No reason. Just like the pic of my dog.

Cute.

What kind of pack is your dog wearing?

Cool, this is the dog beside you in the avatar right?

Cool, what kind of dog is wearing the pack :)

Cassie is the dog in my profile pic. She's a 4 1/2 y.o. terrier mix rescued from a kill shelter in W. Virginia. Looks like there's maybe a bit of Pit in her too, but who cares. One great dog!

The pack is a Ruff Wear Approach. I won it for being the 50th fan of BackcountryK9 on Facebook!

Nice! Both on your shelter dog and winning the pack!

Did you see Ruff Wear's new climbing harness for dogs?

http://www.trailspace.com/blog/2009/07/25/outdoor-retailer-day-four-round-up.html

That's great for SAR teams! My dogs saw the pic and ran and hid!

Here's my best buddy Sebastian, a.k.a. Ralph, veteran of many hiking trips and ski tours.

The climbing harness is mildly interesting. Earlier this summer I had to abort a hike up 1800+ m Storkalkinn because I couldn't get him up over a short section where there are fixed chains to help hikers up over a ledge. He scrambled up over the first part OK with a push from me, but no go on the final few meters. This week I'll be doing a 30 km ridge traverse with my daughter and I'll have to leave him with my wife because there's a section with 8 m of exposed scrambling.

For any dog lovers out there, here's a gallery of photos of this fine beast, including a few action photos of him leaping over chairs or after snowballs:

http://gallery.me.com/rstrimbe#100150

Thanks so much for sharing those photos! I love to see dogs get out and enjoy the outdoors. I wish I had taken the time to get more photos of my dog when he was in his prime.

I know all about terrain difficulties with a dog, if only they had thumbs eh?

Yeah, but it's also pretty impressive what they CAN do. Somewhere I saw a video of a rock-climbing dog named Biscuit, scrambling frantically up cracks on some pretty steep rock.

The other big problem is skiing -- he insists on running right in front of me on the downhills and I have cut his leg a couple of times. He's one of the most obedient dogs I have ever had, but he gets pretty excited because he doesn't want to be left behind, and I can't seem to break him of that one. Not so much a problem in conditions where he can stay ahead of me or vice versa. I got a warning that you can cut a dog's tendon that way so now I tend to leave him behind, or get somebody to trade off holding him, when using steel-edged skis. But he loves snow insanely, and it's always (otherwise) a pleasure to have him along.

I saw that imprissive video about the rock-climbing dog Biscuit too.
Unfortunately Biscuit passed away few years ago, trying to accomplish the hardest climb a dog could possibly do. RiP

great photos

just thought i would add one too.

taken at hummingbird springs az.