Lickers

My friend Howie passed along a link to comic photos of dogs caught in mid-lick by photographer Ty Foster. They certainly amused me, and I can imagine that Foster's upcoming book project will find a ready audience among fans of silly dog photos.

They also made me reflect on Steve's and my experience with dogs and licking. We recall that only one of our dogs has ever been a compulsive licker, but to our shame, we can't remember if it was Pearl, our fourth Personal Dog, or Yuli, our second CCI puppy. (In our defense, both of them were stubborn black labs -- easy to mix up in retrospect.)

I've known people who like their dogs to lick them, equating the licking with "kisses." It's a pretty obnoxious behavior, to my mind (and the dog pros seem to see them more as a sign of submission than affection.) Happily, Dionne licks us only occasionally and is easily discouraged. 

The tongue weirdo in our current pack is Tucker. Occasionally, he'll sit and draw his own tongue in and out.  To us, it looks like he's savoring whatever food molecules continue to cling to it. Once he starts, we've seen him keep this up for minutes on end.

I wanted to see if I could capture any images comparable to Foster's.  So I wiped a glob of almond butter on Tucker's tongue and got him going: 

Clearly, I'm not as good a photographer as Foster is. But Tuck thought it was a fun experiment.