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Hello pet lovers friends at #Hive!... Today I want to share with you a photographic series made with "Chicho" as the main character!.... I did this yesterday when I decided to go for a walk to the banks of a small river near the village, with the intention of taking macro pictures on insects and flowers, but "Chicho" had other plans for my photographic walk...

Chicho appeared on the streets of our neighbourhood about three years ago and since then he has become something like "our community dog". So technically speaking Chicho is a stray dog, but we all provide him with food, we have given him medical assistance, some even bathe him and he often sleeps in the yard of a house, especially if there are children in the house... But Chicho suffers from something like a "deep sense of his freedom" and does not give up his love for roaming the streets. I myself once wanted to make him stay in my backyard and I fell victim to one of his typical tantrums he throws when he gets tired of being inside somewhere...

That disagreement between Chicho and me did not affect our friendship. So Chicho still appears by my side very often when I go to the streets to take photos, when I go to the nearby grocery store and when I go for walks in the countryside. I also like to sit in the evenings in the street behind my house and sometimes Chicho comes to me and I give him croquettes. Therefore, I was not surprised that he came to the banks of the small river (more like a stream according to its narrow, once wide cause)... I assumed that Chicho just wanted to accompany me while I was taking pictures of insects, flowers and other things in the nature...

But it wasn't all so easy, Chicho had different plans for the day and it showed as soon as he started playing on the freshly cut grass. Then my lovely doggy friend started to do something that I love when he does "he started to smile"... Yes!... Chicho knows how to smile!... And you can see it in his expression in many of these photos... So when I looked at Chicho smiling, I started to shoot him immediately... The insects and flowers can wait, but it's impossible not to take lovely pictures of Chicho being happy and playing like a little boy in the grass and sand on the creek bank!

Chicho is an extremely intelligent guy, so it's not surprising that he immediately realised that he had my undivided attention... And Chicho seems to love this!... Could it be a case of canine egocentrism perhaps? ha ha ha :))... The truth is that Chicho immediately started to move his paws and to pick up grass clippings and let them fall on him. Meanwhile I was taking one picture after another while laughing and thanking God for giving me such beautiful moments like this one...

Suddenly he ran to the river, crossed it a couple of times on a stone path that the villagers improvise for this purpose and started running and digging sand on the banks like an excited little boy... I love it when he goes crazy with joy and behaves like that!... It's really fun (although quite difficult to photograph with a 100mm fixed macro lens geez)... But look at these pictures!... They are the spitting image of a happy child playing with sand!... Of course it's worth any effort of photographic skill to have these pictures!... :))

After almost an hour of "extraordinary display of joy" Chicho was a bit tired and I was literally exhausted, so it seemed like a good time to take some less exhibitionist portraits of my friend Chicho's athletic qualities...

I also took advantage of the fact that Chicho had calmed down enough to then take some photos of flowers and insects, but I must confess that the best part of my photographic walk was the joy shared with this charming little dog that lives in the streets of our neighborhood and also inhabits our hearts...

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_{ADDITIONAL TECHNICAL NOTE: Photographs captured with my Nikon D7000 DSLR camera in RAW format, then processed in Adobe Camera RAW for adjustments regarding light, sharpening, contrast and depth... The pictures are then exported to JPG format on which minor modifications such as straightening and adding watermarks were carried out using PhotoScape 3.6.3. and/or Photoshop}

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Thank you very much for your visit and appreciation!

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Montalbán, Carabobo, Venezuela.