What can I tell you, I HATE taking pictures of animals. It’s not that I don’t like them or anything, I just don’t have that patience gene that allows me to either sit over a hole in the ground for hours, stand quietly in a wooded area with a long lens or in my case this weekend, try to convince my stupid dog to sit still.

But as Lisa (my wife) wanted a new picture of Roxie our dog, that’s what I had to do.

Roxie is a Maltese Shih Tzu mix and just doesn’t like having her picture taken. She’ll sit there looking beautiful until the moment I pull the camera up to my face, at which point she runs for the hills.

Now I’ve read blog postings from other photographers who talk about offering treats and being patient for that perfect shot, but I just don’t have the patience – or quite frankly the desire!

But again as Lisa wanted a picture we grabbed the camera, one light and hit the garden with Roxie and a cheese stick. Roxie loves cheese sticks so I figured this might keep her still, but it had the complete opposite effect. She went mental.

Rather than sit still like all those amazingly trained dogs you see on TV, Roxie decided to dance around like a nutta. At all times she didn’t take her eyes off the cheese Lisa was holding, jumping up and down, spinning round in circles and when she did stop and sit still, the only shot I got was a great shot of the back of her head.

Have I mentioned I don’t like doing this?

Anyway, after lots of attempts (and I mean a lot), I managed to get four passable images that Lisa quite liked.

In every one I had to crop out Lisa who was holding the cheese and re-compose the shot so Roxie was nicely positioned in the shot.

Luckily Lisa got her image and I’m saved from having to do this again for a couple of years.

Here are the four we liked: