Truffles must be the smallest dog I ever had the pleasure to photograph! She's a one-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, with the biggest ears - living in Amsterdam with her loving owners. Originally we wanted to shoot on Truffle's Gotcha Day but the weather had other plans (it's Amsterdam after all) - however, another date was found quite quickly and we were able to shoot with Truffles in her lovely community garden.
Within the first few minutes, Truffles got very upset, distracted and even feisty with the neighbourhood cat - but luckily I always plan for these unforeseen circumstances. We gave Truffles a few minutes to calm down and shake it off and after ten minutes she was the perfect little dog. To put it into her owners' words:
"Truffles isn't reactive to much, but she makes an exception for the neighbourhood cat, who made an appearance all of two minutes into the shoot. It took us a full half-hour just to calm her down enough to be held. At one point, Truffles tore off towards the bushes to hunt the cat down and I thought we were going to lose her in the undergrowth. Suffice to say that within 10 minutes, the humans were as stressed as the dog. And yet somehow... Somehow, amongst all this chaos, Nicky managed to find so many moments of love and connection and even (amazingly) serenity. Of Trails And Wonders is right: the trail was our communal garden; the wonder was that not only did Nicky manage to capture Truffles's sweet-yet-feisty character perfectly, but she also took photos that made the humans look... well, actually pretty good. Nicky, thank you for the memories"