C/O Geoff Fitzgerald
Fetching Studios is Hamilton’s first professional dog portrait studio and the hottest new place to photograph your pet
Conveniently located near Gage Park, a great location for a walk with your pooch, Fetching Studios opened its doors this past December as Hamilton’s first professional dog portrait studio. Using fun backdrops, themes and props, Geoff Fitzgerald and Vanessa Marion-Merritt, husband and wife and the founders of the business, aim to capture your dog’s charm and personality.
Fetching Studios started as the couple’s passion project. They had just adopted their Old English Bulldog, Taffy Lee Fubbins, or Taffy for short, and as new dog owners, the idea spurred out of their own interest in taking pictures of their dog and their love for her.
With more than 20 years of photography experience, Fitzgerald is an award winning commercial and editorial photographer and videographer. He photographs and edits the portraits, while Marion-Merritt, who has an extensive tech background and currently works in product management at Shopify, manages the website and handles other backends of the business.
“We started to realize how much a dog in somebody’s life is a family member and how much love people have for their pets,” said Fitzgerald.
He also didn’t want to go to people’s backyards to take photos of their pets; he wanted to create a professional space people normally don’t have access to or can’t recreate. Thus, the idea for a studio ultimately formed to provide dog owners with not only the pictures, but also the experience associated with the process and working in a studio.
They offer 60 to 90-minute sessions with five to six slots available on one weekend per month. Bookings for Fetching Studios can be made on their website where you can also find other merchandise items including tote bags and T-shirts. Clients will have access to a trickle trunk full of various props, dog costumes and accessories for their dog’s shoot as part of the experience.
“The real meat and potatoes for us is the actual experience you have while you’re at the studio . . . It’s the images at the end, but what we’re really selling is a really engaging and a really fun experience the pet and for their owners,” explained Fitzgerald.
At the end of the studio session, customers will receive 15 fully edited images. If they would like, prints are available in other formats as well, such as a larger poster. Fitzgerald and Marion-Merritt are very flexible on the products they can offer.
Besides Taffy, the couple owns a tabby cat named Pepperoni, or Pepper for short, and two hairless rats named Finster and Heiter. Although the studio is focused on dog portraits for now, in the future, they hope to expand their services to other animals and pets as well. Eventually, the couple also hopes to offer more session openings per month as the business continues to grow.
In terms of the reception to this new business, the reaction to the studio’s opening has been unanimously positive.
“I think having these beautiful, high-end photos of our pets is such a great memento to have. So, in general, the response has been extremely positive,” said Fitzgerald.
They have also received attention from other local small businesses as well. One of the businesses they are collaborating with is Grain & Grit Beer Co., a dog-friendly craft brewery just around 10 minutes from McMaster.
On May 29, Grain & Grit Beer Co. will be hosting Summer Dog Days, a dog-focused patio event featuring a variety of local vendors. Fetching Studios will have a booth there and will be offering a five- to 10-minute dog portrait sessions. Visitors will also receive a discount coupon for a regular session at the studio.
“Other local businesses see what we’re offering, see the products we’ve got and want to get involved. They want to connect with other local businesses, support each other and help each other out,” Fitzgerald said.
Moving forward, they are looking forward to integrating and connecting with more businesses, local animal shelters, charities and pet adoption agencies.
“Not only do we want to offer a service, a product, photos and an experience, but we also want to make sure we’re doing our part in helping out whenever we can and helping out in the dog community to try to give back as much as we can as well,” said Fitzgerald.
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Super Bowl XLIX may have been a tight game, and Missy Elliot might have outshone Katy Perry and the shark backup dancer on her left, but the real story of Super Bowl weekend was Puppy Bowl XI. At 73-45 to Team Ruff, this year’s game was the highest scoring one in its prestigious 11-year history. Surge the hamster got the workout of his life, as he had to run overtime to power the scoreboard.
This year brought many new additions to the Olympics of canine sport. The penguins of yesteryear from Happy Feet have danced their way off the Geico field, to be replaced this year by a new squad of cheerleaders – dwarf goats! They didn’t disappoint as they went baaaaatshit crazy for all the plays.
It’s also the first year the dogs were placed into separate teams, the yellow Team Fluff and the green Team Ruff, because someone finally saw through the cuteness of it all and realized that previous years have just been pups chasing their tails. Teamwork does indeed make the team work, because this year’s dogs played harder than any bone thrown at them.
The half time show was played by Katy Furry, but last Friday night must have taken a toll on her, because she couldn’t manage to purr through her hits in her blue wig. The dogs in the barking lot were not pleased, and Twitter exploded with so many memes that Grumpy Cat must be a bit nervous on top of her giant mountain of cash.
Speaking of Twitter, the game was live tweeted by Meep the bird, but a human had to step in because Meep got distracted by all the bird related emojis on the phone. Looks like someone’s wings are getting clipped.
Cara, the 14-week old Shih Tzu from Team Fluff, emerged from a roster packed with talented pups to be named the Puppy Bowl XI. In her rookie year, just like everyone else, Cara scored double-dog TDs, with a particular highlight when she recovered from a stumble at the 10 and pushed Bubba and the toy noodle in her mouth into the end zone. That bitch didn’t even see it coming.
While Cara carried Team Fluff in the first quarter, Team Ruff made a strong comeback early in the second. Labrador Retriever mix Bryan Adams somehow managed to paw a ball through the uprights, and in the process scored the second Field Goal in Puppy Bowl history. Unfortunately, it was downhill from there for Team Fluff.
One memorable play involved a fight for a noodle toy. The two dogs were pulling so hard that everyone wondered why the referee didn’t make a call. The camera panned out to show that he was too busy kissing all the other pups. In a moment of glorious payback, Bubba grabs another toy and trots her way past the two feuding pups and into the end zone, because no one was watching it.
Overall, Puppy Bowl XI was one to remember, though not as memorable as the livecam where this reporter saw a mother repeatedly eat her puppy’s poop. Talk about taking one for the team.
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By: Megan Vukelic
This Welcome Week, McMaster welcomed more than just first-year students. Scout, a one-year-old border collie, is the newest addition to campus as part of a partnership between the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Hamilton-Burlington SPCA.
Scout is currently going through therapy dog assessment administered by the SPCA. The goals of the program are threefold: helping students de-stress by interacting with Scout, promoting services offered to social science students, and bridging the gap between students and faculty.
The program has stemmed from a pilot study led by James Gillett from the department of Health, Aging and Society, which focuses on the nature of bonds between humans and animals.
Gillett describes Scout as a canine ambassador for the faculty. While McMaster has had therapy dogs in residence as well as Mills Library in the past, Scout will be social science centric.
“In the residences there is not as much access to everyone,” said Gillett. “This program will make the services available to all social science students.”
However, Scout is more than just a therapy dog. “The program is not exclusively for mental health. We are trying to do both – help students deal with the stresses of campus but also give them tools for success.”
He explains that often students that need academic and personal services the most are also the most reluctant. Having therapy dogs available will make these programs more accessible and make students more likely to feel comfortable to pursue them.
Similar programs have been implemented in universities across Canada. At the University of Alberta, students are able to take registered therapy dogs for walks around the community. At the University of Saskatchewan, professors with their own therapy dogs have been bringing them to campus as part of an initiative to foster connections between faculty and students.
Therapy dogs on campus have helped reduce the fear that some students have when approaching professors or faculty. Gillett expressed his intentions of incorporating such techniques into the program at McMaster in the future, in order to foster greater community within the social science department and improve student experience.
Students in the Faculty of Social Sciences have been overwhelmingly supportive of the program, recognizing the benefits for students. Daniel D’Angela, Welcome Week planner for Social Sciences, expressed his support of the program after meeting scout at Faculty Day while he greeted incoming students.
“The SPCA dog program is a great way to provide opportunities for students to de-stress with the added bonus of promoting resources that the University provides,” he said. It is the intention of the program that Scout will have more of a full time presence at McMaster in the following school year once he has completed the therapy dog program, and will hopefully be accompanied by more furry friends.
