will run for nutella & wine: An Ode to Vera

One year ago today, I was scrolling around Facebook during a break between classes (there's a good chance it was in the middle of a class...) and the local favorite animal shelter Animal House had just posted a picture of a brand new puppy - Eden. I jogged over to the shelter over lunch and met this little 18 pound mini-lab look-alike. She was so shy! She just stared at me from across the room while I sat on the floor. After a few minutes of this, she tentatively creeped over towards me, sniffed my hand and crawled into my lap. That was about it for me. I was dating this guy at the time, and things were getting pretty serious between us - serious enough that I had to wait for little Eden, soon to become Vera, to meet his dog, Abbeygale, before making any decisions. But I knew right away that I was going to take her. I adopted her 3 days later, and I have never looked back.

I can always count on her to want to be over-top excited for a run, and her least favorite thing is when she sees me lacing up my trail shoes at 5AM, because that usually means she doesn't get to come along. She seriously has the Stoke. Within days of her adoption, she'd already summited Horsetooth Rock twice and hiked/ran a few miles on Towers (a true FCTR dog from the start).

She ran her first, well only, race on Halloween this year, and even let me dress her up as a bumble bee for the event. And she kicked butt (we won our - my - age group). I've been taking it slow'ish with her in terms of building up her running mileage, but she's gone as far as 11.5 miles with me in a single clip. I have high hopes for her being a true ultra-runner dog one day.

And she is the ultimate road trip companion. Except she doesn't hold up her end of the conversation all that well and prefers to sit on the plastic center console instead of the big front seat that's usually open to her (well that part is just weird). She listens great though! But in our year together so far, she has been all over the state of CO, through Arizona and Utah, and back and forth to NJ for Christmas. She's been from the Grand Canyon to the Appalachian Trail and back. There aren't even all that many people who can brag about that!

Vera loves to road trip in very uncomfortable looking positions

She also is a great camper. Her first camping trip was a mini-backpacking foray around Grey Rock, where we camped in pretty darn cold temperatures. She was quite the trooper, and cuddled up warmly against my then boyfriend to keep him warm (his sleeping bag was wayyyy too light-weight for an early spring camping trip). Since then, she's become quite the pro, though she gets a bit iffy on actually eating food when we're out in the woods. Trying to dig chipmunks out of their holes, as seen below, occupies a much more prominent spot in her mind than hunger.