National Geographic grantee Cedar Wright and Alex Honnold love adventuring. For their latest journey, the two biked nearly 800 miles and climbed 45 iconic mountains in the American Southwest. The two were in the midst of the expedition they dubbed “Sufferfest 2” when they stumbled across something completely unexpected – a puppy!
“Sometimes you’re in the middle of nowhere and you gotta go, so you just pull off and pee behind a bush,” explained Wright. “I have to pee so I just stop on my bike randomly in the desert and all of a sudden I hear this whimpering sound and at first I can’t figure out what it is and then I look and there’s this little puppy curled up an old tire hiding from the wind. I quickly realized that he had been abandoned.”
They had no idea how the puppy got there, but they immediately knew he had to come with them and they adopted him as their mascot, nicknaming him “Sufferpup”.
They had a few (mis)adventures with the puppy, feeding him string cheese, which unfortunately ended up as poop in their sleeping bags. That prompted them to improvise and build him a cool little cardboard shelter from a beer box. The pair were thankful for Sufferpup’s company after a long day of biking or climbing.
“[I]t’s really heartening at the end of the day to come down and have this adorable little puppy to cuddle with,” says Wright. “Without Sufferpup I don’t know if we would have made it.”
I think Sufferpup probably thinks the same of them, as he wouldn’t have survived without them. “He went from being this shivering close to death creature to being filled with energy and his coat started to look all rich and he really became this happy little puppy,” Wright says of Sufferpup’s transformation.
Watch their happy trek with Sufferpup and what happened to the dog when they finished their trip! Hint: “Sufferpup scored. Some friends of ours adopted Sufferpup and now he’s eating organic dog food in Boulder, Colorado. So happy ending for Sufferpup.”
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