Vagary: (n) an unpredictable or erratic action, occurrence, course, or instance: the vagaries of weather; the vagaries of the economic scene. Synonyms: caprice, whim, quirk.

A week or so ago, I posted a beautiful waterfall picture, an image that I consider among my best. It was part of the narrative series that I am doing, and as such, it meant setting up the camera on a tripod (necessary anyway, to achieve the slow shutter speed required to blur the water), on a flat rock a few feet out into the stream, putting the camera on a 20 second delay timer, and making my way back to the edge of the stream in order to mountain goat up the bank and dash uphill to sit on the rocky outcrop beside the falls. Then the camera would take 5 shots in 3-second intervals. I repeated the process several times.

The final time I did this, after the camera took its last shot in the series, I began to stand up to make my way back, and as I did so I watched in horror as the tripod tipped backward into the stream. I have never covered distance and terrain so fast in my life. Even so, the camera spent a good 20 seconds submerged in the water. This was my best Nikon, with a price tag upwards of $5K. I yanked out the battery, folded the camera into my shirt, and sopped up what I could of the external moisture. 

In case you were wondering, here's what it looked like from the camera's point of view. Nothing like capturing the fateful moment as it happens:

Now to make it even more interesting, this poor camera had already miraculously resurrected itself from the dead late last year, after I took the rather questionable decision that photographing crashing breakers, waist-deep in the Atlantic, would be a fun thing to do. This time around, though it certainly didn't owe me anything, the poor camera was actually half-functional after its dip in the waterfall stream. I covered it in silica gel packs for a week and let it be, hoping beyond hope that it would come through again. And it did. The lens is not in perfect shape anymore, and a couple of the command buttons are a bit more finicky than usual, but it's generally ok.

This morning, I took the camera over to the park to photograph the dogs as they played. I threw balls. They chased. I followed them with my lens and snapped away. All was good. Then Soleil took one bad step, twisted in a grunt and a thump that will ring in my ears forever, and went down hard in full sprint.

I dropped everything and ran to her where she lay. Initially, she couldn't get up; she was clearly badly hurt. She somehow managed to scrape around and find the ball she'd been fetching, like she wanted to comfort me with it. I was pretty sure right from the get-go that she'd ruptured a ligament in one of her hind legs. We've since been to the vet. He's pretty sure too.

When this post publishes, I will be on my way back to the vet with Soleil, so that she can be sedated and x-rayed and diagnosed properly, and then she'll be facing a fairly serious surgery, and a recovery period of 6 to 12 weeks.

I know that the moment of her fall is in my camera, but I cannot bring myself to look.