I know the important things in this image are not totally sharp but I’m still in love with it as an action shot.

We got up quite early this morning to more-or-less uninterrupted sunshine and decided to do a big walk early in the day rather than later on. There is something wonderful about the moor in the morning. The skylarks are in the air doing their skylarky stuff and singing their tiny hearts out, the livestock are all frisky and, perhaps best of all, there are very few people around. Not that the moor gets crowded as such, but walking mid-afternoon will ensure we bump into lots of other hikers and dog walkers, whereas the mornings are for us and us alone.

The heavy rain in the week has totally changed the landscape – mud, puddles, lakes and standing water have all returned to the moor after months of dryness. We walked a track that has lots of dips in it where for most of our time here in Cornwall there has been standing water. It’d dried up this summer but now the puddles are back. The dogs love them, charging through them with gay abandon, not caring whether they get plastered in mud or water.

So I said to DM “can you throw the ball along the path and I’ll try to get a mad spray shot”. It took two or three gos to get the shot I wanted because I missed my trigger point a couple of times, shooting just before or just after the key point, then I got this. Mad spray from JD and Lola in mid-air, the combination of these two things is making me smile as I look at it and type.

Dog action shots don’t come easy (unless your name is Ric Yates, in which case you have a knack of getting a perfectly focused, perfectly framed shot) but I love the way this is full of fun and life even though technically not great. I LOVE the fact that Lola’s tail is up, she's just about to get a soaking and JD is concentrating so hard on getting the ball, even though he is right in the middle of a soaking. It’s just a really sweet shot of my babies in full flight and having a great time!