Christmas cards with your dog in them

A third of the sleigh cards brought the dog

From November 9 to November 14, 307 people made 429 Family Reindeer cards. Those counts leave out every card made by us or by our test browsers. On 139 of the cards, from 105 people, someone tapped Add the dog and gave us a photo of their own dog. That's 32% of the cards and 34% of the people. Everyone else got the stand-in corgi, who has taken it very well.

There's one thing to know about where these people came from. Nearly all of them found the card through our ads on Facebook and Instagram, and those ads show a dog driving the sleigh. So they'd seen a dog on the card before they made one. A third of them putting their own dog in that seat is a lot, but it doesn't tell you what all dog owners would do.

The bigger surprise was who came along with the dog. Half the cards without a dog were one person on their own (150 of 290). With a dog, only 38 of 139 were one person and the dog, and almost half (66) had three people or more. The average dog card had 2.6 people on it, against 2.0 without. We think that once someone remembers the dog, they start thinking about the whole household, and the card turns into the family photo.

Which photo of your dog works best

Use a photo of the dog alone. Of the 139 dog photos people gave us, 131 had no human face in them, and that's the right call. The card draws the dog in its own seat, so a photo where the dog fills the frame gives it the most to go on. A dog cropped out of the corner of a group shot comes out small, and usually soft.

Pick a photo where you can see both eyes and the nose, taken in daylight and from the dog's height. Skip the costume, because the card gives the dog a tiny Santa hat anyway. If your dog has one thing everybody knows him by, like a single white ear or a patch over one eye, choose a photo that shows it. That's how Grandma will know it's really him.

Put the dog in the dog's spot. On 35 of the 290 cards without a dog, someone had put a photo of an animal, with no person in it, in one of the people's spots. Those spots are for people, and the card draws everyone in them as a human in antlers, so we can't promise what a dog's photo turns into there. Tap Add the dog instead.

The people's photos matter just as much. Our photo check flags any face that's out of focus, and it flagged 396 of the 2,369 photos people have added since November 3, about one in six. A sharp selfie beats a blurry group shot.

Three dog cards, worked through

The most common dog card was just one person and the dog, with 38 of them. For that you need two photos, a selfie in good light and one of the dog. Tap Add a photo for yourself, then Add the dog, and that's the whole job. You pull, and the dog drives. "Santa outsourced. We work for treats." would sit nicely under it.

Four people and the dog came up 32 times, nearly as often as two people and a dog (35). Use one photo of each person. They don't have to come from the same day, or even the same year, so the ten-year-old's school picture and Dad's selfie from the car end up in the same sleigh. Our test family made this one. They're made-up people, a mom, a dad, a girl of ten and a boy of four, and they have a corgi.

The full sleigh, five people and the dog, is where we got it wrong. On November 9 the card let you add five people and then offered Add the dog, but with all six photos in, the button to make the card wouldn't start it. One person tapped it nine times, then spent 26 minutes swapping photos in and out. Since November 10 the dog doesn't count against the five, and 15 cards so far have had five people plus the dog.

Whichever card you make, let the dog sign last. Our Christmas card from the dog page has 75 lines in his voice, and the humans can sign underneath.

If you're taking a real photo with the dog

Most advice on dog Christmas photos is about getting the dog to sit still for a family shot, and it comes down to a few things. Shoot near a window in the morning, get down to the dog's eye level, hold a treat just above the lens and use burst mode. Stop after five minutes, before the dog decides this is a punishment. Our Christmas card photo ideas post has 21 setups you can shoot at home, and a few of them star the dog.

And if the group shot never comes together, you don't need it. One photo of the dog and one of each person is enough for the card to put everyone in the same scene, with the dog in charge.