Some dogs walk into a session at their peak: muscles warmed up, zoomies fully loaded, ready to perform for the camera. Madigan is not that dog anymore, and she has zero interest in pretending otherwise. At 17, she’s earned the right to lie down for most of it, which, honestly, made this one of my favorite sessions of the year.
Won at a Fundraiser, Kept for the Story
Kristen didn’t find her way to Bark & Gold through a Google search or a friend’s recommendation. She won this session at a Coaches vs. Cancer Kickoff Reception, the kind of auction item you bid on hoping you’ll get around to using it someday. Someday turned out to be exactly the right time.
Ten Dollars, One Resemblance, No Turning Back
Madigan’s story starts with a goodbye. In Kristen’s words: “I had to let go of my childhood border collie after 16 years and about three months later, saw Madigan at a local rescue. She looked so much like Pepper, that I adopted her on the spot. [It was the] best $10 I ever spent!”
Her name, fittingly, means “little dog” in Irish. Ten dollars and a resemblance to a dog she’d just lost—that’s not a plan, that’s a gut decision, and it’s held for 17 years.
No Coaxing a Seventeen-Year-Old Into Anything
Kristen came into this session with the kind of honesty I wish more people led with: “She is very in her own world. She may ignore you completely. Or she will sniff and move on. She has a little anxiety, but mostly just goes with flow at this point.”
As for posing, Kristen put it plainly, sharing, “Whatever she will give us! Her sit isn’t very poised any more. She prefers laying down.”
So that’s what we did. No coaxing a 17-year-old border collie into a sit she doesn’t want to hold. Madigan brought a slow, low-energy, entirely-on-her-own-terms approach to the whole afternoon, and that’s exactly what makes this set of portraits hers and no one else’s.
An October Afternoon, At Her Own Pace
We met at Mingo Creek Park in late October, chosen partly for logistics (Kristen was driving up from the Morgantown, WV area) and partly because a wide-open park in full fall color is hard to beat. Kristen wanted space for Madigan to move at her own pace, and that’s precisely what an overcast October morning at Mingo Creek delivered.
Kristen wanted the session to do one thing: capture Madigan’s spirit.
As she put it, “She was always so active [and] kept me active. We have hiked and ran many many miles together. Even as she has gotten older, she finds spunk here and there. She will start to chase a neighborhood cat, until she realizes she isn’t a young pup anymore. She still has that stubbornness of a border collie, but will cuddle sometimes as well. She has been very clingy to me her whole life. Now that she is losing some senses, her nose always finds me in a crowd or at home.”
That’s the kind of detail you can’t direct a dog into giving you. You just have to be there, watching, ready when it happens. Watching the two of them together, that connection hadn’t faded one bit; if anything, 17 years in, it had gotten more specific.
An Album, an Acrylic Block, and One Dad Who Called Dibs
At her ordering appointment, Kristen chose a fine art album with just over 20 images, bound in a Natural Driftwood fabric. She also selected a black-and-white acrylic block—requested, unsurprisingly, by Madigan’s dad, Dwayne (the guys always claim the acrylic blocks first, no exceptions). Rounding it out was a complimentary 5×7 matted print, part of her original auction win.
Between the album, the acrylic block, and the print, Kristen didn’t walk away with a gallery full of files she’ll mean to do something with eventually. She walked away with artwork already living in her home.
If your dog is more “lay down and let the world come to her” than “sprint toward the frisbee,” that’s not a problem here. That’s just who your dog is right now, and it’s worth capturing exactly as-is. Reach out and tell me about your dog. We’ll figure out the rest together.