We Do Not Have Long With Our Dogs

Older man cuddling and kissing his West Highland Terrier beside a red telephone box at Westminster Station during a London dog photography session

I have always felt there is something truly special about photographing a dog exactly as they are now. The expressions you know by heart, the little mannerisms that make you laugh, the way they look at the people they adore. These are the things that one day become far more precious than we ever realise in the moment.

As a London dog photographer, that is what I want every session to hold onto. The little things that feel so ordinary now, preserved in photographs a family can keep close for the rest of their lives.

Woman holding and kissing her senior dog during a portrait photography session at Raffles London at The OWO — There is a particular kind of arithmetic every dog owner does eventually, usually without meaning to. You work out roughly how many years you might reasonably have left with him, and the number is always smaller than feels fair.
A dog moves through an entire life while we are still in the middle of ours. Puppy to steady adult to grey around the muzzle, all inside a stretch of time that, for us, barely registers as a chapter.

We tend to assume there will be time for the proper photograph later.

Later, when the house is tidier. Later, when he has recovered from the limp, or grown into his ears, or stopped being so restless around a camera. Later becomes a placeholder we never quite get around to filling.

Woman smiling at her older dog during an at-home end-of-life dog photography session — I do not say that to unsettle anyone.
It is simply part of sharing our lives with dogs, and perhaps the strongest reason I know for having our dogs photographed while they are here, rather than waiting for a version of the moment that suits us better.

What a good dog portrait does, in the end, is hold onto something that time will not. It preserves the details that are so easy to take for granted when we see them every day, and gives us a true likeness of him exactly as he was in that particular season of his life.

The tilt of his head. The particular way he held his ears when he was listening to you, and the equally particular way he chose not to. The expression you recognised immediately, even if you could never quite describe it to anybody else. The eyes that somehow remained entirely his own as everything around them began to change. These are the things I look for when I photograph a dog.

There is gratitude in portraits like this. It means we took the time to have one made at all. That this dog, in this particular chapter of our lives, mattered enough for us to stop and properly see him.

Couple with their German Shepherd during a family and pet portrait session in the City of London

Working as a dog photographer in London means I meet them at every stage of life. Puppies who cannot keep still, adults in their prime, and older dogs who have begun to take things at a gentler pace. I have never needed a dog to be calmer, younger or easier before I wanted to photograph him.

For me, the value of a portrait is in recognising him. Years later, you can look at that photograph and know exactly who he was then. His character, his expression, the little details that were once part of every ordinary day.

The years with our dogs only move in one direction. However long we are fortunate enough to have them, I am not sure it ever feels quite long enough.

If you have been meaning to have your dog photographed, perhaps do not wait for everything to be perfect.

The version of him you love today is already worth remembering.