The Big Red Dog's Date with her Birth Control Plan

What a day! As I write this, Ruby is at the vet getting her reproduction capabilities nixed (spayed). And it seems to fitting that this should occur on a day when I opened the newspaper (you know--those print things) and saw that the federal health care plan is going to mandate that insurance companies cover women's birth control contraceptives, starting January, 2013! It's about time! The fact that men's Viagra is so routinely covered, but women's contraceptives are not, has really angered me over the years. Insurance companies have been able to duck this by claiming religious controversy. I suspect it's been a "convenient" and lucrative "moral position" and their part, and that they've been much more inclined to cater to their male stakeholders than to young women. But I digress. . . .

. . . Anyway, so Ruby is at the vet, and I'm anxious about this. She looked at me with her beautiful big eyes this morning and said, "Where's the food? Yo! Are you forgetting something near and dear to my heart? Tricks? Shall I do tricks for you? How about a handshake? Ummmm, let's go in the kitchen and get some food!" Apparently, we would get to fee her until tomorrow.

And then we pulled out the leash and led her to the car (translate, she practically dragged us to the car and leapt with joy into the back seat), and now she's probably under sedation. . . . so I'm pacing around, antsy, looking for ways to distract myself . . . . (I'm glad my children never needed their tonsils taken out, or. . . ummmmm. . . . needed to be fixed!)

So here are two versions of a shot of the Big Red Dog, and look how red--I mean, REALLY, really red she is in the second photo. The photo was taken with my new 20mm f2.8 lens at the dog park. The first photo is much more what she actually looks like to me.

The second version is one in which I used the command "convert to sRGB" from my working space of RGB in photoshop, and then ran an action that resizes and sharpens for web.

The first shot is one in which I used the command "assign to sRGB" and then ran the same action.

I don't get it. The "convert" command somehow loses the sRGB change, and results in a photo that is interpreted by the web any old which way, in whatever color space it feels like. And Wild Red it is.

But the "assign" command keeps the sRGB designation and successfully bosses the web around demanding that my instructions about the sRGB color space be followed. (But then again, Google Chrome and internet explorer are still not color managed and will play looser with color instructions; Safari and Firefox have much better color management capabilities.)





Other than all that, this shot is of Ruby at the dog park. She loves it! She's now gotten to go about four times, and still thinks its the Happiest Place on Earth (sorry Disney.) See the black dog taking a drink from rectangular Rubber Maid container? Ruby is a maniac with it; when she gets a chance at it, she manages to "dig" out all the water with her front paws, splashing any nearby humans, who then are at her beck and call to refill it from the drinking fountain. Apparently, other owners at the park are telling me their dogs are picking up her fiendish ways and are doing the same things to their dishes at home now. Sorry folks!

Sigh. Time to go pace around in the kitchen again and clean a closet. . . .

***** UPDATE * * * * *
Ruby is home and well and groggy and sleepy. I'm not sure yet if she's going to be trying to lick her stitches a lot, so we're taking a wait-and-see attitude about whether she need to wear the cone around her head. We actually got one of those inflatable ones. It's hard to see her like this; she's definitely uncomfortable, and for awhile she just laid in her crate and moaned :(

Hopefully the next two weeks will show a speedy recovery, and we'll see our little maniac back!