs. She wanted to know if we were interested in seeing the dogs if one or both did not get a home. Only one of the two people came and one of the two dogs got a home. We went that night and met Luna.
When we pulled up on the driveway, the house was to the left. The area by the front door was fenced off. In that area, I got my first glimpse of Luna. It was at that time that I knew that I wanted her. When we got out of the car to meet her, she was very tired as she had a large yard to run around in. She fell asleep in our laps as we talked to the person who had her. After some time of talking, we took Luna home. She was three months old at the time.
As both of my parents were working, I was the only one at the house with her Monday through Friday every week. Luna was a very destructive pup. She chewed through the window and door frames more than once. She also somehow managed to chew through the wood floor. We tried to hide some of the damage she caused to the house from my dad as we were concerned that he wouldn’t allow Luna to stay if he saw it.
As she grew, we took a lot of walks together through the neighborhood, on the Appalachian Trial, among other places. These walks helped me find the places that I do photography. One example is the red-bellied woodpecker pictures that I took. The pictures were taken on a path that we walk just about every day through the neighborhood. As Luna and I walked over the course of a few weeks, I had seen and heard the woodpecker multiple times. I eventually decided where to set the camera up.
One thing that often happens is that people confuse Luna with being a pitbull. Whatever makes people think that she is a pitbull instead of a Labrador, I don’t see it. It always seemed a bit odd that many people do that because from what I have read, Labradors have been one of the most popular dogs in America for a long time and I don’t think Labradors look much like pitbulls.
Luna was born in December and is now six years old. She has a little bit of white coming in on her chin. We have done a lot together from walks around the neighborhood to walking parts of the Appalachian Trail to seeing the Natural Bridge. I hope that we can continue doing a lot together for many more years.
