I'm not a big poster in this part of the website. I don't do serious pet photography as a rule and just try to catch my two Goldies, Calla and Maggie in their natural environment. I had occasion last week to get a nice sequence of my Goldie Calla doing what she does best, gettin down and dirty.
As most of you dog people know, it's all about smell with dogs. As with many other animals, dogs have instictively developed behavior that helps them to mask their scent, presumably from the days when they hunted their food and didn't want their prey to smell them and get away. This behavior has manifested itself in my Goldie Calla as a behavior in which she likes to roll around on anything that really stinks (luckily Maggie doesn't have this little habit). This can be a pretty disgusting habit if you think about it, and I tend to discourage it when I can. Well last week we were on a hike in the forest near my cabin near Donner Pass and she found a particulary smelly mud hole on the trail and proceeded to do her roll around. It went something like this...
Get maximum body contact
When I strongly tried to discourage her I got the "you talkin to me" look
Then she tried to shake it off
To no avail
But all she needed was some water to splash around in and she was good as new
And ready to find the next mud hole
. 
