I still haven’t quite got the picture I want of this puppy yet. So instead of giving up I just keep trying. The snow the other day provided another opportunity to try. The snow contrasts with his black fur and would definitely take him out of his normal environment. Not to mention, the snow attracts the kids and that energizes the puppy. I made it a point to arrange staying over the night before the snowstorm to try again.
One good piece of advice when working with animals is get all the information you can from the owners. People love their pets and come to know their quarks and behaviors very well. This is all useful information. For example, the puppy here opens and closes his mouth as he runs. Why? No clue, but his owner mentioned this, so I knew to keep an eye out for that. All pets have some strange behavior that might be useful or might need to be avoided and it is a lot easier to just be told this then wait for this information to come to you so remember to ask.
Finally, I will admit my equipment really helped here. First, I had a plastic rain cover built for DSLRs. This just gave me piece of mind. Second, I could crank my camera’s shutter speed up for this as dogs tend to move fast. I offset this by bumping up my ISO, normally I try to keep ISO down to avoid noise (that only photographers ever seem to notice, from by experience) but during snow you really can’t notice any noise, so you get a little more leeway. Even if you can’t do that with your camera, it likely has a sports mode setting of some sort so give that a try and see what happens.
