We never had a dog while I was growing up. I didn't really know what it meant to have a dog until last year. Up until then I would say that I've been afraid of them. I never quite trusted that they wouldn't just turn one day and see my hand as a potential meal instead of just something to lick. Over the past couple of years I got to know an old Staffy. Her name was Buffy - because she was strong, not because she was a vampire, I think. At first when I would visit, I would run into the kitchen and jump up onto the kitchen bench to get my legs away from her. Though as time passed, she got too old and sick to bowl me over, and I also learnt how to deal with an excited dog running at you. More and more I have noticed them around, in houses, at farms, etc. After staying in Dovre, I got stuck on the top of Dovre Fjælled (mountain) for a while. An old lady picked me up in Dombås and dropped me off at the top. I was a little worried. I could hear wolves howling in the distance and there were 60 kilometres to the next town. No one was stopping for me. Who would want to stop on the top of a mountain on a highspeed highway? It was pretty hilarious. Wasn't too cold, luckily. Only -5 I think. Anyway, I decided to wave my arms at the next person passing, as if something was wrong - that way they would have to stop, and I'd get a lift at least to the bottom of the mountain. The next car did stop, though she was a young Norwegian girl who laughed at my performance and said she would have stopped anyway. Her name was Idynne, and she had a sleeping puppy in her boot. She told me about growing up hunting with her father, and receiving a gun for her twelfth or thirteenth birthday. She also told me about how they use dogs to scare the birds from the undergrowth in the forests, which is what she hoped to train her own puppy to do. And then, also the simple pleasure of going camping or staying in a hut on the mountain by yourself, with your dog by your side. The idea of "sitting by the fire and listening to it crackle, while your dog lies next to you..." Robyn Davidson, Australian explorer who walked accross from Alice Springs to Perth in the 70's, might say she couldn't have done it without her dog. It gave her a sense of safety, because she could rely on him to react if there was danger nearby, and it gave her a friend when she was wandering thousands of kilometres from anything and anyone. In Grong, I stayed in an old farmhouse that had been in the family of my host for generations. They had a dog. A white labrador, pictured above. A big, goofy, but calm dog that said a hello and then relaxed around the house. Again, I got this feeling. Something I have never understood before - that a dog really is a friend. Comfort and company.