The Snow Dog Series is a series of photographs that I took when he was about 2 or 3 years and we were living in Toledo of Japhy Ryder playing frisbee after a good snowfall. I wanted to do another version of this series only much later in his life.
This would be one of the last times that we were able to play frisbee. Japhy was 15 or 16 years old do to his eyes were starting to go . He was beginning to loose the frisbee in the air, and when it landed he would spend a long time searching up and down rows in the open field. Despite his declining vision, he was very excited to be out in the snow with his good friend, Frisbee.
Because of his ailing eyesight, we also had to change the rules a bit. After all, who said that Frisbee had to be thrown far down an open field of grass? We starting doing little throws, baby throws. We kept it super short so that he was able to smell the frisbee at all times and couldn’t loose it. We played chase with it where I would grab the frisbee and run around with him chasing me.
Japhy is 18 years old now, and the days of seeing how far out he could go and jump and catch the frisbee are gone, however there is still time and lots of energy and high spirits left to invite new games to play together.
