For those of you who know me, know that I have a love for both dogs and photographing them. This started when I produced a 2006 calendar for charity (my first major photographic project) and continued with my still ongoing Hundred Hounds project. In the future, I’ll be writing about how to get the most out of photographing dogs and some useful tips, etc.

In the meantime however, thought I’d kick things off with a mini post of the appropriately named "Stuff on Rio". You see, we have two dogs. Both are Rotty’s, one male, one female. The boy, Rio, we got in Singapore 2 years ago as a puppy. The smartest and naughtiest dog I’ve yet to meet. Pure chaos and joy mixed in equal parts. Our other Rotty, Ume, is an SPCA dog – we adopted her a year ago. She is trained as a therapy dog and can go to old people’s / children’s homes, etc. An absolute angel.

Anyway, Rio loves to keep things. That’s the simplest way to put it. Anything he can keep by holding in his mouth, wearing on his head, etc – this is one of the ideas of fun (bear in mind he has pretty unusual ideas of fun as an eaten pair of spectacles would attest to but that’s another story). So, this is Stuff on Rio.

Rio wearing one of his favourite toys

Wearing a luggage tag after I came back from a business trip. Reminds me of a judge in an English court of law

More luggage tags.

Wearing his favourite toy – "Goma Chan" which is Japanese for baby seal

Not wearing anything here but I thought it similar enough to warrant inclusion

More "Stuff on Rio" another time…