I wanted to put this together for anyone who gets discouraged taking photos of their dog. These are also just my favourites from the shoot. I took 300 photos. No I’m not even exaggerating.

We started out, armed with a bag of treats, and decided to try the classic photo with a pumpkin. For this the cues, “down” and “stay” came into play.

I wasn’t really satisfied with that though. It was cute, but it didn’t really have the feel I was going for. So we moved to the fence to try that. For this the cue “paws up” was used.

I tried several angles with the fence.

Then I just let Suki run around for a bit and snapped some photos of that.

And because Suki enjoys heights I tried seeing how having her stand on the fence would turn out. To get this picture I’m holding the camera at ground height with a treat near the lens.

Then we moved to another new spot and I tried a few more photos.

We have a small, bent apple tree in the yard. So I tried directing her up onto that. One of the pictures from this made the final cut, but here’s a different one.

Then we went back to the house so I could edit photos I saw my lion statue and the gears started turning. So back out we went to try that. Again, from lots of different angles.

At this point I thought we were done, but I jokingly tossed the sheet over Suki as I was cleaning up and had an idea. I lifted the sheet up over her head like a hood. She kept mooching for food, not really bothered by it. I pulled the hood down further. Still not bothered.

While I do direct Suki, I try not to force her to stand somewhere she doesn’t want to or to look at the camera if she would rather not. Keeping your dog happy and making the photo-taking process fun for them is the most important thing. Try not to have an exact, set in stone idea of how you want the photos to turn out. Just have fun, take lots of pictures, and let your dog act naturally. Those photos will always turn out better because your dog’s personality will shine through and the photos will have a good memory attached to them.