UKC

Just came along this story of a Nepalese stray village dog accompanying a group up Baruntse:

https://blog.usejournal.com/stray-dog-climbs-23-000-mountain-89c5ddd57285

Which brought some nice memories of local dogs opting to come with us up various peaks in Georgia and the Caucassus and the Balkans, even for days at a time Guarding our tent and such...

I remember hearing about a dog that went with mountaineers up Kazbegi and another one at Shkhara in Georgia, but this one might hold the altitude record

Any other stories of local stray dogs going with you when mountaineering or hiking?

I've never experienced it, but I'd get nervous in some countries if a stray started tagging along; one of the first signs of rabies is that the animal loses its natural wariness.

We had a dog follow one of our Gold D of E teams for a couple of days on an expedition in the Asturias mountains in Spain. It walked with the team for about 40 km, sleeping outside the mountain hut they slept in, tucking into horse pop for tea (there was a farrier shoeing horses in the nearby village) and accompanying them until they reached their end point at a hotel where we stayed on the last night. We expressed out concern about the dog being lost to the hotel manager who replied "it's okay, he does this all the time. He'll go home again in a few days!"

True, rabies is a problem in such countries, but infected animals losing their fear of humans and being aggressive is somewhat different from the typical "stray" village dogs that are well-used to tourists. These are not completely wild dogs (these can be a serious problem and I would be quite wary of them in some parts of the world, mostly in the cities). The ones accompanying us in Georgia even usually had an owner (of sorts) in the village, and the same dog has even done the route with different people many times (from their descriptions of the dog)  

Still, it pays to get rabies vaccination if going to many Asian and some other countries, as well as take the usual precautions.

Not strays, but farm dogs tagging along on ski touring ascents in Italy...once, just beneath the summit of Cima dell'Accla after a very long ascent in fresh snow 2 guys came up super fast with a Labrador trailblazing in front of them...not even bothering to exploit the skin track...then it came past me and made short work the last vaguely exposed scramble to the summit and got there first. Then the 2 guys arrived. I complimented them on the mountain nous and stamina of their dog. "Not ours," they said. "It followed us up from the car park!" 

Then on another occasion a big, friendly Bernese mountain dog tagged along with us (after charging up from the nearby farmhouse and scaring the pants off of us as we were getting ready)... When we got the summit there was another party just preparing to leave...the dog went back down with them! You could just tell the beast was in his own back yard & knew exactly where it was all day.

Talking about dogs and mountain nous...I was at Rifugio Marco e Rosa...very high...3600m on Piz Bernina...sunning myself outside...the warden had some wolf of a dog way up there... A helicopter came in and landed...with the engine still roaring and the rotors spinning the dog trotted down to the landing pad and put its giant forepaws up onto the side of the helicopter to see who was inside!