The Two of Them
Friday, August 6th, 2010I’ve decided to take a little break from Friday Five this week and instead write about the two of my favorite mutts in the world – Buddy and Olivia Jane. I’m always amazed and amused at how totally different they are. Buddy is ninety pounds of black fur and seriousness. Olivia is nineteen pounds of solid muscle and insanity. Buddy doesn’t play with toys. He won’t fetch sticks or tennis balls and could care less about squeaky toys. But give him a bone and he is one happy dog. Olivia, on the other hand, plays constantly. She must have a toy in her mouth at all times. When she’s outside chewing on or fetching a stick she’s in her happy place. You have to make her stop playing by telling her to go get in her bed, and that doesn’t last for long. And when Olivia is not dropping tennis balls and squeaky toys in your lap, she’s irritating the life out of Buddy. She flies into him at top speed, growls right in his face, puts her face in his mouth, bites his legs, and sticks her toys in his mouth so he’ll play tug-o-war. And my sweet boy just bears it all in silence, until he gets fed up and tries to catch her. It’s quite dangerous for Buddy, though. We have tile floors and he slides all over the place trying to chase the little monster. Then he gives up and takes a nap on his couch. I really need to video the action and share it with you all, it’s quite comical.
And Olivia and Buddy are both totally different in their modeling approach. Take a day last week, for instance, when I was testing out my new red paper. Olivia comes prancing in, toy hanging from her mouth, and sits on the paper. She’ll sit their forever if you’ll just throw her the toy every now and then. She’ll perk her little ears up, stick her tongue out, tilt her head, look serious. Buddy, however, is a different story. He doesn’t like Olivia getting all of my attention, so he’ll try to get on the paper when it’s her turn, or lay down right on my lap. When I give him his turn, all he does is lay there, with the most stoic, “my-life-is-so-hard” expression on his face. He just wants to take the spotlight and be the center of attention.
There are a million other small things that these two do that show just how different they are – from the way they bark at people to they way they pass gas (Buddy is silent and Olivia is VIOLENT – she’ll knock you out, seriously). It just goes to show how wonderfully unique every dog is. Buddy might not be as energetic as Olivia, but he’s my main man and I love him to death. And Olivia may not know how to slow down, but I wouldn’t trade her and every ounce of her craziness for anything in the world. There were never two dogs that were so different from each other, but who loved each other so much. I can’t imagine what Buddy would be without Olivia, or Olivia without Buddy. Or what I would be without the both of them.
When I was photographing Buddy and Olivia on the new red paper the other day, I wanted to get a shot of them together. I was envisioning Buddy sitting down, with Olivia sitting between his front legs. Didn’t work at all. Buddy did not want to be that close to Olivia, and Olivia was a tad too excited. So they did it their own way and this is what I got. It’s totally “them” and I love it so much.
