Celebrating the Journey with Senior Dog Photography Sessions

Senior dog photo sessions are all about celebrating the journey you've had together and creating lasting memories of this precious chapter in their life.

It’s a chance to capture the love, loyalty, and joy they’ve brought into your life, and to honour the bond you’ve built over the years.

Capturing Your Senior Dog’s Unique Personality

These sessions are designed to focus on the unique personality and spirit of your senior dog, showcasing everything that makes them special, Senior dogs tend to be calm and wise, and that is what we hope to capture in a photo session.

Whether it’s their wise, soulful eyes, their graying muzzle, or even their slower pace, every detail is a beautiful reminder of the love and memories you’ve shared.

It’s also important to document the special bond you have shared over the years. So I’ll always suggest that you get in the frame with your dog. By incorporating family members in the photo session we can capture that relationship and bond. These are moments that you will treasure as your senior dog continues to age.

Meet Menudo: A Special Senior Dog

Last week I had the honour of photographing the sweetest senior dog, Menudo. I love senior pets. The gentleness that comes with age and the loyalty, trust and love they have for their human family is so endearing.

Menudo is a Deer Head Chihuahua, identified by their slightly more elongated head with a longer and more narrow muzzle, wider set eyes, and a flatter skull like you’d find when you look at a deer.  The deer head Chihuahua is usually a little larger than other types of Chihuahuas. I’d never heard of these before!

Sadly Menudo has a type of nasal cancer and so his Mom wanted to have some photos taken as lasting memories and to document the wonderful bond that he has with the people who love him.  I can really empathize with his humans as I’ve lost two dogs to cancers in the nasal cavity. These senior dog photography sessions, are always poignant, sometimes heart-wrenching.

Menudo was named after a a Puerto Rican-based, Latino boy band that was formed in 1977 and was one of the biggest Latin boy bands in history. Ricky Martin started out in this band in the mid 80’s and Menudo’s Mom was a Ricky Martin fan during her youth at that time, hence his name “Menudo”.

We did the photo session at Sir Winston Churchill Park in the Toronto area on one of our first beautiful spring days this year. We were so lucky with the weather because the end of March in Toronto can often still be cold!

Accommodating Menudo’s Needs

Although we had allowed an hour for the shoot, little Menudo was tired after 40 minutes so we cut it short.  This can be common for senior dog photography sessions.  Of course I will alway accommodate the needs of the dog.

Senior dogs may have mobility issues or prefer lower-energy activities. Poses that accommodate their comfort, such as lying down, sitting, or leaning against a favourite person are common.

Patience and allowing for plenty of breaks are the order of the day when photographing a senior dog!.

Saying goodbye to a terminally ill pet is emotionally painful, but photos provide lasting memories. I try to advise pet owners to photograph their pets while they are healthy and vibrant. Don’t wait until they are sick.  But it is at times like these that people realize they may not have any truly good photos and certainly not many photos of themselves with their pets. 

There are also other ways to honour your pet. Here are some of my ideas for truly meaningful pet memorials.

One of my favourite quotes is: “When we think of those companions who traveled by our side down life's road, let us not say with sadness that they left us behind, but rather say with gentle gratitude that they once were with us.” [Author unknown]. Photos will help us remember this!

Update, January 2023: These senior dog photography sessions are in such demand so I’ve highlighted another recent session.

As member of a pet photographers blogging group, we publish blogs that showcase our work, photography tips or dog-related information according to a weekly theme. This week was photographers choice. You can read a wonderful photography story from Darlene Woodward with Pant the Town Photography specializing in photographing dog adventures on New England beaches.