I am in awe every time I meet a service dog and I have been fortunate to meet several because of my photography career.

Service dogs provide assistance to people with physical and psychiatric challenges and this is Koda, a young black labrador retriever. Her human is Hannah and Koda helps her because she has bipolar disorder.

Hannah and her partner Linsey run Limitless Freedom Dog Training. I met them several years ago when they responded to a model call I put out for a commercial photo shoot.

If you follow my Instagram, you’ve probably seen their dogs before because over the last few years, whenever I have commercial clients that need dog models, I usually contact them first. Their dogs are beautifully trained and gorgeous and when I’m doing commercial work having well trained dogs certainly makes my job easier.

So I’ve photographed their dogs a few times but it’s always been for commercial work. This year for her birthday, Hannah asked her parents to gift her a photography session so this photo shoot was all about Hannah and her dogs.

As I am typing this now, I am wishing I’d taken photos or videos of their van when they met me. Their van is the ultimate dog mobile. I don’t remember how many crates and dogs they had in it but there were several!

I remember thinking, what a life for these dogs! They get to go out and about all day every day and have adventures.

Koda is technically a rescue. Limitless Freedom had worked with her back in 2019 and when that family needed to rehome her, Hannah and Linsey took her in. After she settled in, it was apparent that she was a special dog and they began assessing her temperament for service work.

At the time, Hannah was in need of a new service dog because her collie Luna had a routine medical procedure that left her unable to eat solid food. Because of her medical issues, Luna needed to retire so Koda took over the role of Hannah’s bipolar disorder alert dog.

Thankfully Luna is doing well.

As a dog photographer, I get to meet a lot of dogs and occasionally I meet one that really makes an impression on me.

Luna is one of those dogs.

She is the first collie I’ve ever met. I’ve never really been drawn to the breed but something in me clicked when I met her.

She is gorgeous but it’s more than that. Her personality is so calm. She puts me at ease whenever she is around. She has that kind of affect on me.

I’m sure she was a wonderful service dog for Hannah.

That photo above of the tattoo: those are the sound waves of Luna’s bark. How cool is that?

Service dogs are incredible creatures and Koda and Luna are definitely in that category. I am grateful to Hannah and Linsey for entrusting me to capture these memories for them.

This is a blog circle and our topic this week is Working Dogs. Next up is Jessica Wasik with Bark & Gold Photography, sharing tips for setting up a pet-friendly home office space to accommodate your dog. Be sure to click the link at the bottom of each post and you’ll make your way around the circle. Happy reading!