Send in the pugs: The 1,000 Pugs project comes to Toronto

It looks like every pug will have its day thanks to San Francisco pet photographer and blogger Amanda Bradshaw. Participants in the 1000 Pugs project can have their pet professionally photographed in a unique outdoor location for a $50 sitting fee.

Bradshaw, the owner of Frolic Photography and the "thumbs" behind popular pug blog The Daily Puglet, plans to photograph 1000 pugs in a single year while raising $10,000 for local pug rescues including Toronto’s own volunteer-run organization, Pugalug. Bradshaw’s work has previously appeared in The Huffington Post and Bark Magazine. Although her regular session rates start at $275, participants in the 1000 Pugs project can have their pet professionally photographed in a unique outdoor location for a $50 sitting fee, which includes a $10 donation to a local pug rescue in each city. Each pug photographed will receive its own unique number out of 1000 and is guaranteed a place both in the online gallery and in the full-colour hardcover book Bradshaw aims to release in early 2013. Pug owners on the other hand, can expect 15 minutes of shooting time, three hand-processed images of their pug in an online viewing gallery, and free low-resolution digital downloads. With sold-out stops already completed in Atlanta, Dallas, and Miami, Bradshaw's ten-city North American tour pulls into Toronto from October 12-15, 2012, and registration for local pug owners opens today on May 3, 2012 at 11:00 a.m. EST. But it takes a village to document 1000 pugs, and although San Francisco-based Bradshaw was able to cover her own travel costs, she turned to Kickstarter to help raise money for a new laptop, back-up camera equipment, as well as additional memory and storage. In just over a month, a community of 250 investors crowdfunded her campaign by donating $15,452, a whopping $5,816 above her fundraising goal and which will now allow her to hire an assistant to help with the administrative workload. The idea for the 1000 Pugs project came from Bradshaw's own experience fostering a young pug that quickly became a permanent fixture in her heart and her home. On the 1000 Pugs website, Bradshaw shares her inspiration: 1000 Pugs is the expression of these lessons and a celebration of all the pugs who add joy and ridiculousness to the world. It’s also a way of giving back to the rescues who work so hard to save pugs in need. If it wasn’t for the little pug foster who decided to stick around, 1000 Pugs wouldn’t exist. If the success of Bradshaw’s Kickstarter campaign in any indication, it should prove to be a memorable year as Bradshaw and a community of pug-lovers come together to cast hardworking rescues and pugs, recycled and new, into the spotlight.