Pet photography comes with all kinds of challenges and getting the right pose will often seem impossible.  Dogs are usually easier to work with than most other pets, but even they can cause frustration.  Years ago I photographed a high school senior who was an avid horse lover.  She wanted a portrait of her with her horse. I showed up and expected that it would be an easy shoot.  How wrong I was.  Every time I tried to pose the two of them together the horse wouldn’t cooperate and shied away every time I raised the camera to take a picture.  The owner was quite surprised and had no explanation for this unusual behavior.  I thought perhaps the camera was spooking the horse and tried to pose the two of them together without the camera.  It didn’t make any difference.  The horse just wouldn’t get anywhere near me regardless of the camera.  After several failed attempts, I almost said forget the horse. The day was a bit on the breezy side and, while still contemplating a solution, a gust of wind suddenly blew my hat off my head. What happened next was a complete surprise to me and the owner.  The horse calmly walked over to the girl and assumed the pose we were looking for.  After all the attempts to get the horse in the picture, it turned out that the camera wasn’t the issue at all.  It was my hat!  For some reason the horse just didn’t like my hat and decided not to cooperate.  Needless to say, we all had a good laugh and I was then able to shoot many great pictures of the girl with her horse.  That’s the challenge of photographing pets.  Sometimes it can be the most trivial thing that creates a trust issue.