Dog of the Month - Ember
Meet our dog of the month, Ember!
I recently photographed Ember and her mom at NCAR Mesa Labs in Boulder, Colorado. Their bond was impossible to miss, and capturing the connection between them was such a joy. Ember, a wolf hybrid, looked completely at home among the mountain backdrop and towering evergreens.
Here is what Ember’s mom had to say (what a beautiful story!):
“I met Ember on a rainy Monday morning on Switzerland Trail in Boulder, when she was still with her foster mom. Through the hush of the storm, she appeared like something out of folklore: wild, watchful, and utterly breathtaking. Part wolf, as her DNA later confirmed, she carried an unmistakable ancientness about her. While the rain fell around us, Ember walked directly up to me and gently pressed her head and cheek against my leg. Her foster mom was stunned because she rarely did that with strangers. But in that moment, she didn’t feel like a stranger at all. It felt like something deeper, like fate, recognition, and a quiet choosing.
Ember is my gentle giant, a breathtaking blend of wolf, Malamute, and German Shepherd, wrapped in softness, loyalty, and soul. She is calm in a way that feels almost healing, the kind of presence that steadies a room. Babies can tug on her, little kids can drape themselves over her, and she simply beams with her big, derpy smile. She is my constant shadow, my service dog, and one of my greatest sources of grounding in a world that can sometimes feel overwhelming. She is also gloriously mischievous, once so committed to emptying fridges and freezers that her dad had to install bear locks just to stop her. She burrows little beds into the earth wherever we wander, offers the kind of hugs that feel impossibly human, howls passionately at passing fire trucks, and after I taught her to swim in floaties, transformed into a water-loving wild thing I can barely keep dry. When snow begins to fall, something in her comes alive. She doesn’t just play in snow; she belongs to it, racing, burrowing, and beaming through white-covered landscapes like the wild-hearted creature she was always meant to be. Ember is more than a wolf dog. She is untamed magic, devotion, comedy, adventure, and companionship all woven into one extraordinary soul”.
