The Importance of Prioritising Animal Welfare When Photographing Pets for Advertising
This article was originally published in Edition Dog Professionals Issue 2, June 2023
It’s no secret that photos and videos of dogs sell. In fact, it’s common for marketing trends in the human industries (think mainstream fashion, lifestyle and travel brands) to filter down to the pet industry over time. Just take pet influencers as an example; there are so many dogs with hundreds of thousands, or even millions of followers online, some even earning a full-time income from the content they and their dogs create.
We’re a nation of dog lovers, with around one third of households in the UK having at least one dog. This figure has experienced a surge in recent years, largely thanks to the increase in pet ownership during the COVID-19 pandemic and UK lockdowns. It’s easy to understand why so many of us can relate positively to seeing dogs depicted in advertising.
Of course, when photographing humans, especially children, there are plenty of additional processes that must take place by law. However for dogs, it’s not as comprehensively regulated. Commercial pet photography and videography for advertising is somewhat of a grey area in terms of best practices. This is partly due to the classification of dogs in UK law being closer to ‘property’ than that of a child or member of your family, despite our emotional attachments to them resembling the latter. With recent changes to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, which now legally recognises that animals, including dogs, are living, feeling beings with complex thoughts and emotions, it may be a matter of time before the classification of pets in UK law is updated to reflect our close connection and family-like bond. Though at the moment this is purely speculation.
I graduated with a degree in Photography from Falmouth University in 2015 and started working directly with pets and their owners as a commercial photographer a few years later. I’ve worked with pet industry clients including Dorwest, Eden Pet Foods, JR Pet Products, Pet Head, Henry Wag and K9 Connectables to name a few. I pride myself in putting pets first when it comes to my work and I am known for renegotiating briefs in order for them to promote higher animal welfare standards within a project. At the end of the day, I think it’s important to remember that an animal cannot directly consent to being photographed and this must be reflected in how we work with them and their owners in commercial contexts.
When working with animals, there are two main organisations whose guidelines I follow. Firstly is the RSPCA’s Guidelines for the Welfare of Performing Animals, which includes information relating directly to how you should handle and interact with animals on any commercial set (including TV/Film productions, as well as using dogs for advertising and marketing campaigns.) The second set of guidelines are from the British Veterinary Association’s Pets in Advertising: A Social Concern, which is focussed more on pets’ five welfare needs and how that translates into responsible image interpretation and use in advertising.
It is also recommended that photographers have an Independent Animal Welfare Advisor that they can consult about projects and who can attend productions in-person if required. This is usually someone with a veterinary or animal behaviour background. I consult my advisor, Beth, a Registered Veterinary Nurse with additional qualifications in canine behaviour, nutrition and communication. We discuss specific image ideas and concept requests in a brief and how ethical they would be to create and for the client to use in their upcoming campaigns. We then report back to the client with our thoughts and collectively amend the brief as required. Here’s why it’s important to consult an Independent Animal Welfare Advisor, such as Beth and what to look for when sourcing someone for the role.
‘As a Registered Veterinary Nurse and therefore a member of the RCVS (Royal College of Veterinary Surgeon) I made an oath on registration. Within that oath is a line that ”Above all, my constant endeavour will be to ensure the health and welfare of animals committed to my care.”. This oath and the regulations that surround the registration of veterinary professionals are devised to protect the public interest and to safeguard animal health and welfare. It is widely accepted that those with the right to practise veterinary medicine, either as a nurse or surgeon, should have responsibilities associated with those rights and that is why we make an oath and agree to follow an extensive code of conduct and regulations.
Unfortunately this same level of responsibility around animal care and welfare is not yet regulated for other pet professionals in the same way. As a result not all pet professionals can be deemed as equal in the feedback and guidance they may offer. For example, the behaviourist and training industry is currently unregulated. Technically this means that anyone can become a pet behaviourist without the need of specific qualifications. The closest we have come to any form of industry standards in the UK is The Animal Behaviour & Training Council (ABTC). The ABTC was launched to co-ordinate the much needed regulation of those engaged in the behaviour modification and training of animals, it provides a code of conduct and set of standards to protect the welfare of animals undergoing training and behaviour activities.
Of course, a large proportion of pet behaviourists do have additional, supporting qualifications to aid their practice but it’s important to ask about an individual’s professional experience and qualifications before consulting them as an Independent Animal Welfare Advisor.
There are a few options when it comes to sourcing potential dog models for a commercial campaign. Firstly (and the option I prefer) is working directly with dogs and their owners in their familiar environments. You can also source models via a third-party animal modelling/casting agency or you can also include dogs that your company’s colleagues already own. The benefit of using dogs in environments that are familiar to them (for instance their home, garden or local walks) is that you’ll likely get a much more relaxed model on the day, resulting in more candid lifestyle images. Another benefit of travelling to your dogs, as opposed to getting them to travel to you, is that they will be in closer proximity to their usual vet if anything were to go wrong and they needed immediate medical attention. I have previously been known to cut photography sessions short after the owner and I discovered a previously missed medical issue that was only detected once we’d started working together. Furthermore, as an owner of a dog who is nervous at vets myself, I understand the importance of keeping as many variables of a photoshoot familiar to the animals you’re working with. Fundamentally the experience of being photographed should be enjoyable for all involved, especially the pet models and of course their owners.
When working with pets on any creative photo or video campaign, it’s essential to minimise overwhelm as much as possible. When referring to ‘overwhelm’, it’s easy to assume I mean fear based anxiety. However, from my experience overwhelm can go two ways. Pet model overwhelm through excitement and overstimulation isn’t spoken about frequently enough among creatives compared to the overwhelm associated with reactivity, fear and anxiety. However, when photographing animals it is important to factor in both ends of the scale. Overwhelm can be caused by the presence of other dogs, unfamiliar people, extended periods of time on set, loud cameras and bulky equipment, particularly flash lighting that is often bright, unpredictable and noisy.
Typically I find pets can cope with between 1 and 2 hours on set modelling before they get too tired, bored or distracted and it negatively impacts the final images. Of course this time does vary between individual models, however this is why, particularly in TV and Film, multiple dogs of the same breed and colouring are used to represent an animal character. For instance Marley from the film Marley and Me was played by 22 different yellow labradors which included multiple dogs at each age stage to reflect the 14 years the plot covers.
Avoiding overwhelm is one of the main reasons the RSPCA Performing Animals Guidelines does not recommend mixing groups of dogs that are unfamiliar with each other and haven’t been socially mixed prior to your production. This includes both in front of and behind the camera. Often productions will stagger or queue up dog models, so they can photograph a wider variety of breeds in one day. The problem with this is that there is a potential for dogs to mix with other animals they do not ‘know’ when arriving, departing or waiting for their turn on set. This is another reason why I prefer working with animals individually in their familiar spaces, as it means we aren’t pressured by time and can take work at the individual animal’s pace. This often results in better final images overall.
On the whole, when working with animals for advertising, flexibility is key. Sometimes models don’t want to play ball or chew or bathe or run around on command and that’s okay. As I mentioned previously, we must remember that these animals cannot explicitly consent to having their photographs taken, which also means they can’t not consent either. Sometimes I’ve had to swap models out of projects last minute because they didn’t want to interact with the specific product or concept. Again, this is why working directly with a photographer and their personal roster of models and owners is a good idea, as they typically have this wider flexibility available to them.
However you choose to source your pet models, it’s important to ensure they’re fairly compensated. I believe it’s imperative that both the pet themselves and their owners benefit from any commercial projects they take part in. This usually looks like a combination of gifted products for the dog, and payment to the owner. Of course, the value of each will vary from project to project but I personally like to make sure that a set percentage of the project fee is designated to model payments. Gifting items alone as a payment strategy for dog models is, in my opinion, insufficient and borderline outdated. While it can work well for smaller brands or businesses that are just starting out, I think it’s important to honour the training and time given by both humans and animal models to the project and therefore fairly pay them for their work.
Furthermore, on the topic of valuing every aspect of a production to the fullest, Beth (my Independent Animal Welfare Advisor) adds:
‘With an ever increasing reliance on social media and the development of our ‘instant gratification society,’ fancy websites and glossy photographs can work as smoke and mirrors, obscuring the questionable ethics and treatment of animals behind the scenes. The demand for rapid image turnaround times makes the allure of supposed quick fixes, easy options and shortcuts when creating content more desirable.
Taking the additional steps to seek out creative teams who actively collaborate with professionals that have relevant and appropriate qualifications and accreditations, who ensure they remain up-to-date with developments in animal behaviour science and who prioritise an animals welfare and health over any personal or business desires not only ensures that a business maintains pet friendly in all aspects, it produces better content and protects the welfare of all animals involved in the production.
Once shoot day is over, it’s easy to think the hard work is done. However, a key part of commercial photography projects comes in the post-production and curation of content. Editing down final images to your very best is arguably an artform of its own. While going through the process, you need to strike the right balance between actual vs perceived experience final images. What I mean by this is, finding the sweet spot between an accurate representation of the project shoot as it happened, as well as images that will be interpreted positively by your audience and reflect a content, relaxed, unstressed model. This is where an understanding of canine behaviour really comes into play. Another great opportunity to consult your Independent Animal Welfare Advisor for support.
The Advertising Standards Authority oversees the advertising industry, they are the self-regulatory organisation. All types of advertisements, whether TV, social media, billboards or print products need to ensure they stick to the rules. Any that don’t, can be complained about to the ASA, who will then investigate and ban misleading, harmful, offensive and inappropriate ads.
In relation to advertisements featuring animals, the ASA notes that
‘regardless of the content of an ad, all animals featured must be looked after well and should not be harmed or distressed in the process.’
Therefore once again highlighting the significance of prioritising animal welfare on any commercial production. However, this also goes one step further into post-production too. We need to make sure dogs appear calm, happy and relaxed in the final images. Now, while they may have been this way for the duration of the shoot itself, there may be moments that the camera has captured that could be interpreted differently by the image viewer.
For example, if the dog was holding a prop in one of the photos, you may have captured what looks like a lip curl as an ill-timed still image; whereas in reality they were simply grabbing or releasing the item. Another example would be an image of the dogs’ eyes wide open, while they’re turning their head, which could be misinterpreted as ‘whale eye’ - a sign of nervousness and overwhelm in dogs. While in the actual moment of photographing these images, the dog model was not experiencing these canine behaviours at all, we’ve got to be careful that the final photographs can’t be misinterpreted as expressing them.
These are of course just a couple of things to keep an eye out for when photographing dogs for advertising. The British Veterinary Association has created its own set of guidelines titled Pets in Advertising: A Social Concern. The document outlines best practises for working with animals on productions, in a similar way to the RSPCA guidelines. Furthermore, the BVA guidelines outline the Five Welfare Needs framework we should be considering when creating and curating our content. These are the need for a suitable environment, the need for a suitable diet, the need to be housed with or apart from other animals, the need to exhibit normal behaviour patterns and the need to be protected from pain, suffering, injury and disease. It goes into depth about perceived scenarios and how they could influence an image viewer’s choices and subsequently the knock on positive or negative impact this could have on domestic animals populations as a whole in our society.
So, while we all enjoy taking and interacting with pet related content, there are quite a few factors that need to be considered when we’re producing it. Hopefully some of these resources have been useful and will come in handy next time you’re on set for a project. Ultimately, if you’re prioritising dog model welfare by creating a healthy, happy and relaxed environment for your dog models throughout, you’ll increase your chances of more successful, well-received final images as a result of the project.
If in doubt, ask your photographer and creative team for a pet-specific portfolio before booking them, as well as enquiring about their Independent Animal Welfare Advisor, their qualifications and the practices they have both put in place to prioritise animal model welfare throughout projects.
