I just said goodbye to Roma. If you’ve been following me for a while, you can imagine how I’m doing, haha. She’s a young dog, and though she didn’t didn’t “show me the way” or save my ass or anything, she shaped me and my learning as a musher. Here’s Roma’s thread.

I met Roma on a hike we did on the fifth day of school. I wanted to take who I found out was her dad, but he was already taken and her harness was on the same hook as his. This is our first picture together, and one I took near the top. She didn’t like the camera at first :)

These are my favorite pictures. We would spend almost every Sunday morning walking on the beach. These were taken in mid-September, on the only cloudless Fall day I can remember.

This was our first solo tri. I had been harshly told that she was “too attached” to me, and it was this trip (and that comment) that I realized that I could also learn what kind of musher I didn’t want to be. That doesn’t have as much shade as it sounds - to me it’s just fact.

As a person who loves hugs in a country full of people who don’t (usually) hug, we hugged a lot. Like, a lot. This was on a group trip in November.

She learned to love the camera (or love me?) and developed the nickname Colgate because of her perfectly white teeth (see next tweet). Taken before our 9 day campout in late-April.

This is the last picture I snapped of her today, doing her nibbling that she aaaalways does. I truly believe that she knows I’m leaving, but I promised that I would tell Pilot all about her, because Roma is the dog that started it all. Onward!