Sit. Stay. Smile. Photography & Art

Hey everyone…it has been awhile since I last posted to my blog, so I thought I would share a few photos from a recent photo shoot. Meet Windy…she is a sweet black lab who loves going to the beach and taking walks. She lost her eye when she was just a puppy but she has always managed to get around just fine. Here are some of my favorite photos from our outing…

Hey everyone! I hope you all survived the holidays and had a great New Year’s…I am looking forward to some down time over the next few weeks to work on some personal projects…I am itching to do some mosaics and maybe try Encaustics for the first time…I love the cold weather months when my pet photography business slows down due to the weather and I have time to do more art…Speaking of…Art Journaling Magazine asked me to submit a few of my art journals for their Winter edition of the magazine…I am posting a few shots of the article I wrote…I am really happy with the way it turned out…this is the second time that they have asked me to show my work, so I am very honored to be included among some really talented artists. I LOVE working in my art journal whenever I can and find it to be very cheap form of therapy for me…If you would like to see more examples of my journal pages…click on the link at the top of the page labeled “art journals”.

Diesel is the coolest Great Dane…he may be a big dog but he is a marshmellow. We went to the beach for his photo session and he had a great time digging in the sand and getting scared by the horse shoe crabs. Here are my favorite shots…Enjoy!

I wanted to take a moment and tell you a little bit about my sweet dog Cowboy…We had to put him to sleep very unexpectedly last week due to a condition called Hemangiosarcoma, which is a cancerous tumor on the spleen. Cowboy was my Katrina dog rescue who came to us in pretty bad shape from his time on the streets after the storm and due to the fact that someone had kicked him and broken his pelvis. He was terrified of men, had never been inside a house before and did not know what a toy was or what to do with one. He was obviously a backyard dog who had recieved little love and attention. Slowly he came to trust us and became one of the sweetest, most loving dogs I have ever owned. He loved people, but did not like other dogs when he was on the leash.

He was a very young 8 year old dog who has never been sick a day in his life. He was acting a little lethargic last week and would not jump up on the bed…I thought maybe his hips were bothering him. I made an appointment for him at the vet for later in the week, but when I decided to check his gums, they were totally white…not color whatsoever. This is a bad sign, so I called the vet back and asked if I could bring him in ASAP. When I brought him in, the vet drew blood and he started bleeding heavily from the needle prick and would not clot…she thought maybe he had ingested rat poison. I told her that was highly unlikely and decided I needed to take him to the emergency vet since it was late in the day. With 15 minutes of arriving at the Emergency room, I was told that he should be put to sleep because he had a cancerous tumor on his spleen that had ruptured and he was bleeding internally. Even if the vet operated and removed the spleen and the tumor, he would have only had a 15% survival rate for three more months if I did chemotherapy. With his history and post traumatic stress related to pain, I knew that I could not put him through that. It was such a hard decision to say goodbye to our sweet boy, but we felt like it would save him a lot of pain and stress, which is not the way I wanted him to spend his final days.

We miss Cowboy everyday…he was such a huge part of our lives. We are grateful for the time we were able to spend with him and we know in our hearts that we gave him the best life that we could. I know that he is pain free now and we hope to see him again someday…Goodbye, sweet Cowboy! Here are a few of my favorite pictures from over the years…I feel bad for humiliating him in the costumes…he was far to proud for such silliness, but he always wanted to please me…he was such a great dog.

Tyson and Kitty came to their photo shoot ready to party…They were excited, ready for some treats and had a whole lot of fun cheesin’ for the camera. We went down to my favorite graffiti wall and then down to the beach for a few more shots later on…It was a beautiful, sunny day and we had a great time hanging with the boxers and their owners were such a big help! Thanks guys!

Also, just to let you all know, this weekend I am hosting a charity event at this same location to benefit the Virginia Beach SPCA. The event is called “Bring on the Bulls” and the purpose is to help shine a postive light on Bully breeds and help educate the public on the facts surrounding these often misunderstood dogs. If you would like to set up an appointment for photos, please email me via the link on this page. The date is this Saturday, October 6th from 12-4pm at 17th street and the boardwalk. Bring your dog and come down to support the VBSPCA!

Say hello to Phoebe, a sweet little Beagle who loves her bone and her Mama…we had a beautiful night on the beach for photography last weekend, the only distraction were the little flies that insisted on biting us the entire time! We didn’t let that get in our way of having some fun…Phoebe is a very social little dog and enjoyed going up to all of the people on the beach to say hello. I have to say that September is my favorite month here at the beach..it is still warm but the frenzy of Summer has died down and it just seems more relaxed…we pretty much had the whole beach to ourselves…here are some photos of sweet little Phoebe!