My dog Gus.

For the second week of SPC's "black and white" theme I thought it would be fun to try and get a pic of me and my dog. He is perfection in black and white. I was first attracted to him on petfinder.com because of his distinct straight line down the middle of his head separating spot and solid. I had no idea how big he was, nor did I care. He was in a shelter and reminded me of my dearly departed Spot. We got Spot on a whim of fate, too. I had never set out to have anything remotely like a dalmatian in my life, but Spot made us "believers". Unfortunately, Gus made us non believer's! Yep, the likelyhood we will ever own another large Dalmatian type is pretty slim. Gus is an escape artist, terrorizes the cats, and generally likes to stay underfoot as much as possible. He simply doesn't know how to rest, it sometimes seems like. However, he is as loyal as they come, always returns home after escaping, and snuggles w/ the cats when the cats think no one is looking. He will stay w/ us until the day he dies, though he has probably not heard the last of R. threatening to send him away again if he escapes. Fortunately for Gus, we moved to the "country" and his escaping doesn't hold the same impact as it did before. I only wish we were even more so in the country so that he could truly run free whenever he so chose. Given his general frenetic and large nature, taking a picture of us both was problematical. This was the first attempt of two, and it came out the best by far. The element of surprise is about all I could offer Gus to get his "cooperation". He is soundly trying to lick me in this photo, though the actual act wasn't caught on film. He's sly that one...he wants you to believe he is a sweet innocent thing. Don't be fooled.

Check out more self portraits here!