We recently lost our sweet boy Dingo. He was diagnosed with lymphoma in August of 2019 and put up a good fight until June 2020 when we made the decision to let him go in peace before the bad days outnumbered the good. Upon receiving his diagnosis, our first call was to the oncologist and the second was to a wonderful photographer friend of mine to schedule updated family pictures.

I have lots of pictures of Dingo, but not with me and I wanted to always remember the way I would kiss the brown spot on the side of his face that I called "the kissing spot" which was usually met with a stoic expression that my husband would interpret for Dingo by voicing "That's too close Mom".  This picture is from September, months before we lost him and he looked like himself and made the face that I knew so well when I pulled him in for a smooch (but he always tolerated for me).

In the weeks after we lost him, my husband and I found ourselves revisiting the pictures that Sylvia took of us over and over again. Sometimes we'd smile. Sometimes we'd cry, but we were ever so thankful to have them and they made us feel better.

I made the mistake with Penny, our first dog together (and Penny Whistle's namesake), never having her professionally photographed so all we have of her are a handful of snapshots. I promised myself that would never happen again so every couple of years we get new family portraits taken so we have pictures of us with our dogs, something that even as a professional pet photographer I can't do. Don't make the same mistake I did. I've never had a client tell me they regretted scheduling a portrait session, only that they regretted waiting too long and missing the opportunity to do so.