Getting Back to Chihuahuas…
Susan Payne breeds, handles and judges Chihuahuas. Her book, The Chihuahua, was just published by Kennel Club Classics. I finished reading her book from cover to cover. The section on the history of the breed is very interesting and my favorite part. In Mexico dogs were believed to accompany souls to heaven. The Chihuahua has tremendous “star quality.” Every Chihuahua has a story. Susan Payne emphasizes the importance of finding a breeder that breeds to the standard which is crucial for the health of the dog.
In 2006, my husband and I had visited the Springfield, MA, Dog Show the previous winter. We were interested in finding a Bassett Hound . We are very partial to these hounds. We spotted a little girl named Edith who ate rocks and another fine guy named Grissom. We were just not ready at that time. The following year we rescued Seamus, who is the most perfect and handsomest dog in the entire world. Seamus has taken over our plush rocker/recliner- a birthday present for my husband. Seamus has a sister, Holly 
who is 
also a “rescue hound.” These guys are spoiled. They get scrambled eggs for breakfast on Sunday and have a beautiful dog bed from ORVIS that is big enough and comfortable enough for me to spend the night with them although I typically do not do so. However, I brush their teeth almost every day. Get the picture!!! Seamus even has his own blog and frankly, the ladies swoon over him. As you can see, the rescue league ad for Holly, claiming that she was “the best of breed” may have been an exaggeration but the part about “her sweetness” was right on.
Well it is definitely time to switch gears and get back to Chihuahuas!
A colleague of my husband, Steve, was at the 2006 Springfield show with her tiny Chihuahua. I took a few pictures of Sue Pease and her pet and sent her a few prints. Several months later, Sue Pease’s friend, Chihuahua breeder, Susan Payne, asked my permission to use a few of my photos in a book she was writing for Kennel Club Classics. That’s how I met Susan Payne in the Spring of 2007 when I took some photos for the book she was authoring about Chihuahuas.
Of course, I was thrilled at this opportunity and took more photos for Susan Payne over the next few days. During the process I learned more about this charming breed. Susan’s interesting and informative book, The Chihuahua, is now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The cover of the book is shown at the left. Sue Pease also happens to be a contributor to this fine book. Photographing pets for personal pleasure is very different than photographing dogs to document the characteristics of a particular breed. Breed standards are very important. The Chihuahua has a section on animal care which provides so much valuable information. I just learned that there is a small space where plates join in their skulls and I imagine this spot is vulnerable.
I prefer to take pictures. Writing a blog post is quite a task for me but practice makes perfect. I admire people who are prolific/adept writers and realize that the process is not as easy as the final product might make it seem.
I’ve included my favorite photo from this project in my post. I also really love the photo of Broadway dog trainer, Bill Berloni, who looks like he has his hands quite full. Of course, you will have to read this book to find out why. Perhaps you will discover why this tiny little creature is so popular and adored by millions of people around the world. All the Chihuahuas that I have met are smart, confident and well-behaved and to be perfectly honest I don’t think I can say that about all the bassett hounds I’ve met.
Gardenias | my favorite fragrant flowers
Flowers make me happy. I love photographing flowers…white flowers are more challenging. Photoshop CS4 has introduced the adjustments panel which makes granular edits a snap.
Many white flowers are particularly fragrant. Freesia, lily of the valley, tuber roses, honeysuckle, lilac, roses, casablanca lilies, peonies, hyacinths, jasmine and magnolia all have a heavenly aroma.
White flower facts:
The White Flower Farm in Litchfield, CT was originally founded by a NY Times reporter. At first, he bred only white flowers. The strains were hard to maintain, though, and colors crept in.
The JFK library is Boston, MA has a beautiful planting of rambling roses and pines reminiscent of the Cape Code seashore. Over the years, pink roses have appeared because the white strain orignally planted is impossible to maintain intact in nature.
Shakespeare’s works are planted with multiple references to flowers.
Antheriums, orchids, amaryllis, and cala lilies are beautiful and a pleasure to photograph but not so fragrant.
Site Maps | xml site maps – what’s the difference?
Site maps are used for more than planning and efficient repurposing/redesigning. I recently received my monthly newsletter from internet marketing guru, Bruce Clay. I already knew that when the Google bot first comes to your server, it eagerly searches for the site map and uses the file as a guide to spider all the pages in your site. Bruce uses Google’s site map as a good usability example. Google is perfection in my book. Bruce provides a link to Google’s webmaster guidelines.
Putting information architecture & usability issues aside for the moment, the site map serves as a list of everything the spider needs to digest and index. Appropriate naming conventions are critical for this reason. Then, if your page titles, meta keywords, headers, and content support and inform the page naming, you are on your way to achieving a page one organic position and this is crucial for the internet marketer.
Bruce’s article gets a bit tricky and granular at this point. He competently draws the distinction between site maps and xml sitemaps. Bruce explains that Sitemaps are lists of links in XML, files read by Spiders and traditional html Site Maps could easily be used by humans to navigate a site.
I have found that many people are a bit confused about the difference between site maps and xml sitemaps. Recently, an internet marketing sales manager asked me to discuss/present the differences to his team who probably thought that anyone who found all this interesting and exciting was a bit __________. (fill in the blank)
The really cool/interesting thing is that the site maps and sitemaps (below) are literally opposite sides of the same valuable coin.
- XML sitemap code snippet
Bottom line: make life easy for the Google Bot and also make life easy for your web development team/
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