Shio @ 8 months

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Shio is finally 8 months old! It's amazing how much he has changed in this past month. Quick recap of this month:

He has finished teething on everything in our apartment (yay!) and is able to be left home alone without being crated for 6 hours at a time.

He's clingy! This was a big surprise to us. Shio will run up to me to check in at the dog run now and sit by our bedroom door waiting for us in the morning. He's also okay with being held for more than 10 seconds.

There have been minimal potty accidents indoors but he is not fully trained yet.

The fur on his face has lightened while the red fur on his body has darkened. The fur on his back has become coarser and his tail started to fill out and look fluffier.

He continues to love playing with us and other dogs. Still has terrible recall but we will work with our trainer on that.

And he still does not sleep in his doggy bed.

shiotheshiba wallpapers

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I spent Sunday afternoon creating a mini-studio to shoot Shio against seamless white paper. This was the second time we have attempted such an endeavor -- the first time we used white fabric, and the results were sub-optimal and never shown to anybody. (Truth be told, it could have been more my lighting techniques vs. what the seamless material was...)

Shio was actually very reluctant to participate; last night he was messing with the roll of seamless paper and it fell on him. He was very scared of the paper and the sound that it made as I unrolled it and stuck it against my DVD rack with gaffer tape.

With the help of my lovely fiance, we bribed Shio into participating.

First, some behind the scenes stuff...

Here is Shio waiting for the shoot. Unlike some celebrities, he was pretty chill when not in the spotlight:

Shio Chilling

Shio would sometimes call for hair and makeup to help him freshen up:

Freshen Up

After some quick touch-ups in Photoshop, we created 3 wallpapers:

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All taken with Nikon D700, 50mm f/1.4G. 2-light setup: 1 SB-900 triggered by RadioPopper into Calumet 60" umbrella, 1 SB-600 triggered by CLS directly onto Calumet seamless white paper.