I've made a trailfriend of a dog for a brief period. Once some friends and I went on a hike to a couple of local peaks on the rim of Anchorage (Knoya and Tikishla) At the trail head a local dog befriended us and followed us. My friends were going to camp out the night, one of those brief Alaskan affairs. Since it was still light and quite pleasant, and I had the harbinger of an illness coming on, I decided to do the remainder of the hike and go home early in the morning. The little dog followed me, and it turned out that the final bit up Tikishla was steepish in pressed snow footprints, nothing super hard or technical, just needing one to pay attention. And somewhere along the way the dog abandoned me. I headed back to the trailhead and spent the next day not able to keep anything down so I pretty much forgot about the whole mountain deal.

My friends didn't, they hiked up Tikishla and right at the peak they found the little dog, which apparently had followed up my step-like foot prints and hadn't found the way down! They escorted her off and once she was back on the lower trail she got herself back to her home, but my friends had a lot of fun with me, specially the cute one who for weeks would roll blue eyes at me and make little puppy noises.

Robo, who likes doggies and kitties and birdies and truly felt somewhat bad about 'is thoughtlessness.