How to prepare your pet for an exhibition: Main secrets

The New Zealand National Dog Show is only a few months away, and dog owners across the country are already hard at work ensuring that their animal looks as good as possible. But even if you’re not taking part in this fantastic event, it’s still worthwhile putting some time into grooming your pet and ensuring they are always looking their best.

And if you don’t have a dog and instead chose a different animal, you can still benefit from a few tricks regarding grooming, photography, and other ways of making sure everyone can see just how beautiful your animal is.

We’re going to look at a few great ways that pet owners can get their pets looking absolutely tiptop at all times.

Every pet has unique grooming needs

As far as grooming goes, it’s essential that you work out what’s right for your animal. Naturally, dogs and other animals vary widely according to breed. However, they also all have their own personal needs and requirements. Your animal may have very different needs to an animal of the same breed and age.

If you have the money for it, it can be worthwhile taking your pet to a professional grooming service. This is especially true if your animal is long-haired, or any other kind of high upkeep, such as allergic. Professional know exactly how to care for a wide range of different animals, and can ensure that yours gets the best treatment possible. That said, if you’re willing to invest some time and effort, you can save money and get exactly the same results at home.

Cats are considerably lower upkeep than dogs and generally require less attention. Regular brushing is worthwhile for longhairs, and all breeds benefit from the occasional trimming of their claws, but otherwise, you can generally leave them to their own devices.

Dogs, on the other hand, can benefit from a bath once every three months or so, or more if they have skin conditions or spend a lot of time outside. On top of that, you want to ensure they get a regular brushing to remove any hair.

If you keep your pet clean on a regular basis, it will be a lot easier ensuring that it looks its best in any exhibitions or shows you want to put it in.

Be prepared to be very patient

As to the shows themselves, a huge amount of how your pet looks depends on getting them to hold still. Dogs that run all over the place doing what they want rarely make for great photos. Most dog owners these days put in the time to ensuring that their animals are able to obey a few basic commands.

If you’re planning on putting your dog forward for a show, or even just trying to get some great pictures of them, it’s worthwhile going through the motions to make sure they can stay still for that perfect pose. With cats, your options are more limited as they tend to do what they please. However, if you’re lucky enough to have a fairly calm animal, you can get a load of great pictures with minimal fuss.

Regardless of the temperament of your pet, you will have to be extremely patient, both in shows and in photography situations. Unless you’re extremely lucky or have trained your pet extremely well, you’re going to have to get through a whole lot of dud pictures before you get that perfect one. But with enough patience, and enough trial and error, you should be able to coax some beautiful snaps out of even the most trying pet.

There’s nothing more rewarding than getting a few perfect photographs of your beloved pet. When done right, whether at a show or outside of one, pet photos are able to reflect the unique personality of your animal. While it may take some amount of effort and training, the final results are more than worthwhile.

My name is Leah Green. One of my biggest love is animals. I wish all of them to live happily surrounded by the care by owners. Max Polyakov Animals Foundation shares the same interests. Learn more about this organization and its help to these little creatures.