I walked into the laundry room at my mom's house to meet my new puppy. I was on a lunch break from a local supermarket and only had about half an hour to spend. He was a pup of only a couple of months in a crate, hungry, nervous, weary from a long day of car rides, and had messed on himself a little. I was in love. I named him Roy. He was mine. And 13 years later, he still is.

We started going on hikes and mini-adventures and his faith and companionship were remarkable from the beginning. I have written it somewhere before, but he's the Chewbacca to my Han Solo. As I've waded into deep and freezing waters to take pictures, he's repeatedly tried to follow. He can't swim. It was there, as he waited impatiently on the shore as I stood in fast, hip-deep water, that I first turned the camera on him and snapped a few portraits quickly realized he was an amazing subject.

As I changed formats and mediums and styles and approaches in my photography hobby, he has always been a constant. I could have a lousy photography outing but a nice little portrait of him standing near me was always a silver lining. It's now grown to the point that he holds perfectly still as soon as I raise the camera to my eye, and then as soon as he hears the distinctive shutter snap he saunters off resuming his thing. I've accumulated a lot of portraits of him and began posting them years ago on Flickr (a photo-sharing website for those not familiar). I began posting weekly images of him under the cheeky guise of "Whippet Wednesday."

In celebration of a Whippet Wednesday long overdue, and a belated nod to his recent birthday, I present you with a treasury of some of my favorite film images of Roy.