Lens of Love: Exploring the Beauty in End-of-Life Pet Photography

In a world where time seems to move too fast and cherished moments slip by too quickly, there's one thing that many of us wish for, and that's the ability to freeze time. Join us today for a deeply moving episode of Starlight Pet Talk, as we sit down with a talented dog photographer who specializes in capturing the poignant end-of-life moments with our beloved pets, from gentle cuddles to final farewells. These photographs offer peace and eternal remembrance for grieving pet owners. Today, you'll discover the profound beauty and healing power found in preserving these precious memories we share with our beloved animal companions. Don't miss this heartfelt conversation that celebrates the enduring bond between humans and our pets. Stay tuned. You're listening to Starlight Pet Talk, a podcast for pet parents who want the best pet care advice from cat experts, dog trainers, veterinarians and other top pet professionals who will help you live your very best life with your pets. We also share inspiring rescue and adoption stories from people who've taken their love of pets to the next level by getting involved in animal welfare. My name is Amy Castro and I'm the founder and president of Starlight Outreach and Rescue and a columnist for Pet Age Magazine. I've rescued thousands of animals and helped people just like you find the right pet for their family. My mission is to help pet parents learn all the ways that they can care for, live with, and even have fun with, their pets so they can live their very best lives and their pets can, too.

Welcome to Starlight Pet Talk. I'm your host, amy Castro, and my guest today is Angela Schneider. Angela is the founder of Big White Dog Photography in Spokane, washington, and One Last Network, which I thought was really fascinating. It is a podcast dedicated to the support and services pet guardians may need as their companion animals age and ultimately lure our physical world. She also teaches fellow pet photographers around the world how to better support their clients through end of life photography services. So, angela, thank you so much for being here with us today. Hi Amy, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you today?

Great Thank you, and don't forget to mention that you were the guest on my podcast last week talking about rescues and a lot of complicated issues that come with that.

That is true, yes, so that we kind of met through a virtual podcaster matching up thing and we definitely have some alignment in our experiences and our interests. We'll put some links out there when it airs and let everybody know how to listen to that, because we had a. It was a very unusual conversation. It's not the conversation that people usually like to have about death and making decisions related to death when it comes to pets, but, like you said, you know we're all going to have to do that. Everybody is going to be at that position where they're dealing with end of life issues with their pet and I think better to be prepared than caught off guard. Yeah, exactly so I know, I know you come from a background of journalism, but how did you get interested in pet photography specifically, or dog photography really?

My mom took a lot of photos of us when we were toddlers, so there was always a camera in our house and it naturally ended up in my hand at one point and, oddly enough, the first pictures I ever took were of our Ralph Collie princess when I was 13, 14. And you mentioned my journalism background. I grew up in Canada, in Nova Scotia, and when you work for small town newspapers in Canada and I think it's true for a lot of areas in the United States too you do your own photography. You're the reporter, the editor and the photographer and the darkroom person all of the fun things. So a camera is a part of my arm, really an extension of my hand. It becomes a lot deeper than that as we go on.

But as I grew up in journalism, I crossed the country over to British Columbia and then Alberta and I did get tired of taking pictures because it was work. And then I got a job with the Calgary Sun in Alberta and we had a staff of probably 15 photographers, so I didn't have to do any. I got rid of all my gear and, yeah, I was perfectly happy to not do any photo taking at all. And then I got my first dog and then I got laid off from journalism and I went into marketing and communications and that sucked so bad.

Now you're hurting my feelings I know right, and I entered marketing and communications at a time when the industry was hijacking the word authenticity and nothing ever felt authentic about it to me as a journalist, and I had a mental breakdown, an emotional breakdown. There were other things involved, but the reader's digest version is my therapist told me to go out and find ways to unleash my creativity, because it was not happening in marketing and communications the way I needed it to, and so I had also discovered hiking at that time, and of course, I was living in Calgary right next to Banff National Park, so my dog and I would go hiking, and I realized one day that I was standing in the most beautiful place in the world with the most beautiful dog in the world, and I didn't have a camera in my hand. And so that year one of the benefits of marketing and communications was getting Christmas bonuses, actual Christmas bonuses. So I took my Christmas bonus and bought my camera and fast forward to 2014,.

Shep died, and it was very sudden for me, although I look back at all the photos I took that year and I realize it shouldn't have been, but it was being a rookie to a lot of those things and I realized that I had so many beautiful, beautiful photos of him from our hikes in the mountains, but I didn't have any good ones of us together. So I kind of promised him that I would find a way to make sure that happened for people like me, and it didn't happen until I moved to the United States. I was dating a boy and he asked me to marry him and brought me down here to Spokane, washington, and I tried to resurrect my marketing career here and I ended up at a tech company and it just sucked the life out of me. So I left that job and launched the first iteration of my photography business as a tribute to Shep and, of course, bella, who you can see behind me, is my top model. You like the?

floofs.

I do. I Shep was a Marema sheepdog. I adopted him at a time before Google, when we weren't able to just go what the hell is a Marema sheepdog? And come back with all of this information like we can now, and I grew to love him like a child. He was my best friend, my soulmate, and as I started learning more about the breed, I became very attached to the breed and its personality traits its independence, its stubbornness, its defiance. I love all of those traits about it and I love it about me. I'm independent and stubborn and defiant, so I'm a Marema sheepdog.

Well, that's interesting too, because it's you know we'll get great Pyrenees in our rescue periodically. They actually they're quite abundant in Texas, of all places that you think they'd be way too hot for them, but that you know there are a lot of them. There's a lot of need, I guess, for livestock guardian dogs, and you know just exactly what you expressed about them is very much the same with the, you know, and there's other breeds down here too. But it's it's interesting that people will say she just doesn't listen when I call her because she's been bred for hundreds of years to do her thing and she has no need to come and talk to you. So you gotta understand the breed for sure.

So it's interesting, you said, because I had never even really thought about that as far as, because I've got tons of pictures of my pets, tons of pictures of foster pets, but I can't really think, except for one of the photos that I use for professional photos was taken out here at the rescue ranch by a really awesome photographer named Cassie Beard, and she took pictures of me with pets and then with my dog out on the dock, and I use that picture all the time. But that I think about all the dogs that I've had over the, all the animals that I've had over the years, and very few photos of me with the animals. It's usually me taking the picture of the animals, so that's really does get you thinking and once it's, you know what's the when it's the person or the animals gone, so is the opportunity. So I think it's important that we that we think about that is that key to the end of life photography, because I really want to talk about how you kind of transitioned into that kind of niche of pet photography, because not everybody wants to face the death of a pet or deal with other people's grief related to a, you know, to losing their pet or their loved one. What got you interested in that?

Yeah, I was very quickly into operating my business when I realized that one third of my clients were coming to me for last minute sessions. Oh wow, and I started researching then what pet loss grief was about. Probably because I was still trying to process my own grief around Shep and I started learning about this thing called anticipatory grief, which is what we enter when we realize that our pet loss was coming due. And I really threw myself into reading about a lot of that stuff and I just wanted to be a better person for my clients. I wanted to be able to understand as much what I had been through and what they're going through and how I can just give them a space at their session To celebrate the life of their animal. And I really do want to say that I hate the term end of life pet photography. It is so final and so clinical and carries such a feeling of ick for me, because what I want I'm not commemorating the end of this animals life. I am celebrating that entire life that you had together, because I had Shep for 10 years.

Some people have their cats for 16, 17, 20 years. People have horses for 30 years. It's an incredible, incredible connection that you build and while we still have a portion of our society that looks at animals as just a dog or a utility. You know, we have an issue in southern Idaho where, once the ranchers have no more use of their livestock guardian dogs, they just let them go into the mountains. It's the same in Utah.

But there's a whole other part of society. People like me. Their dogs are their cats, are their main support system. There they're 24, seven companion, their best friend, their soulmate, their co pilot, and that's. It is just such an amazing relationship that we have with our animals, more than we might have with any other human in our life. And so that connection, that bond, that love, it incomparable love, needs to be celebrated and I would love it if somebody came to me for puppy pictures or to to do two and three year old photos. And I do have those clients and I love them so much. I just don't want people to wait until the last minute and I am more than happy to go out and do that session at the last minute.

But let's do it when your dog doesn't have that tumor on its face or when, when the degenerative myelopathy has kicked in so badly that they can barely move, for you know it just. Yeah, get it done early and honor that connection with the happiness and the health that you feel at six, seven, eight years old.

Why do you think it is that people I mean because people don't wait to take pictures, professional pictures of their babies. I mean I look back and see some of the photos that I sent out to everybody I knew of my daughter when she was an infant. It's like, wow, I should have waited. I should have waited a little bit on those because she got much cuter as time went on. But you know it's like we. You know we document, we want to document every stage. You know we go from the Professional photos to the school photos. You know everything gets documented. Why do you think people wait for pets?

I think that it is, and I cannot speak upon parenthood because they don't have any skin children. I think parenthood is just a more naturally accepted reason for taking all those photos, all those milestones. There's no judgment around a first birthday. There's no judgment around graduation day from kindergarten. You know there's no judgment around that.

You know people do take pictures of their pets. Obviously it's that crossing that line, I think of taking professional photos of your pets and then also being in those photos. I think that's a. Is that a big part? What would a session kind of consist of, Maybe? How would it be different than if they did come when they were two or three years old, versus? You know, this is going to be a session that's capturing. I know you don't like the term end of life. Is there a better term we could be using? Not really.

I mean I use it all the time for search engine optimization.

Yeah, that's kind of what I come up with.

It covers it appropriately. So yeah, you know the sessions don't really look a whole lot different. My focus is always primarily on the dog. I certainly have a ton of poses that I'm going to run a client through. Probably the biggest factor is what is the? What is the dog capable of doing? How far advanced is their illness or age related mobility issues, something like that right, can they still walk around the park, can they?

I had a client with a Bernie's Mountain Dog with very advanced DM and we pulled her around the park in a wagon. So that can happen. But when it comes to the end of life sessions, I try to give my human client a little more space to because I know she's and typically it's a female she's processing a lot of really complicated emotions, especially if I'm there the day before or the morning of a euthanasia. I just like to give her a little space and back off and not be taking the photos all the time. It's less of a directed session because I just want it to be very natural and allow her to have the emotions that she needs to have in that moment.

So it's interesting to me that, like I said, the whole concept of doing this and making a point of doing this, it's like to me, if you're going to capture something like, is that the moment that you want to capture and have to live with for the rest of your life, that photograph?

Because it kind of reminds me. I went to a funeral the other day. Actually I've gone to two funerals in the last month or so and I remember telling somebody and this is kind of morbid, but when my grandmother passed away and also when my father passed away, we have this distant relative that apparently liked to chronicle the person in their casket, kind of thing. It's not the photo that I want to have and unfortunately that's still the first mental image that rises in my head of my grandmother, because I got this photograph in the mail and wasn't expecting it and just opened it and looked at it and I wasn't able to be there. I was in the military at the time and now that image is stuck in my head. So I guess I'm a little bit perplexed as to why do you think people want to capture that moment in time and don't think to do it sooner, like you said, when the animal's in the prime of its life.

I very much aligned with what you said. I was raised Irish Catholic in Nova Scotia and we didn't do it as a practice in our family, but I had friends who would show me photo albums of their relatives laying in state and I was like ew, why?

would you?

do that. And then at my mother's funeral, somebody asked me if I wanted to take a picture of my mom in her casket and I was like no, I don't want to remember her like that. I think that people want those photos, possibly out of a place of regret that they didn't do it sooner, that it is their last chance. I'm not entirely sure that I would have wanted to do it with Shep. I don't know how I feel about doing a session with Bella when it's time. I've already had two sessions done with Bella. Those celebrate us in our prime and we're on a beach, which is where we love to be. We don't live near a beach. We have to drive seven hours to get to a beach.

So that's a really tough question and I'm not sure I have the answer. I think what I want to do now is start asking people who come to me for those sessions and find out what it is about these photos, because I can't answer it personally, because I'm not sure I want those photos for myself.

Yeah, yeah, that would be an interesting question to ask. What do people say when they're maybe not necessarily when they call and make the appointment, but do you see? I mean obviously you're communicating with the person at the session. Do you sense a difference between when they come to the session or when you meet them for the session, and when the session is wrapped up, like is there a sense of peace or relief, or do they say anything about being grateful for having those photos? I'm just curious to what the dig into the mindset a little bit, because I don't even know that. I know anybody that's done this, and now I want to ask my friends it's like, have you guys ever done this before?

And would you? Yeah, my clients are very brave, very, usually very composed at their sessions and I just ask them to focus on their pets. I'm not even here, I'm just an observer kind of thing, right, I had one client recently. Her Husky has DM. I see so much DM lately in it, it just it makes my heart ache. But she made her first connection with me in early January and she wanted very badly to have snow at her session and of course this El Nino is just screwing us badly in the PNW for snow. But we finally got some snow and we went out and did this beautiful session and she told me that she had been praying every day that he would make it just so that she could have her session with him. And it's not time for him to go yet I don't think she's doing research into further treatments for him. But she told me when we met again to see her images that she felt a real sense of relief and peace afterwards, that she was able to get that session done with him and that she could have those beautiful memories.

In my grief work I cling to the continuing bonds theory that was offered by Dennis Glass in the 70s I think, and he proffers that the memories that we have, the stories that we have created together, will carry us survivors forward with comfort and healing. So I am creating tangible memories, a photo album that she can hold and flip through when Dante is gone and remember their life together, because they've been together for 12 years. She's a single mom and her kids are grown up and she has grandkids, so the dog is her constant and not even her first dog, but this is her soul dog, the one that got her through everything. So to be able to give her that photo album to hold and look at and remember him when he's gone, boy, that means everything to me. I'm getting emotional over a dog that isn't even mine. I do it all the time.

Well, but you're seeing people that you know their most vulnerable, raw, emotional time with their pet, and it's not the happy go lucky, you know, puppy photo that you might hope to be taking, kind of thing. It's the well, and I would think it's a tremendous responsibility because I don't mean to sound crass or whatever, but it's like you know, it's kind of like the last shot, so if you don't get it right, that's what they're going to be left with, you know. And so it's a tremendous responsibility for you to capture that. There's so much in that I don't even know how. I'm struggling to put it into words too, but the situation you're describing with this woman, with the snow and wanting it to be just so, you're create, like you said, you're creating a memory and you want to capture that memory as close to what they have envisioned so that they can be at peace with it.

This is why I recommend people look for a professional to do these sessions. I know, of course it sounds selfish, because I'm a professional dog photographer. Of course I want you to hire me, but this is the end of your pet's life and if you want images, if you want good quality images, hire a professional and be willing to spend a little bit extra. You know that at the end of our animal's journey there's often vet bills, cancer treatments, anything Cremation is $300 now, I think. But it's so important to hire a professional and spend the money on these photos if you want good photos, because we understand that we only have one shot. We have invested time, money, in education to become the best we can possibly be at what we do and we have payment plans. We are not so many of us in this business. We're here because we've lost our own dogs. So we get it, we absolutely get it, but we still have to run profitable businesses.

Just like that yeah, exactly Right, yeah, well, and when you? Well, I guess two things Now. The first thing I was thinking about and you mentioned the cremation, and I was already thinking about that because I was thinking, you know, for the investment that we make I mean, I've had, and maybe it's running an animal rescue, I've gotten a little bit sadly used to death. That was kind of part of our conversation when I did your podcast is, you know, kind of being a little bit scared about how used to it I am and how I feel like I don't feel my emotions as much as I maybe used to. And you know it used to be when I, when my one of my pets it was, you know, if we had to euthanize a pet or it passed away you know I got the cremains back, did the individual cremation and that even adds, you know, more and more and more to the process.

And then and this is going to sound a little bit sick, but you know the animals in a plastic box or a little wooden box or whatever, and it got stuck on the shelf in my, in my closet.

And then there's another one, and a couple of years later there's another one, and at some point I was like, well that's, you know why am I keeping all these boxes? And I'm thinking about what was invested. You know, if it was a monetary issue, what was invested to do that, versus getting something that would actually bring you joy, where you could see the photographs, as opposed to looking at a wooden box or a plastic box? And so you know really something to think about. You know, if it came down to a financial decision, wouldn't you rather have some you know, wonderful photos that reminded you of your pet and you know you could actually see them, versus a wooden box with some ashes in it? That's an excellent point. You'd also mentioned something about the people who do this. So you know how would one go about finding a good pet photographer, so that you know, especially if you did wait until end of life and you've just got that one shot to get those photos.

I do have a website called One Last Network and I'm building a directory of photographers who offer professional photographers, who offer end of life services, small but growing and otherwise. I also teach my pet photographer search engine optimization, so I hope that you would be able to go Google for, but you know what I honestly wouldn't Google end of life. I would just Google pet photographer or dog photographer near me or something like that, and sure you're going to come up with a good amount. I think If you have a pet and you're not already following the dog photographers in your area, tisk yeah.

I mean it's such an art to get it right. I mean we can all get photographs, you know, of our pets, but to really capture the essence of a person or an animal, you know, to really get that it takes a certain eye that not everybody's got so, and a lot of experience. And you know I would hate to be the one that I'm taking my own photos or I have a friend do it or something like that, and you get back, you know, some blurry or not so great photos and it's just, it's worth, definitely worth the investment. What do you, what do you hope for people that are that are listening, what do you hope they take away from our conversation today? I know you said the one key thing and I want to reiterate it is you know, don't wait until end of life. You know, take, take opportunities where you can to get those professional photos of your pet, especially in their prime. You know, with the way you want to remember them, I would think.

Well, amy, the one thing that that keeps coming back to me is and this is why I charge for end of life photography and I know there's a lot of people out there who don't, but this is why I charge. It's not fair to my other clients, because I had a client in 2021. She brought me her puppy. Well, then her husband drove over the dog in the backyard, so her puppy session with me ended up being her end of life session for that puppy. We don't know. We don't know how much time we have. We don't know how much time they have.

Everything can happen and you know one of the things I talk about at Big White Dog photography the people I want to work with are the people who love their dogs that damn much. You know they look at their dogs and they see everything, just like I do. I know those photos will help you when it's time for you to say goodbye and in the days and years that follow, because I still look at my photos of Shep. It took me a long time to be ready to do that, and I understand, and I couldn't get through looking at those photos without bawling my eyes out. Those photos today make me smile and I get to go back to Alberta this summer for a visit and I get to see all those places that we went to together and I get to take Bella there.

Knock on wood, she turns 10 next week and Shep made me who I am today. In fact, if it wasn't for Shep, I might not even be here. She saved me, and throughout the last seven years of running this photography business, I have met so many other women like me. Our dogs change us. Our dogs make us feel good about ourselves. They give us a sense of responsibility. They accept us for who we are. We don't need to be anybody else, but who we are for our dogs. That's why this is so important to me. That's why it's so important for you to get photos with your dog. That's what I wanted to take away.

I couldn't have wrapped it up any better than that. I thank you so much for your willingness to just kind of bear your soul on this subject and it really has gotten me thinking because, like I have said in our previous conversations, my animals sometimes tend to be felt like a herd around here. Taking that time to really focus on them as individuals is something that I need to work more on. I know for a fact that there are people that are going to be listening to this that will go out and seek these photographs before it's towards the end of life because of what you've said today and what you shared with us. So thank you so much for your willingness to share and to express your feelings and be vulnerable. It's very much appreciated and I know you're going to reach a lot of people with your message that you've shared today. Thank you.

Thank you Two things. If you're in an area that has served my directory, please feel free to email me at.

Sorry, bella has an opinion, that's okay, we allow dogs to talk on this show.

Please email me at Angela at bigwhitedogphotographycom, and I know pet photographers in every corner of this country, canada and all around the world. I can connect you even if they're not on my directory. And the other thing is just go look into your dog's eyes and get lost, because that's the best place to be.

Don't forget to tune in next week and every week for a brand new episode of Starlight Pet Talk and if you don't do anything else this week, give your pets a big hug from us.