Free Printable Back to School Sign for Dogs

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All over my timeline this week, there have been photos of kids, with backpacks holding back to school signs.

They’re like mug shots only more colourful. Mom friends tell me these photos are meant to celebrate back-to-school, but other than the fact that I had crisp new pencil crayons, I don’t remember celebrating the end of my fun summer as a kid. Still, it’s a cool tradition to take a photo once a year, recording the things your kid is currently loving. Time flies and years later, it might be hard to remember little details. So I got to thinking?

Why don’t we take yearly photos of our dogs?

I mean, Kolchak has grown and changed so much over the last 12 years. One of my favourite things to do is flip through old blog posts to remember old stories, see his old favourite toys and relive happy times. And I though HOW STINKING CUTE would it be to do “back to school photos” for the dog?

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I absolutely love how this idea turned out, so I decided to share the blank dog back to school sign as a free printable, so you can take photos with your own dogs.

Here’s how:

Download the free printable sign at the bottom of this post.

Print it

Fill in your dog’s favourite things. I used Papermate Flair pens because I think the colours compliment the colours I used in the printable quite well. You can get ’em on Amazon.

Not super confident with hand lettering? I feel you boo. Before I took a lettering class from Cindy Guentert-Baldo of LlamaLetters fame, I hated hand lettering too. (Snag her book, yo. She makes lettering easier than it looks.)

It’s cool though! Download the PNG version of the sign and open it in Canva. This free online photo editor is really easy to use, so you can add the text you want it and print it, easy peasy.

Once your sign has been customized to your special doggo, have them sit in a spot with good lighting (outside is great for pictures like this!). I used a photo frame to prop up my back to school sign and added a dog binder, a few notebooks, some Crayola markers and my apple stacks as decoration. Totally unnecessary, but by now, I think we all know I’m extra AF. This is super cute whether you add the extra props or not!

If your dog is Kol who was ALL KINDS OF UNCOOPERATIVE for this photoshoot, you can bribe them to look into the camera with treats. Have a hesitant doggo? Check out our tips for photographing a camera-shy dog.