If your friend was a professional photographer, wouldn't you do the same thing with your dog?

We talk a lot about dogs and kids at Dogster — how dogs are the new kids, how dogs aren’t the new kids, how having dogs is like having kids, how having dogs is not like having kids, even how having dogs and not kids makes you lonely and bitter (thanks for that one, Pope Francis!).

But we haven’t heard from someone who just said, “Screw it, we’re done, let’s just make our dog our kid.”

Meet Jan and Chase.

That cute ball of squee in the middle there? Snuggles. This is a happy family.

In a fresh, modern twist on the ailing, tired newborn-photos genre, Jan and Chase brought Snuggles into the mix. Jan’s friend is photographer Jamie Clauss, of Count It Joy Photography, and after Jan saw some recent newborn pictures Clauss had shot, she got misty-eyed.

“She saw them and thought they were beautiful. She said it made her wish she had a newborn baby to do that with,” Clauss told Today.com.

Enter one handsome Jack Russell Terrier, Snuggles. Soon, they were snapping away, having a blast, laying the foundation for something that would take over the Internet. Look how amazing:

“It was very hard to keep my composure and not wake Snuggles up,” Clauss said of the dog, who slept during most of the shoot, according to Today.com. “She was so comfortable and snoring and I’m standing over her on the bed and trying not to laugh out loud and wake her up.”

Of course, we were kidding up top. Jan and Chase do not really think their dog is a baby. This was all a fun shoot. The photographer is their friend, and they saw a great way to do something creative with their dog. Don’t write weird things in the comments about how Jan and Chase think their dogs is a baby — they’ve had enough of that on other sites, because the photos have gone widely viral.

“People seem to love it,” Jan told AL.com. “It’s funny how it all came together.”

Visit Count It Joy Photography to view the full gallery.



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