Meet our Eras pups – James, Betty, August, Inez, Red, Marjorie, Clara, Tim, Archer, London and Peter. As Taylor Swift wraps up the European leg of her world tour in London this week, we wanted to celebrate her story-telling with some of our own, so we’ve named a litter of pups from her songs titles, characters and lyrics.
If you follow the Guide Dogs accounts on social media you’ll be used to lots of lovely photos – from working guide dogs, pups in training, to a cute bundle of puppies. Often these images are taken in the moment by the person who is with the dog at the time – but when you need to get 13 dogs in one picture you definitely need reinforcements! Here’s a behind the scenes look at what went into a Guide Dogs photoshoot for this Gorgeous litter.
Our future guide dogs are born in the homes of volunteers, so in late July we visited a mum and pups at home, taking with us an armful of friendship bracelets, and bagful of Eras Tour-themed props – and the all-important photographer.
A lot of planning goes into a photoshoot – getting the right people there, detailing what images we want to come away with, and above all, making sure that it’s fun for pups, and that we don’t ask them to do too much. On the day we had a Breeding Dog Advisor, Ellie, there to make sure that the pups and mum Sandy were comfortable and happy, members of our social media and press team to get the images they needed, and someone to get some behind the scenes shots, and manage timings and flow.
Even then, you have to adapt to what happens on the day and be ready for the unexpected, like a sudden heatwave. Our dogs’ welfare is always top priority, and as small puppies are especially vulnerable to hot weather, we re-planned the day before the shoot, moving to an earlier start to avoid the higher temperatures, and fitting in less outdoor shots than we’d anticipated. The result was that we got the images we needed, whilst keeping our future life-changers cool and calm.
In addition to the 11 pups, our volunteer Lyndsey has the pups’ mum Sandy and grandma Wispa. You’d imagine this makes for a hectic household, but Lyndsey is an experienced Breeding Dog Volunteer, and everything was calm when we arrived, with pups sleeping in their roomy pen with a large fan keeping them cool. Sandy met us at the gate, delighted to see us and in great condition, despite feeding 11 hungry pups! She accompanied us to the door where we met Lyndsey, and discovered Labrador grandma Wispa. With several Swifties in the team we were delighted to have 13 dogs there, including The Black Dog…
It's one thing to aim for the perfect image of a whole litter, but another to actually capture it, with eleven energetic and inquisitive pups. Top of our wish list was a photo of all 13 dogs – which we got, albeit with some of the pups making a break for it! We also wanted some shots of our characters – and the photo of James and Betty, with August looking on, came out just as we wanted. What you don’t see in the finished image is the people carefully placing the pups on the lawn, then quickly running out of shot so neither they nor their shadows can be seen!
With the outdoor images in the can, and the sun getting fiercer, we brought the pups inside to sleep. They loved the squashy toy Reputation snake we’d bought for them and cuddled up all round it. With the fan keeping them cool our photographer carried on working, getting some cute shots of them relaxing, while we got some informal snaps of Sandy getting lots of attention from Breeding Dog Advisor Ellie, whom she adores! Lyndsey explained that Ellie is here regularly to check in on the mums and the pups – and as soon as Sandy sees anyone in a Guide Dogs uniform, the tail starts wagging because knows she’ll be made a huge fuss of! With the photos taken we left the pups to sleep and came back to the office to write social posts and press releases, so everything was ready when Eras Tour fever comes back to town…
Find out what it’s like to volunteer as a puppy raiser for one of these future life-changers.
