Anyone who reads Outside knows that one of the best backcountry tools a man can have is his dog. Our own K9 editor, Grayson Schaffer, has exhibited the varied merits of canine utility on many occasions. But the unbelievable news last week that a dog named Oly not only survived an avalanche that killed his owner in the Montana backcountry, but did so for
several days while buried under several feet of snow, before ultimately digging himself out and plodding along to safety, only serves to reinforce just how resilient man’s best friend can be. That this dog in question was a Welsh corgi, a stubby legged herding dog from the British Isles, is all the more unbelievable. This is not a breed known for prowess in snow, or for being a ski companion, but being a herding dog, a Corgi does have tenacity and endurance, two skills that would be critical to surviving four days under thousands of pounds of snow, not to mention digging out of it and walking to safety.

I bring this up today because a blog entry I read this morning pointed out one thing that might have helped Oly in his ordeal. Scientists at Yamazaki Gakuen University in Japan were seeking to understand why it is that dogs are able to walk on snow and ice without discomfort despite their paws being naked of fur and having a high surface-to-volume ratio, which allows for more rapid heat loss. Using electron microscopy, the scientists found
that dogs have a network of tiny veins (known as venules) connected to the arteries in their lower extremities that serve as a “counter-current” heat exchange system; basically, blood is diverted into these venules and warmed before recirculating back into the body, preventing hypothermia and keeping the paws themselves from freezing. This is the same system utilized by Antarctic penguins and dolphins, as well as Arctic foxes and, as the blog’s author wisely observes, is probably an indicator that the evolution of wolf-to-dog happened, at least in part, in a place where such a trait would have been critical.

I’m more inspired by her other superpower: She weighs just under ten pounds but can sprint like a greyhound and jump four feet high from a dead standstill—and she thrives on five-mile runs. Alas, she’s not invincible. Her kryptonite? Winter.

Don’t get me wrong. B loves snow. She’ll go bounding through massive dumps (of up to four inches) until she’s nearly catatonic from cold, and it’s entirely up to me to rescue her before she’s on the brink of death. But I couldn’t bear to deny her the pleasure, especially since winter heavily overlaps with what we call squirrel season—when the squirrels spend a lot of time on the ground, gathering nuts. B’s main mission in life is to seek and destroy rodents. (No success yet, but not for lack of obsessive-compulsive effort.) Given the extended time this requires outside even in icy wind and weather, it was incumbent on me to find some winter gear that’s sturdy, warm, and flexible enough to see her through her dangerous addiction. Here are some of the best options out there.

For Snow Days
Land’s End Quilted Dog Coat
B’s first coat ever was a Land’s End model—the Pet Squall Jacket—and after five years it’s not even close to collapse. It’s water-resistant and fleece-lined but suffers from the major design flaw of having a Velcro collar closure that doesn’t hold up to constant use. I loved everything else about the jacket so much that I actually hand-stitched extra-large snaps to the collar to keep it closed. But even better, the company’s newer model, the Quilted Pet Coat, is an entirely different and equally warm design that not only solves the collar problem but also provides better under-body protection from the elements—especially in the vulnerable rib-cage area. And at $29.50, it’s the only quality dog coat I’ve found that fits a tight budget too. landsend.com

All-Natural Base Layer
D-Fa Ice Barker
Made from soft merino wool, D-Fa’s light jacket stays warm when wet and dries quickly using your dog’s body heat. While it might be a bit much for cold-weather dogs like labs and huskies, pointers and other short-hair breeds will love the added comfort—especially on days when you’re far from the living room hearth. One thing to note is that because dog’s don’t sweat, breathability isn’t so much an issue of transporting perspiration as its drying when it gets wet. $119, d-fa.com

When Speed Counts
Ruffwear Cloud Chaser
Besides making you feel like your dog is a protagonist in an eighties movie that involves a lot of aerobics (see: Jamie Lee Curtis, Olivia Newton-John), this flexible soft-shell jacket (see: spandex) envelops a pooch’s core in microfiber fleece and moves with her. This is canine activewear at its best—lightweight, breathable. Replete with racing-stripe-like reflective strips and a full side zipper, the Cloud Chaser may as well be called the Squirrel Chaser. $74.95, ruffwear.com

Crazy Cozy
Foggy Mountain Snuggler
Besides fighting those evil-natured rodents, B’s other primary aim in life is to cuddle. Foggy Mountain makes that possible even when she’s out and about. The Snuggler is not unlike the beloved Snuggie: It’s sort of a blanket that’s been cinched and folded in just the right places, providing a self-cuddling environment, so Biscuit can feel swaddled in love even when she’s lunging at pant legs out on the sidewalk. This coat is seriously warm, and on those supercold days when it takes B approximately 1.2 minutes to decide that for the sake of her extremities she’d better go back inside, this is the one I’m reaching for. $38.95, truefitdogcoats.com

For Après Chase
West Paw Design Reknitz Sweater
I just realized that for weeks I’ve been pronouncing this REK-nitz, when all along it was REE-nitz. As in reduce, reuse, recycle, re-knit. Made from reclaimed cotton—which is greenspeak for scraps salvaged from the cutting table—the Reknitz is B’s go-to in the great indoors. It comes with a pre-cut hole through which a leash can be attached to a harness for walking, but we prefer to rely on it to guard against drafts, since I’m not always around to lift the blanket draped over the couch so she can climb under. $34, westpawdesign.com

Best All-Around
Ruffwear K-9 Overcoat
When it comes down to it, the jacket I reach for most often isn’t one that serves any highly specialized purpose. Because when it comes down to it, my dog isn’t Lara Croft. For the most part she just goes on walks, every day, no matter what. And for that ongoing, essential activity, the K-9 Overcoat is, well, just right. Sturdy and warm, it offers good coverage but doesn’t smother her either, and it’s built to last. Plus, the expandable waist strap and thick plastic buckles that click into place make it the easiest one to pull on and off. Plus, it looks like a cape. $64.95, ruffwear.com

Magnolia on her bed

The problem with most dog beds is that they look like, well, dog beds. They’re basically round (or square) pillows that squash down into wafers after a few month’s use—or, worse, get chewed to pieces in the course of a few days. And their style choices: if you’re not a fan herringbone, tweed, or tartan, you’re out of luck. Enter San Francisco pet company P.L.A.Y (Pet Lifestyle And You). Started in 2010, their beds are functional, durable, and, dare we say it, stylish—more than two-dozen beds come in a plethora of colors and patterns, including denim, bamboo, and the company’s artists collection. They’re also eco-friendly, because the filling is constructed from a high-loft (and soft) polyfiber that is made from recycled plastic water bottles.
And dogs love them, if my one-year-old yellow lab  is any indication. Before getting P.L.A.Y’s bed, she’d been subverting me at night by crawling into bed after I’d fallen asleep. She was sneaky about it, too, quickly retreating to the floor when I woke up in the morning. Not exactly the Wildrose way. Now, after getting the bed (and a little extra cajoling from me) she sleeps the entire night on her new bed. (From $95, petplay.com)

P.L.A.Y.'s denim lounge bed

Let me start by saying that there’s no such thing as the “ultimate adventure dog.” In fact, I believe that all dog breeds are worthy of the “adventure dog” moniker.
Even—dare I say it—Chihuahuas. Yes, Chihuahuas.
I wouldn’t have believed this possible, though, until I met Cosette. And even then, when I first laid eyes on her at a dog adoption fair in Los Angeles I nearly kept right on walking. I was searching for a dog that would bound up 14ers with me, run recklessly across the mountainsides with me, and share a campfire with me while we stared together at stars and ate S’mores. The kind of dog that would inspire me to take grand adventures on the open road and would love nothing more than to ride shotgun with me into the distance.
And Cosette–well I wasn’t even sure that she could walk around the block with me. She looked like a sickly coyote pup. She had runny eyes, an aggressive case of mange, and she smelled like a ripe wool sock that had spent one too many days in a hiking boot.
But the rescuer who brought Cosette to the fair worked me over with the determined guile of a used car salesman. Cosette, the rescuer claimed, was simply a fixer-upper. She would only get better and more beautiful with time. Sure, when the rescuer initially found Cosette she could barely walk, was covered in scabs, and was oozing pus, but now she had an entire half a coat of fur and plenty of interest in adventures.
And if I would just be willing to fill out a bit of paperwork—and be sure to include my phone number–I could be added to the ostensibly long list of people interested in this dog.
The next morning–before I’d even made it out of bed–I received a call from the rescuer: After careful consideration and a thorough review of my paperwork, I had been selected as THE perfect match for Cosette. Of course I later found out the selection process came down to me and well, me, since I was the only person who had expressed any interest at all in Cosette.
And I’m a bit ashamed to admit this now, but I almost backed out. That’s because in addition to her health issues, Cosette spent most of our first two weeks together trembling in a corner behind the sofa and maintaining a near-constant distance of two feet.  As for our initial “adventures,” they consisted of walking around the perimeter of our apartment building.
But even the most legendary adventurers begin with small journeys before tackling Everest.
And so did we. Eventually we explored the neighborhood together. And then we climbed to Griffith Park observatory together.
And pretty soon I discovered that Chihuahuas can make fantastic running partners–especially Cosette. With her newfound adventure confidence she ran roughshod for miles over the labyrinth of dirt trails that crisscross Griffith Park.
And they love road trips! When I moved back home to Colorado, Cosette jumped eagerly into the car to be my co-pilot across the Southwest. When I spent six weeks filming in remote regions of the Four Corners, Cosette faithfully followed me up the mountains and through the deserts.
And by the time I drove to New England to film the autumn foliage on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Kancamagus Byway, and the National Historic Road, Cosette was an old pro at being my pocket-sized adventure buddy.
But Cosette isn’t a rarity in the Chihuahua world. Even though Chihuahuas are the smallest breed of dog, they are legendary for their intelligence, loyalty, energy, and bravery.
The Mayans and Aztecs even considered the ancestors of the modern Chihuahua sacred and believed the breed possessed the ability to guide the dead safely to the afterlife. And while there aren’t any Labradors in the Sistine Chapel, the same can’t be said for Chihuahuas: a dog that resembles a Chihuahua graces Botticelli’s fresco depicting the Trials of Moses.
A few months ago, I adopted a second Chihuahua, Murci, from the Ranchos de Chihuahua sanctuary in Chimayo, New Mexico. At 8 pounds she’s even smaller than Cosette. We went on our first hike as a trio this summer and Murci’s now officially an adventure dog-in-training. And while we have no plans to hunt ducks or jump into a pickup truck and go backcountry skiing, we’ve got plenty of other adventures ahead.
And Murci is a natural at it. Because, after all, she’s a Chihuahua.

OK, here’s the conundrum. You want to bike to work, but you also work at one of those exceptionally cool companies that lets you bring your dog to work. You can either teach your dog to heel perfectly beside you, even in heavy traffic (extremely dangerous), or … you can get one of these new Croozer Designs dog chariots. It’s essentially a crate on wheels and provides a safe harbor for your pup at sporting events like Ultimate™ frisbee tournaments and Critical Mass rides.

Danger at Spago, in Beaver Creek. He's such a messy drunk.

Ah, Josh, the old damnation by adulation trick. But let’s face it, you just can’t help talking about Labs.

As dogs go, I prefer the ones that can wear their mud, pull shotgunned ducks from the freezing marsh, and show up for drinks at Spago without so much as a bath. (No offense, Jack, but the blow-dried look is so Westminster.)

The beauty in a well-trained Lab—training is crucial, because without it they’re as crazy as any cur—is a go-for-broke athletic drive paired with a blessed off-switch. I’ve got two of them that sleep under my desk all day and go everywhere and do everything with me. The yellow weighs just 55 pounds and is tough, calm, and faithful. He holds out a paw for me to snip his nails and pull cactus spurs, and even Superglue a ski-edge laceration. The chocolate, Danger, is faithful.

He’s not obedient, but he’s by far the smartest dog I know. They say border collies can learn 150 words. A toddler can do that. Danger has taught himself how to open the fridge like he’s got opposable thumbs. He pretends like he’s just going to the kitchen for water, peeks around the corner to see if anyone’s looking, and then helps himself. I read somewhere that deception is one of the most advanced forms of cognition and that only humans and maybe one or two great apes can do it. It requires empathy—placing yourself in your opponent’s reality in order to outsmart him (me).

Labs also inspire empathy. That’s why Hollywood mints tear jerkers about them every few years. There’s a reason Yeller and Marley were Labs. They do the cute human things with their eyes. That and it’s a lot harder to make a thrilling scene about a boy and his dog going herding.

A light-framed field-bred Lab, can run like a husky—even Iditarod king Lance Mackey mixes some Lab genetics into his sled-dog lines—swim like a Newfy, and snooze like Homer Simpson. They do a lot of the same working-dog jobs border collies and Aussies are good at, but they excel at one in particular: hunting.

Despite being brought up in polite urban society and kept safely away from our one or two southern uncles, guys our age are finding their way back to hunting. I don’t really have hard numbers to back my claim, but easily half the guys I work with have taken it up in the last five years—most of them not having hunted with their fathers. And on this score, there just isn’t a more versatile hunting dog than the Labrador retriever. I’ve skied a lot of powder runs and kayaked some nice rivers, and I’m telling you: watching a dog you trained find a bird and then make a long retrieve after the shot is every bit as good.

First things first, I don’t own an Australian shepherd. I don’t even own a dog. I live in an apartment, in New York City, with an 18-month-old boy and at the moment my 1,000-square-feet can only handle one semi-tame animal. This puts me at a decided disadvantage against Grayson, who lives with a pack of 11 UK labs in a log cabin he built himself from trees his dogs felled using only their teeth. So while I have spent the past year reporting a book that features an Australian shepherd, in the process becoming a major fan of the breed and a believer in its all-around awesomeness, I can hardly argue from any experiential perspective against a guy who has hunted, fished, skied, hiked, camped, spelunked and forest-fire-fought (yes, I know – not an actual term) with his dogs. Grayson’s labs fetch him beers from the fridge, belay him when he’s rock-climbing, and, on cold, damp nights in the bush, lie still and flat in a line, forming a warm, living mattress on which he sleeps. So, yeah, how do I beat that?
I’ll tell you how. By reminding him that he’s the one who told me that Aussies were the world’s best adventure dogs in the first place! He said this as we were collaborating on a only partly serious Man’s Guide to Dogs for GQ*, and I was singing the breed’s praises as a tireless, enthusiastic partner in all things active. On top of everything else, Grayson told me, Aussies are ideal for Outside Magazine types because they’re the only dogs you can reliably bike with. They can and will (happily) keep up for rides that last all day, have only limited chase instinct (their job, after all, was to contain cattle, not pursue it), and unlike other herding dogs, don’t have a bite or nip instinct. Thus, according to Grayson, the Australian shepherd makes the ultimate adventure dog. That alone means I win, but in the interest of a good argument, I will add a few further scraps of evidence.

1. Nearly all dogs get tired, eventually. Labs, as much as they really, really (really) want to stick with you, will eventually wear out and want a beer and a down-filled LL Bean bed. Aussies, on the other hand, are tireless. They will run until you can’t anymore, and then they will run more.

2. Aussies were bred to herd just about everything, including cattle. These are animals that don’t always enjoy being harassed, and have horns and hooves they don’t hesitate to deploy. Aussies had to learn to dodge said weapons, and any dogs that were afraid of large, angry animals were removed from breeding programs. Thus, today’s dogs are pretty much unfazed by things like bears and mountain lions.

3. There is no more athletic dog on earth. A good Aussie can outrun a speeding bullet, leap a three-story building, and swim the English Channel. It is one of the few breeds you will find excelling at every recognized AKC dog sport: agility, obedience, tracking, dock jumping, etc.

4. They’re really smart, consistently near the top of all dog intelligence rankings.

5. They love their owners. A lot. Which means that even if they don’t 100% love whatever it is you’re asking them to do, they’ll do it, and will be happy just because you’re happy. The breed’s nickname, after all, is the Velcro dog.

*that certain people took way too seriously

Josh Dean is an Outside correspondent and the author of the forthcoming SHOW DOG, which HarperCollins will publish in February 2012.

Some people have Burning Man. For the last two years, I’ve cleared my schedule and made the 17-hour drive north to a certain repurposed mine-foreman’s house in North Dakota. On the agenda for the week: pheasants. My editor recently asked me if I was really taking a vacation and driving cross-country just to kill things—again. To be fair, chasing ditch parrots, as the Nodakkers call them, makes at least as much sense as driving to a place that’s good for riding bicycles or kayaking down a freezing rocky river where you could drown, or any of the other things we do for fun.

The simple explanation, for the uninitiated,  is that bird hunting is actually more about the hunting dogs—British Labradors for most of us—than anything else. Here’s an animal endowed by nature to run faster, jump higher, and smell more acutely than any human. And through years of selective breeding, patience, reinforcement, and, who are we kidding, the occasional profane outburst, a good Lab will put those inhuman abilities to work for the handler. Occasionally, when everything aligns perfectly—bird and gun and scent and dog—it can seem like the connection between retriever and handler is plain English.

It’s that connection that brings this same crew—most of them from Alaska—together ever year. We all have dogs out of Mike Stewart’s Wildrose Kennels in Oxford, Mississippi, and we all do our best to train using the low-force, positive-reinforcement ethic that Stewart promotes. Getting together means getting a lot of good dogs together. When you turn 15 dogs loose in the same pheasant field, there’s either chaos or there isn’t. Mostly, there isn’t.

Here, then, are the (unofficial) rules of dog etiquette for people who take their gun dogs seriously—but not too seriously.

1. Your dog might be the best dog in the field back home, but that likelihood lessens with each mile driven.
2. Undersell your dog—always. He can speak for himself.
3. Everytime you’re about to brag about your dog, stop yourself and complement another dog’s fine retrieve from the day, instead. Don’t worry, this is not a selfless act because,
4. Only the underdog can overachieve. The best the overdog can do is meet expectations.
5. If your dog breaks and steals a retrieve from another dog, you must berate your dog loudly. This is for the benefit of the other hunter and will have no effect on your dog’s behavior whatsoever.
6. OK, now put a leash on him.
7. Never give another guy a hard time about his dog. Believe me, he knows.
8. Instead, refer to number 3: Acceptable: “That dog sure has a lot of drive.”
9. When your dog honors, then makes a long retrieve through heavy cover, and returns with a lightly wounded bird, you’d better sound at least as happy as an eight-year-old girl who’s been given a pony for Christmas. (Not saying my dog has ever made a retrieve like this. But man, Jay, Duke sure makes those long falls look easy, don’t he?)
10. When your dog leans against you, it either means that he’s trying to dominate you or that he has an itch he’d like you to scratch. Your call.

Danger: Let me just slip into something more comfortable

If you’ve ever experienced that problem of a wet or muddy dog messing up your furniture or car upholstery, here’s a solution from same folks who make the FURminator fur remover. The new FUR Dry wearable dog towel simultaneously dries your dog’s fur and keeps it from making contact with, well, anything you don’t want to smell like a wet dog. Works great for post-grooming, too.

Next week, wildlife photographer Art Wolfe releases a compilation of his favorite dog photos from around the world. With and introduction captions and intros by noted dog-book author Jeffrey Masson, Dogs Make Us Human ($30, Bloomsbury) illustrates the universal bond between humans and dogs.

“Our relationship with dogs is the single most important symbiotic relationship between humans and another species on the planet,” writes Masson in his introduction, “the most delightful and in many ways still the most mysterious.”

Wolfe’s photos span the globe. Dogs Make Us Human introduces readers to Kelpies herding sheep in New Zealand, sled dogs pulling sleds in the northern Cascades, and Yorkies in cute outfits. Put it on your coffee table.