You’re not the boss of me, Ghost. I’ll play with my friends if I want to.

Had a bunch of things going on today, in fact I’m still not done. Shit-shoveling, haul off a bunch of moldy old alfalfa from another neighbor, then to town with D&L. When I got back, Ghost and I hiked over to Ian’s Cave. Ian wanted to shoot a bunch of slo-mo footage, which requires two people, and he had five guns laid out.

To Ghost, gunfire is Kryptonite. As soon as he saw the guns, he put on his betrayed face. But this was also his special time with Uncle Joel, because usually that needy bastard Little Bear is along, so he couldn’t just go home on his own. No, he wanted me to come away, too.
He kept aiming himself at the trail, looking back at me and whining. “Let’s go, Uncle Joel! This isn’t any fun.”

As it became clear that loud concussive noises were going to ensue despite his repeated attempts to bring me to my senses, he went and huddled in the Cave until it was over.

Firing a gun for the slo-mo camera is a persnickety process. The camera has no zoom and it’s a tight shot focusing on the gun’s action, so you have to find just the right spot and then hold there very very still until the camera and software are ready to go. The computer runs in a continuous loop until it’s triggered, then records everything for half a second or so before and after the trigger event. So to get it right the camera operator (Ian) gives the shooter (me) a countdown from three and I’m supposed to pull the trigger on “fire.” Then wait till the save is complete, then review to see if we got it all right, then either re-do when we didn’t or move on to the next shot when we did. So it’s time consuming, is what I’m saying.

Then we cleaned up and put things away, and (to Ghost’s infinite disgust) sat down to review the clips at our leisure. Ghost put up with a few minutes of this, and then started pushing my leg with his head. Every time I so much as glanced at the exit, he encouragingly got up and trotted toward it. He behaved, in short, for all the world like an exasperated girlfriend on a bad date.

Usually when I’m going shooting I do something obvious, like take a rifle off the wall or head toward the range. Then he knows he’s better off just staying at the cabin. This time I just started walking and invited him along, so I suppose the fail is on me. But I’m a bachelor for a reason: I don’t have to take it from a wife and I’ll be damned if I’ll put up with it from a dog.