A Christmas Portrait : Pets: Twenty-four dogs and cats wind up on Santa’s lap for the Humane Society’s fifth annual photo session with St. Nick.

Tony and Jeanne Carabajal have high hopes it will be the winter of their dog’s content.

So on Saturday, only a week after Halloween and three weeks before Thanksgiving, the couple decided that Daisy Mae was ready to visit Santa Claus for her annual Christmas portrait.

“She really is our baby,” cooed Jeanne Carabajal of Ventura as her husband lovingly brushed 8-year-old Daisy Mae’s tangled white fur. “Daisy, look up now.”

In all, 24 pets barked and meowed their way into Santa’s lap for the Humane Society of Ventura County’s fifth annual year of pet photos with St. Nick at the Ojai shelter.

Most of the four-legged creatures, sporting bright scarlet bows and reindeer antlers, were less than enthusiastic as they faced the camera to the sound of “ruff-ruff-ruff” and “ho-ho-ho.”

“She was excited until she got here, and then she thought it was the vet’s. She does not like the vet,” Jeanne Carabajal said, watching Daisy Mae squirm as a big red bow was placed around her neck.

If the pets were less than enthusiastic, their owners and most of the shelter’s workers were having a good time, gushing, “Isn’t that adorable?” and wriggling fingers to bring out the best in the beasts.

“This is the most fun we have this time of year,” said Jolene Hoffman, director of the Humane Society and one of Santa’s helpers. “We see the negative most of the time. The animals are hurt or abused. Now we get to see healthy and happy animals.”

Besides, Hoffman said, “The staff really loves to see me making a fool of myself jumping up and down and making noises to get the pets’ attention.”

Hoffman was indeed jumping up and down, making animated “eeh-eeh-eeh” sounds in an attempt to capture the attention of the most reluctant animals. Helpers had no trouble, however, getting a pinto horse named Mr. Emish to dress up for Santa.

“We had a big bow on him. He looked so cute,” Hoffman said.

The cost for a basic photo is $10, but for a donation, owners can also get negatives, she said. The sessions with Santa will continue from noon to 3 p.m. at the shelter each Saturday before Christmas, except for Nov. 30, and on Friday, Nov. 22.

Photographer Lesley Lorensen of Ventura has contributed her skills to the fund-raiser for the past five years.

During that time, Lorensen said, her pet photography skills have been, well, purrrr-fected.

“We meow at them. We tempt them with dog bones,” Lorensen said. While most of the models are cats and dogs, at least on one occasion an owner brought in a pet rat.

“We’ve done birds, goats, horses. But the horses didn’t get to sit on Santa’s lap,” she said.

And though many of the animals are nervous, “we’ve never had a Santa Claus bitten,” Lorensen said. “The worst accident we had was we had a Santa Claus tinkled on last year. It was a chow puppy. He was so excited that he tinkled.”

Santa’s helpers were well-prepared for emergencies with piles of towels stashed behind a desk. But only Breezi, a 3-month-old shepherd-Doberman mix, left a small puddle on the floor several feet from Santa’s green throne.

“Yeah, yeah, good dog!” Santa said as the puppy barked and snapped at his beard.

Fred Lloyd of Oak View was under the snowy-white beard, sitting in front of a tree festooned with doggy biscuits and cans of kitty food. For three hours he endured being nipped by a terrier and crushed by a pair of three-foot-tall Doberman pinschers.

Lloyd, 68, said he has posed as St. Nick before, but his previous experiences were in elementary schools. Except for the fur, children and pets are much alike, he said.

“They’re so natural,” he said. “Some of them give Santa a great big kiss.”

This year, as he looked at the sun-burnt hills of Ojai, Lloyd added, “It’s kind of hard to get into the Christmas spirit so early.”

If Lloyd was a bit unprepared for the season, most of the owners said they were eager to celebrate.

Mari Williams, an assistant office manager at the shelter, couldn’t resist the thought of celebrating the holidays without some souvenir of her two kittens’ first Christmas. So after bundling Charlie and Grady up in a cage, she brought them to the shelter.

“They might be kittens from hell,” Williams warned Lloyd as she deposited them onto his lap. “Here, Grady. Here, Charlie.”

Later, Williams planted kisses on the two felines and put them back into the cage.

“I’ve got two ducks too,” she said as she prepared to leave. “But they didn’t want to come.”