2008 was a really good year!

Well, another year as a gypsy dog has come to a close, and I decided to start a blog to share how it went with my friends.

After a pretty long winter working on the mountain where I'm in charge of security for a publishing company, we headed out in late April for West Virginia. I'm a pretty big fan of West Virginia - there's lots of deer and other critters to chase, and generally we go there once in the spring and a lot in the fall. This trip was excellent because I got to get on some whitewater up there for my first time. I rafted the Cheat river canyon with the pack leader, which was incredible.

Me and the big dog on the Cheat.

We stopped for lunch in the canyon, but the hunting wasn't very good in the rocks and they didn't give me much of the good food..

We went back to the mountain for a couple of weeks of work after West Virginia, then we headed out to Idaho. Idaho has got to be one of my all time favorite places. We do this river there called the Middle Fork of the Salmon, and it's totally sweet. There are tons of deer and other things to chase out there, and so many smells to sniff that it was absolutely unbelievable.

The first day there was snow, which gets me pretty fired up!

Me in the wilderness.

There are these pools of hot water that the people sit in out there, and it's really boring. Not only that, but it's hot to hang out anywhere near them.

Here's me and the boy after acing a big rapid.

After Idaho we went to Oregon and Washington, which are great places but the weather is usually lame. The temps are pretty pleasantly cool, but the hunting sucks in the constant rain. We end up staying in the den a lot of the time.

Our pack lives in this big moving den when we're on the big trips. This picture is when we were hunting in BC in summer of 2007.

Here's me and the girl in the moving den. It's my bed, but I let them sit on it sometimes.

I let the boy on it too.

The coolest thing about Washington this year would have to be the cool bitches that I got to hang out with.

That's Lily, me and her did the Middle Fork together back in 2005.

It's not a great picture of her, but that's me running with Bella. She's this hot shepherd bitch that rolled with us for a week in Washington.

On the way home from Washington we went through Yellowstone, which is my favorite national park. I got to bark at some Buffalo as we drove by, and I scared one so bad it ran away! After that we camped in Wyoming, where I found some excellent dead stuff to chew on. It wasn't as excellent as the giant elk antler I found in Washington (the pack let me bring it home), but it tasted really good.

I chewed dead stuff while the girl did yoga.

After we got home, we went to West Virginia a bunch, but we didn't get any good pictures. Back at the office, I'm allowed to hunt while I guard the place, which is a nice deal. I got a fat rabbit, but we didn't get any pictures of that either.

Anyway, this is me with my squeaky bunny, which is what I get to practice on when we're inside the home den.

We got one last cool trip in late in the year - we spent the night out in my favorite wilderness near our den. It's called Middle Prong Wilderness area, and this is the first time I got to stay there overnight. I even got to scare a bear out of our campsite in the middle of the night.

This is me pouncing on something in Middle Prong.

That's it for 2008. I got a good visit with my granddad at the end of the year, and now we're at the winter den doing some hunting around here. It's cold and most of the critters are gone until spring, and the bears are sleeping too. I'll have more updates when we get into more adventures in 2009.