The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. – Mohandas Gandhi

By Mary O’KEEFE

The holidays are a time to share with one’s family and for many that family includes pets.

On Saturday, Dr. James “JD” Speas, owner of Crescenta Cañada Pet Hospital, continued a tradition that began about five years ago: Santa Speas – Pet Portraits.

Pet parents showed up at Crescenta Cañada Pet Hospital with their animals all dressed and ready to celebrate the holidays with a family portrait including Santa Speas.

“It is fun,” Speas said. “But taking photos with pets isn’t that easy.”

Getting a child to sit on Santa’s lap is one thing but to get a dog to stay calm and look into the camera takes a lot of patience.

“Some are a little intimidated by Santa,” Speas said.

But luckily Santa Speas has help from several elves who understand how to get that perfect holiday card photo.

“We just wanted to do something fun for the holidays,” said Jessica, Speas’ daughter and co-worker. “And [Speas] was willing to dress up as Santa so we wanted to do it.”

The event has become very popular and the staff added an extra hour this year to make certain every pet had their 15 minutes of paparazzi time.

This year the photos were taken outside so most of the pets were dogs, but there was at least one brave cat named Snowball who posed for the perfect picture.

“This is the first time we [did this],” said Narineh Avant.

She and husband Jason had put a harness on Snowball and got her into her crate to bring her to the event. When asked how they got the cat’s cooperation, especially surrounded by so many dogs, Jason answered, “Food snacks. We gave her lots of treats.”

  Charly Shelton, Mary Okeefe