Tips on including family pets in your outdoor family session

Pets are important part of the family. Having two mischievous yorkies myself I can not imagine family portrait without them. I get asked a lot – if I allow pets (dogs really on my family sessions. Yes I do and I love them – as long dog is not an aggressive and easy going. We have few tricks up in our sleeves to make session run smoothly.

1. Walk your dog prior to the session to avoid over excited pup. Most of dogs love going outside and need to burn some energy.

2. Get support – take extra person/friend, which will not be photographed and dog is familiar with, so we can get family relaxed when we are photographing family with no dog.

3. Stay relaxed – your dog can read your emotions really well. If you are happy, your dog will be happy as well! People often are worried that the dogs will misbehave – in fact most of dogs I worked with were amazing. We just need very small moment where they are focused on me, rest they can just relax and enjoy little walk with extra person that will look after them.

4. I know few universal words on which dogs respond with full attention (“walk” “treat” etc, turning their heads from side to side. Make sure that you are ready, as it will take few seconds to keep your dogs attention. In the nutshell – let me do the dog whispering

5. Don’t foret the lead, water and some sncaks for your four legged friend