Teaching a Dog to Weave
Back in 2009 I was working on finishing up writing the first edition of my book on Doubleweave. At that time the only internet access I had was by dial up, which meant that my files were much too large to send by email. So as I finished each chapter I saved the file onto a disc, put it in a padded envelope, and mailed it up to my editor in Colorado. I had a neighbor who was a retired photography professor, and he would willingly come over at my beck and call to take process photos whenever I needed them.
As we were getting closer to the finish line at Interweave Press, they asked me to supply a headshot for the book. The most recent professional headshot I had was from the mid-1980’s when I had the poodle perm hairstyle of the era. So I asked my neighbor, Doug, if he would come over and take a new one for me. Doug was a great guy, but his motto in life seemed to be that if you could make a process more complicated than it needed to be, you should definitely do so, and just to be sure, make it a little more complicated still.
After twenty minutes or so of standing in place while waiting for Doug to futz around with the lighting, the lens, the angle of the camera, and so on ad infinitum, my smile had wilted and turned into more of a grimace. The resulting photos definitely didn’t make me look like someone you would want to learn weaving from.
My friend Wendy had also been a professional photographer, so I asked her if she might be willing to come over and try for something better. She came over with all of her equipment and with her German Shepherd, Buster, who was a favorite dog friend of mine. As Wendy got everything set up to take my picture Buster kept me amused, and in the resulting photos I had a genuine smile on my face.
A month or so later Interweave asked if I would come up to Colorado so they could shoot some videos for doubleweave courses. It was a lot of fun, with Linda Ligon as my editor there, Anita Osterhaug as my video producer, and a couple young videographers behind the cameras. But this was all new to me, and I found it difficult to face the blank black box camera that I was supposed to look at when I was addressing the ‘audience’, particularly because there was an attractive young guy behind another camera that I could see.
He kept telling me not to look at his camera, rather to look at the other one instead, but my eyes kept wanting to focus on an actual face. Finally he asked if it would be easier for me if he put up a photo of a person on the camera that I was supposed to be looking at. I thought about how Buster had made me feel so comfortable for my headshot and asked if he could find a picture of a dog. He came up with a picture of a yellow lab wearing sunglasses, which was perfect, because my last dog, my beloved Maggie Barker, was a blind yellow lab. For the rest of the shoot I enjoyed looking at the camera with the photo of the lab, imagining that I was teaching a very hip-looking dog to weave.
Forward to 2018. Interweave wanted me to write an updated edition of my doubleweave book, and also to come back up to Colorado to shoot updated versions of my videos as online courses. Not only did I now have wifi and Dropbox to pass files back and forth for my book, but the whole filming process had upscaled considerably. I had a hair and makeup artist! The filming equipment was much more sophisticated, and my producer, Allison Korleski, sat behind a whole bank of computer screens so she could monitor in real time what was coming in from each of the cameras.
The crew was just as fun and relaxing to be around as the first time, but I still felt that a picture of a dog on the camera would help me to stay focused. One of the videographers drew a quick cartoon of a dog and taped it to the camera that I was supposed to address, but that didn’t quite cut it for me.
I have a favorite dog friend in my neighborhood named Rosie. Rosie is a big goofy sheepdog who you can’t help but love. I often see Rosie and her ‘dad’ on their morning walks if I happen to be driving at that time, and Rosie always turns and looks as I roll down my window and wave at her. Rosie’s ‘mom’ is a weaver and friend of mine, so I sometimes get to go over and visit with both of them. Rosie has weekly visits to doggy day care, where she is a favorite because of her friendly disposition. Here she is, the center of attention, among a group of her dog friends at Paws Plaza -
I was able to pull up this picture of Rosie, print it out, and have it taped to the camera in place of the hand-drawn dog caricature.
Now, for the past year, I have been working on filming videos at home of loom demonstrations so that I can teach my workshops on zoom. I no longer have a hair and makeup artist, though I do have a nice live-in videographer. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve got Ella Bella to keep me smiling, and to watch over me to make sure that I’m not making any mistakes.
