Bluebonnet season: photos without the pulling

By the middle of March the bluebonnets are up along 290 west of Cypress, thick around Chappell Hill and Brenham, and in patches on every highway shoulder from Hempstead to Waller. The same week, the rodeo is wrapping up and half of Houston is looking for a reason to drive west on a Saturday. The dog comes along, the family stops on a farm road, and somebody tries to get the photo. Most of those photos have a leash pulled tight and a dog looking at a cow.

What the photo actually requires

A photo in a field of flowers needs a dog that can hold a sit or a down, twenty feet from you, for thirty seconds, while cars pass on the road and the kids run around behind the camera. That is duration, distance and distraction at the same time, which is the hardest version of any command. Our trainers call it the three Ds, and most family dogs have one of the three. The photo needs all of them.

Two weeks to a bluebonnet sit

• Week one, in the living room: sit, step back one pace, return and pay. Add a pace a day until you are across the room.
• Week one, evenings: the same thing with the television on and someone walking through.
• Week two, the front yard: sit on a long line, walk to the end of the line, count to ten, return and pay.
• Week two, the last three days: the same sit at a park with people walking past, then in the grass beside a quiet road.
• The day of: five minutes of structured walk before the photo, so the dog arrives calm rather than bursting out of the car.

Keep the long line on for the photo and edit it out later. A dog that has never been off leash in an open field next to a highway does not become reliable because the flowers are pretty.

A word on the roadside

The classic bluebonnet spots are highway shoulders, and a shoulder is a bad place for a dog. Pick a farm road with a wide grass verge, park fully off the pavement, and put the dog on the side of the car away from traffic. Watch for fire ant mounds in the flowers; they are everywhere in March and a dog that sits on one will not sit still for the photo or for a while afterward. And stay out of fields with a fence. The bluebonnets belong to somebody.

If the dog will not hold it

A dog that pops up the moment you step away is not being difficult. It has simply never been taught duration. A single private lesson, $160 at our home in Cypress, is usually enough to show you how to build a sit that holds, and the flowers are around for a month. For a dog that also pulls to the field, jumps on the photographer and ignores its name, Gold is the two week answer at $2,500, and the go-home session can be in a field of flowers if the timing works.

Written by

Best Dog University Team

Board and train trainers in Cypress, Houston. 16+ years, 900+ dogs. About our team