Meet Pupaya. She's now 16 years old and could be one of the most photographed dogs in America. Once a sad, weak, injured rescue dog from Aurora, Illinois this trusting soul joined my family with a warm heart and has never looked back.

In my Chicago studio years, Pupaya went to work with me each day to greet the customers and employees with a tail wag or two and was our favorite test subject. Whenever we ran film and digital camera tests, added new lights, or even when we had family portraits in the studio, we could always count on Pupaya to gleefully hop up on the shooting table and sit pretty for a picture or two.

There are actually families in Chicago that bought 30x40 inch prints of their photo session with us with Pupaya sitting in with their kids. No kidding. When we had little kids that were not really happy about having their picture taken, we would have Pupaya race across the studio and with a single leap hop up on the posing table and let us move her around for the photo. The kids would laugh and we captured a great shot. Here's a fun picture of her posing for a website article with glasses on.

Today she no longer can leap up on the table so I use the "DadEvator" (the Dad Elevator - ha!) to raise her up and pose like the silly Labrador mix that she is. We look forward to many more years and fun test photos with our favorite studio pup.

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