Guinness and Riley were still just puppies when I photographed them this past spring.  Their dad had recently finished building them an amazing custom dog house complete with their own little porch, water bowl and mini adirondack chair.  I mean really, it just doesn’t get any better than that!  One of my personal favorite shots from their session was when their father stuck his head through the dog door to surprise and play with Guinness and Riley and the girls rushed right up to give him kisses!  What a sweet and silly moment and what an adorable family!

I first met Sara Berry in 2001 at the University of Hawai’i in a photo lecture class.  We both were majoring in photography, loved dogs (she had a Doberman at the time named Sampson that I adored), her husband was in the Navy and my husband (boyfriend at the time) was in the Army, so Sara and I quickly became great friends.  Sara has a great blog and you can see a photo of Sara at my wedding here (she’s the one holding her adorable son, Hunter).  Ever since I have known her, her husband has been almost constantly deployed to the most dangerous areas around the world for almost a year at a time.  He is able to come home for a short while before leaving for another long deployment.  I still don’t know how they do it but I am so grateful to them and all of the families that make these tough sacrifices to help keep our country safe.

I’m sure you have heard many wonderful and touching stories on the news about soldiers befriending sweet doggies in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Sara’s husband has an incredibly close bond with a dog in Afghanistan named Aslan and they need our help to get him to the US.  It is an incredibly complicated and expensive task to get a dog out of Afghanistan and can cost around $4,000 per dog, you can read Aslan’s story here (Sara’s husbands face has been blurred for his protection because he spends a lot of time in very dangerous places all across the world and it’s just safer for him this way).

Sara and her husband are good, hard working, honest and such kind people – the type of people that you know would always be there for you no matter what.  If you have it in your heart and can afford to help donate, you can do so here by clicking on the orange Chip In button on the right.  I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how I can help them and decided that a special was definitely in order!

For one week only (1/21/12 – 1/28/12) if you book a session with Photography by Sara Riddle (which can take place anytime within the next year) I will donate 100% of your session fee directly to the fund to help bring Aslan home.  If you book a session during this time I will also include one high resolution digital negative and four 8×10′s of your choice for free.  That is $425.00 worth of products that you will get completely free.  I have never done this before and most likely will never offer anything like it again so take advantage of it while you can!  Any session fees/ donations that exceed the amount of Aslan’s needs will be donated directly to the Afghan Stray Animal League to help bring other soldier’s dogs home.

Photos courtesy of Sara Berry.

After a long and courageous fight, Max sadly lost his battle with lymphoma several days ago.  I originally photographed this sweet boy back in 2009 and my heart goes out to his family who loves him so dearly.