Using a digital camera to photograph a black dog

Hello,
I have a black toy poodle and when I take her photos she comes out as a black blob. My camera is a Fuji finepix S1000fd and I am not a photographer. She is also a fidgit so will not stay still for long. Somewhere on the internet I read about overexposure, underexposure, backong off etc but can't remember where I read it. The more technical answers on these pages go straight over my head

Get the manual out, read the bit about 'exposure compensation'. You can go + or -. You want to go plus. This makes the camera spend longer soaking up the light. Everything, including your black dog, will be brighter.

Good point. If you're taking pics inside you'll almost certainly need flash to stop motion blur. If you cannot find a setting for fill flash use the camera's portrait setting - it'll use fill flash.

Fill flash is just normal flash but on a lower power. It's intended to get rid of ugly shadows on the face etc that can be caused by the sun/lighting overhead, hence why the camera uses it in portrait mode.

Oh for the return of the old days when I knew everything I needed to do in the dark room and knew exactly where I stood. We had first access to a limited import of an American black and white film called 2475 and as well as its name, that was its ASA speed!

I could have photographed your black dog in an unlit coal cellar, developed and printed it within an hour and every detail would have shown up.

These days I have Photoshop CS8 and can do absolutely nothing!