The ultimate feat!
Margaret from Tasmania sent me the following remarkable photograph.
I just had to share it with you, indeed I share the whole article.
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Woman Manages To Get Her 17 Pets To Pose For Incredible Family Paw-Trait
By Jess Hardiman, 3rd December, 2019
A woman has achieved the ultimate feat for any pet owner, having managed to get not just one of her animals to pose nicely for a photo, but all 17 of them.
Kathy Smith, 30, is the proud owner of eight dogs and nine cats, who she somehow wrangled into an incredible family paw-trait.
Mind you, the accomplishment didn’t easy, as Kathy spent two weeks trying to get the perfect shot. That’s right, a FORTNIGHT – I guess they do always tell you never to work with animals; now I can see why.
It turns out the dogs were up for the challenge and sat quietly for the camera, but it was getting the cats involved that proved to be more difficult. Like trying to herd… well, cats.
Numerous warm-up photos show the eight well-behaved pooches in place, with Kathy bribing Ruby, Ben, Max, Sheba, Teddy, Rio, Storm and Misha to ‘sit’ with a handful of treats.
Then came the moggies, a process that saw shop assistant Kathy dashing back and forth with her camera on standby, hauling the cats back into place several times.
Kathy eventually got them all into position and captured a split-second snap of the 17-strong pack before they scattered to return to their pressing everyday lives.
Kathy, from Corwen, Wales, said: “I was so thrilled when I I’d captured this shot – it’s like a little family photo.
“I love all of my pets so much so I was really happy when I managed to get them all posing together – despite it not being easy to do.
“I kept trying to get photos of the cats and dogs all together but some of them were always out of frame.
“The dogs will all sit for treats so that was easy enough, but the cats were another matter.
“I now know the real meaning behind herding cats – I had to just keep picking them up and putting them back until they stayed.
“It took about three attempts but in the I managed to keep them there for a couple of seconds and get the photo before they were off again.
“We live in quite a chaotic but you get used to it.”
Kathy, who rescues and cares for pets and other wildlife in need, said people are often surprised to see her giant four-legged family when they come to visit her in her three-bedroom semi-detached home.
She has three German Shepherds (Mishka, Storm and Max), three border collies (Sheba, Ben and Rio), a mongrel called Ruby and a Yorkshire Terrier Maltese cross named Teddy.
Along with the nine cats, she also has four budgies, several fish and even a baby hedgehog in her care.
Kathy “People are usually shocked when they come over and realise how many pets we have, the house is but we’re used to it.
“They all run and you don’t there’s a lot of them until they’re in one room.”
Featured Image Credit: Kennedy News
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One can easily get Jess’s background for it is on the same page:
Jess is a journalist at LADbible who graduated from Manchester University with a degree in Film Studies, English Language and Linguistics – indecisiveness at its finest, right there. She also works for FOODbible and its sister page Seitanists, which are both a safe haven for her to channel a love for homemade pasta, fennel and everything else in between. You can contact Jess at editorial@ladbible.com.
Brilliant! To be honest I don’t really know how Jess pulled it off!
Learning from Dogs 
Wow! This woman has my respect. I struggle to get Mags to sit still to take a selfie & she manages to wrangle 17 animals including felines! That picture is amazing.
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Absolutely, Susan. I just don’t understand how Jess did this. We can’t do it with six dogs and one cat!
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Kathy “People are usually shocked when they come over and realise how many pets we have, the house is but we’re used to it.
Now, I can relate to that 🙂
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Remind me, John, how many dogs and cats you have down there in Brazil?
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16 🙂
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No wonder you saw eye-to-eye with Jess! Ever tried taking a photograph, John?
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All together? Never. Plus, we’d never get Bela in, as she’d be too busy trying to kill the cats.
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Actually, we came with 16 dogs when we came to Oregon but I can’t really remember how it was now.
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An Exodus
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🙂
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I’ve been thinking that I would love to publish or republish articles that talk about your dog rescue story, John. The chances of us coming to Brazil to do it ourselves are just next to zero!
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Well, you’d be more than welcome if you did come. Our stories aren’t all that glamorous, though. Apart from the first two (cats from Sao Paulo) all he others have just been off the streets in our little community on the hill.
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That’s kind of you to offer. Jeannie’s dogs were likewise rescues from the streets of San Carlos, Mx. What’s your nearest airport? I presume that is the only way to travel realistically?
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Sao Paulo. We’re about 120 kms n/e on the way to Rio. Embraer is based here in SJC (so we have great aerospace infrastructure, and a huge runway), but our airport has only one commercial flight a week. Rio and SP are easy drives away, so all the airlines left us.
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I see that it’s about a 17 hour flight. I’ll chat to Jeannie but not today as our Ruby is at the vet undergoing a procedure; been there since yesterday afternoon.
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Sounds complicated. Hope she’s OK. Boris and Bela are going to the vet tomorrow at 9am. Boris for an op to remove a growth on his ear, Bela for an ultrasound.
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Likewise, I hope Bela and Boris are alright.
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Oooops, 13. 7 cats, 6 dogs.
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Gold star for THAT effort! ⭐️Taking images of multiple pets is the hardest work a pet parent will do!
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I would amend that ever so slightly, Monika. That is that taking images of multiple pets is the hardest, most pleasing, work a pet parent can do!
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Absolutely. And “fails” are often the best images.
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Quite so!
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