Meet my dog! After all I am DogGuy =p

Hello steemit community! Meet Sky! Short for Skylar. She'll be 10 years old in October and has been the love of my life for the last 9 and half years. I figured I'd spice up the /introduceyourself thread with some fun stories about Sky. Now obviously most of you out there don't know Sky but the best way I can describe her is to say she's the most sophisticated dog that I know. I actually Googled sophisticated to see whether I was on the right page or not and got; having, revealing, or proceeding from a great deal of worldly experience and knowledge of fashion and culture - yup that's her.

Puppy Sky

Sky was born October 28th, 2006. She was 1 of 9 pups in her litter and was actually the alpha female (came out first). There is no question if you were to meet her - you'd know right away she was an alpha. Although she's very non-confrontational she likes to have control of the situation. The picture above is her at about 6 weeks and that's her on the right with one of her bothers and one of her sisters.

She was a pretty damn cute dog. It was hard not to love her.

Growing Up

So when I got Sky I was 19 years old and a sophomore in college. Sky was born about a hour south of Canada and for the next 3 years got to spend her time living in Northern Virginia. Summers were hot, fall was hot, wintered were kind of blah. Although both Sky and I prefer the cold winters, she never passed on an opportunity to bake in the sun.

Having lived with Sky for almost 10 years now, I could not even fathom the amount of times I've been asked;

• hey did you know your dog has two different colored eyes?
• is that a wolf?

Really both questions make me laugh. I've replied to the first question with everything from a very passive "i do know" to a shocked and surprised "SHE DOES?! No, I didn't know!".

Almost a day doesn't go by where someone asks me if she's a wolf. 80% of the time it's young kids and the other 20% is black people. With kids it's often a very soft "is that a wolf" curious to pet her and with black people it's a surprised jump back 3 feet and exclaiming "jesus christ that thing is a fucking wolf!! Yo is that thing a wolf?"

What's funny about both situations is that Sky really doesn't like people. And it's not so much that she doesn't like people but you really have to earn her respect for her to not go all alpha on you. So most of the time when people approach her or she can sense they are approaching she'll go all alpha and start barking/howling at you. Scares the shit out of most people. I swear to god she can smell fear.

Teenage Sky

Man have we done a lot of road trips. Growing up in MN and going to school out in VA we would make the drive back and forth a few times a year to visit the family. We've hit up NYC, we gone out to WY. Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh - we've kind of been all over.

But regardless of where we are in the country or what the weather is like - we almost make time everyday for our walk. It's without a doubt both of our favorite time of the day.

This is Sky's best friend Che. We lived together (with Che's owner) awhile back and oh man was that wild & crazy. Never again can I live with Sky and a second dog.

Adult Sky (yay now my phone takes better pictures)

So for probably the last 6 years now we've been back up in Minnesota. The winters are cold, fall it's cold, spring it's cold - other than Summer, it's usually cold - and that's definitely how we like it. The picture above was taken at 5am on a day where we got 2 feet of snow. She was already awake and looking out the window ready to play ;)

We have had some good walks in the snow over the years.

What's cool about those last 2 pictures is that they were taken on the coldest day of the year. It was about -35f (-37c) at the time I took those pictures with the wind blowing at about 20mph. In that bottom picture you can really see how hard the wind is blowing... Well worth the frozen fingers in my opinion =)

New family members & friends

So we were lucky enough to add a new member to the family this year. Sky actually has done pretty well considering she usually kills most things that are the size of our baby. Now instead of the two of us everyday there are 3 of us on our walks. And as an FYI we typically go for our walks during normal working hours (I work from home) which is why my wife doesn't join (although she does on the weekends). So if you were wondering how there was a 3rd without a 4th - that would explain that.

Nothing like a good ol' stare-down to see who's going to break first. After about 30 minutes Sky got bored and the racoon actually won.

So really there's not much more to say other than Sky is one hell of a dog. We've been through a lot together over the last 9 years. It's hard to even think back to those first few years when I was still 19-20 years old and we were just traveling the country having a good time. Now we have a family, live in a quiet neighborhood and enjoy our daily walks together. People still mistake Sky for a puppy and given that she's almost 10 years old people often don't believe me when I tell them her age. The easy answer to that is "well we go on a lot of walks". I highly encourage all you other dog lovers out there to make sure to take the time to get your dog proper exercise. It's not only good for them but it's also good for yourself ;) A tired dog is a happy dog.

Probably wouldn't be right to end this post without some cat tax. Thanks for reading!