Jake is 8

Today is our Jake’s Eighth Birthday. The photo above is of him this afternoon looking out the deck doors, as often does, toward the front deck and the front gate. This was the best of the photos I took since, as usual, he wouldn’t pose for photos.

That’s not an exaggeration: Jake really doesn’t like posing for photos. I usually have to catch him while he’s resting because it’s quite rare for him to sit still while I take photos. His adopted sisters—Sunny the dog and Bella the cat—will pose for me; I think Bella secretly enjoys it, and Sunny likes the attention. Not Jake. Maybe it’s because he knows I’ll probably put the photo on the Internet. Probably not that, I suppose.

Nevertheless, Jake is very different in behaviour from Sunny, even though they’re the same breed. To engage in even more anthropomorphising, there are times I’d absolutely swear that Jake is a person in a dog suit, and that at any minute he’ll engage me in conversation about the nature of freedom, or maybe Greco-Roman concepts of beauty. Well, more likely it would be about the best technique for butt sniffing, but still: I can often imagine him talking, because he so often looks as if he’s deep in thought.

Jake’s a gentle soul. He doesn’t get aggressive, and he seems to love nothing more than snuggling up to a daddy and leaning in to us (I read somewhere that when dogs lean against their humans, it’s their version of a hug. I have no idea whether that’s actually true, but I like to think it is). Jake does that a lot.

The photo below is of Jake enduring one more photo, about three hours or so after I took the first one. He was no more cooperative than he was earlier this afternoon.

Jake on the deck. Bella's in the background.

But then, as we were making dinner, Jake adopted what I call his “preacher’s pose”. I call it that in a reference to something I used to do as a kid. I don’t know if I’ve ever taken a photo of him in that position. I did have a couple with him looking at the camera, but his eyes were glowing, and I didn’t want that, so I chose another profile one instead.

Despite it all, I got some photos to mark Jake’s birthday.

Happy Birthday, Jake!

Related posts:
Jake is 7
Jake is 6
Jake turns 5
Jake is four
Jake turns three
Jake’s Birthday 2-day
Jake is one year old!
A new arrival