The second method is effective with any catz breed. Simply put your cat away and bring it out again. As the cat comes out, there's a chance it'll stop in the middle of the screen and go into a show pose. If it does, take pictures. If it doesn't, put it back and take it out again. Sometimes it helps to "lead" the cat with the hand cursor to make sure it ends up in profile. And also, remember to pet your cat when it goes into a show pose so that it'll become a habit.

There are a variety of other ways to get catz to go into full poses or pseudo-poses. A lot of times cats'll go into poses when you put them down, but it'll usually be a pseudo-pose where their head is still moving. You can get the same sort of pseudo-pose by putting clothes on cats. If you take the clothes off quickly and snap a picture, there's a chance you could get a shot of a decent pose. You can also get catz to pose by spraying them with the love potion, but it makes them look upset, so that method is only really effective with orange shorthairs and orange shorthair based mixies, who are supposed to look upset anyway.

Now, moving on to the criteria for a good show pose. The back legs should be as far apart as possible, with the right leg in front. The front legs should be perfectly aligned so that you can only see one of them. The tail should be slightly curved up over the back. The head should be facing forward, and the eyelids should be even. A little leniency is allowed with calicos and cali-based mixies, since it's incredibly difficult to get even eyelids out of them, and it's entirely a matter of chance.

I'm going to dissect this shot I took of my cat Sang:

Right, hope that was helpful! On to the dogz poses.

Poodles can't do either of the standard poses. I've tried everything. I've worked for hours and hours on trying to get poodles to pose and they won't. The poodle pose sort of involves lying down and facing the camera. If you have a poodle and really want to enter it in shows, my best advice to you is to hex a dane personality on it, get a pose shot, and then hex it back. That said, let's get on with the info on dog poses.

There aren't as many shortcuts in getting show poses out of dogz as there are in catz. It's also very difficult to snap a good one just while taking pictures one at a time. That's why I use my good friend, the auto save pictures button.

Using the auto save is simple. First, move all the pics in your petzpix folder to another folder. Then bring out the dog you want to get a good show pic from. Go up to the "options" menu and open "general options." Towards the bottom of the menu you'll see "camera options." Hit "auto save photos."

Pick up your dog and turn it until it's facing right in perfect profile. Start snapping pictures. The little window that usually pops up to show you the picture won't, because they're automatically saving to your petzpix folder. Keep trying until your dog goes into a show pose (deleting the extra images if it's taking awhile). As soon as your dog starts to pose, snap pictures like crazy. With any luck, you'll get a good front-pose shot and a good side-pose shot. Open up a program like Paintshop Pro and look at all the pictures and pick the best one. If there aren't any you like, try again. Repeat until you get a good pose. To turn off the auto save, use the general options menu. Remember to always reward your dogz by petting them after they pose, to make it a habit.

Now I'll analyze one standard and one front-facing pose:

I hope this was helpful! If you have any suggestions for this page, don't hesitate to shoot me an e-mail: [email protected].