Day 4728

Santa has left the building. We are done with Santa Paws for another year. Today I set a new record for number of dogs photographed in a single day. Over a 100 dogs had their picture taken with Santa and I wound up with over 1600 exposures on my camera. We had to be very efficient today and the kennel staff we worked with were great. They were so efficient and had all the dogs staged and ready to go for us.

None of us really thought that this type of event would work, but we were pleasantly surprised. We saved a lot of time by not having the dog's owners present. All the dogs were already at the kennel and boarding for the day, so we didn't have to wait for anyone who was running late or got lost on their way to their appointment. We usually have a big box of costumes that people could sort through and find something for their dog. We abandoned that today and just photographed the dogs without any Christmas apparel. If an owner really wanted their dog to wear something, they supplied it themselves. 

We didn't take as many photos of each dog either. Typically we spend about twenty minutes with each dog or group and take a huge amount of pictures. Today's customers still got about 25 pictures to choose from and I think everyone was happy. The big change today was that we didn't make prints on the spot. This saved a huge amount of time. We just burned a flash drive with all the pictures for each customer and they could print whatever they wanted later.

It's hard to believe that we used to do five or six of these events every year. We even did photo events for Easter and Mother's Day. We're all getting older and two events wore us out. I kind of liked the way we did things this year. We did one invitation only low volume event for Dalmatian Rescue volunteers and people who have adopted dogs from us and then a second high volume event partnering with a local boarding facility. We pre-screened the dogs at the first event and the kennel pre-screened the dogs at today's event. There were no walk-ins with aggressive or psychotic dogs. One really bad dog at an event like this can screw up everything.

I'll unpack everything and put it away tomorrow. All I want to do now is finish this blog post and go to bed. Dinner tonight was a left over slice of pizza from lunch. Dawn was really good about being left alone in the house for so long. We got up extra early to give her a walk before we left and then gave her another short walk after we returned home. I got home first this afternoon and Dawn actually seemed glad to see me. I don't know how I managed to get home a half hour ahead of Janet because she left the event first. I guess I picked the better road today.

Tomorrow I'll do my grocery shopping, take the photo gear back to the storage warehouse, and return to my regular uneventful schedule. I may be a bit biased, but I think we have the best Santa photos in town. People always seem to love the pictures they get. Who knows how long we can keep this up, but hopefully we'll be around next year. I have Santa Paws photos in my files from 2010, so we've been doing these events for over twelve years now.  I think we've helped a lot of dogs along the way.

Camp is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day