Hiking In Pacifica With Dogs

There’s been a lack of landscape photography happening in my life lately. I’ve gone on a couple hikes and camping trips through the years, but lets talk about the real reason why I’ve been slacking:

In 2019, I adopted a dog. And now, all I do is take pictures of said dog.

For the last couple years, I’ve focused a lot of my time and energy into training this dog. Because he is a nervous rescue dog, he needed more training… and I needed more training on how to train him.

So, in November of 2020, we enrolled him into group obedience training classes. Long story short, it’s been great! He is doing much better, is more confident in crowded situations, and we’ve met quite a handful of other dog owners whom we now go out on hikes with and take photos.

Let’s take this past weekend for example: we went on a 5mi hike in Pacifica after our class.

Everyone, meet Kano!

On paper, he is listed as a Formosan Mountain Dog mix. We adopted him at the Bay Area Pet Fair (the year before covid). He was flown over to the States from Taiwan about a week before the adoption event, along with other Taiwan rescues. (If anyone is interested in more information on his adoption story and our experience with adopting a dog from Taiwan, feel free to leave a comment)

The other dog to Kano’s left here is Bambi, his classmate! We’ve been classmates for almost a year now and it’s been fun watching everyone’s progress (and occasionally, chaos). On this day, Bambi and Kano had a grand time in class singing and talking to each other while the training was making an announcement to the pet parents.

Photographing dogs is definitely a new skill I’ve obtained over the past year. Can’t really shout out poses for dogs as you do to humans, and they definitely like to move around a lot. Also, a lot of squatting. Haha.

The sun was harsh during the beginning of the hike and we approached golden hour towards the end of the hike. The doggos were definitely ready for the day to be over — it was getting harder and harder to pose them and keep them still for the photos, ha! Still a fun time.

Til next time.

I’ve got a Yosemite and Hawaii post in the works. Stay tuned.