Black and White Sunday: At The Fair

The rodeo crowd

The cotton candy

The kettle corn 

The lemonade

Neoprene Vest and Camera Harness

I've been trying to come up with a good way to mount my GoPro onto my dogs for ages. I've found an okay way to attach the GoPro to Koira's collar so it dangles under her neck, simply by using a hair tie to attach it. It dangles too low for Pallo to be comfortable wearing it like that. Not ideal, but it works well enough for Koira to take still photos. What it doesn't work for is video. The dangling-from-a-hair-tie method is way too unstable to make anything close to a watchable video.

Just looking cute

I recently decided to make Koira a neoprene vest. She gets chilled when swimming, even on hot days, simply because she refuses to come out of the water. Eventually, she gets so cold that her entire body is violently shaking. I figured a doggie wet suit would be just the thing.

Then I thought, hey, a neoprene vest would make a pretty stable mount for the GoPro too...

Nice, snug fitting vest that doesn't hinder movement but provides stabilization to the camera

There isn't a way to attach the GoPro to the front of this vest, but it works great when mounted on the back. I think it is about as stable as a dog mounted camera can be, really. The vest fits very snugly, without hindering movement. Since the vest is so snug, the GoPro has very little camera shake. Most of the shake comes directly from the dog's movement.

Koira is happy to sit, swim, or do pretty much anything while wearing it

I think I need to reinforce the current velcro closures with some small snaps, since the velcro can come loose if Koira moves suddenly, like jumping off the dock into the water. Overall, it worked really well on our trip to the river, though. The velcro even held well enough as long as I made sure to really rub it together well, and Koira never actually lost the vest even when some of the velcro came loose.

The front velcro closure. I think I will add a snap to it.

So, what do you think? Does your dog need their own wet suit? Or how about just the awesome camera holding ability of it? This first vest taught me a lot about how best to make these, but even so, I am totally thrilled with how this first one turned out. The only down side so far is that it is, of course, too hot for Koira to wear this during the summer other than when playing in the water. So I'll have to wait on getting some first hand flyball footage until the weather cools down.

In the mean time, how about a dog's-eye-view of some dock diving at the river?

Lure Coursing Fun

Over the weekend I managed to head down to a lure coursing practice with the dogs. I got off work a half hour after the practice had started, but we still managed to get there in time to do two runs each with the dogs.

Lure coursing is her favorite!

This was our first time running with the reversing lure machine. Normally, we run with a drag lure. In drag lure, the string is only attached to the machine on one end, while the other end has the bags on it. After each dog runs, someone has to go grab the end with the bags and walk it back to the starting point.

I just love the intense expression and the grass flying

Continuous loop lure is the kind most of the CATs are run on. This type of lure means that the entire lure string makes a giant loop that runs through the system of pulleys. No one has to grab the lure and move it back into position with this kind. To reverse it, though, the line has to be taken off of the machine and flipped around so it is pulled the other direction.

Kill that lure!

The reversing machine is a continuous loop set up that has the ability to run both directions without having to adjust anything with the string. We were running straight aways with the reversing machine today, which was really fun. It is a great way to get dogs who like to cut corners, or who kind of fall off the lure and head back to their owners, to stick with the lure better, because the operator can reverse it and make it go in the opposite direction all of a sudden.

This is Koira's butt as she is headed away from me shortly after I released her. All the other photos are from after the lure was reversed and she was headed back toward me again. The reversing lure is pretty awesome for taking photos!

Of course, for most of the dogs, it just meant that when they over ran the lure at the end of the straight stretch and turned back to go grab it, the lure operator made the lure reverse and run back down the straight stretch to where the handler had released the dog. It is a great way to build interest and drive for the lure. My dogs don't really need those built up anymore than it already is, but they sure had fun chasing it anyway!

Don't worry, Pallo was there too, and had a blast!