Dog carries a stuffed animal that resembles him everywhere he goes (photos)

While studying nursing at Washington State University, Hana Brickman volunteered to train service dogs and was assigned a cute Golden Retriever mix puppy.

The little guy – named Gumbo – failed.

“He wasn’t serious enough,” says Brickman, now a 30-year-old nurse, so she adopted him herself.

Years later, while shopping at her local IKEA in Vancouver, Washington, Brickman purchased a stuffed dog that looked very similar to Gumbo.

“It wasn’t actually meant for him, it was meant for me,” she says. But whenever someone came over, Gumbo would grab the toy from the sofa and show it off. “It got drooled on and drooled on and I thought, ‘Whatever, you can just have it,'” she remembers.

When the two went hiking, Gumbo would take the stuffed animal with him, carrying it in his mouth and showing it off to everyone he met. Brickman eventually held a stuffed animal naming contest on Instagram; “Shrimp” won, and she began documenting the pair’s adventures on @gumbowithshrimp.

“People love it,” she says. “Believe it or not, we’ve had the same stuffed animal since 2017. He had stitches and was almost lost in many places. He floated down a river because Gumbo dropped him and we had to rescue him. He fell off a cliff and we had to use a log or something like that to retrieve him.”

“We lost him once on a hiking trail in Arizona,” she continues. “We didn’t realize he was in the car until the next day, and we drove two hours back to the trailhead to look for him because we thought, ‘We can’t leave him behind!'”

Luckily, a stranger found the toy and placed it on the sign at the beginning of the trail. “They probably thought, ‘Some kid lost it,'” Brickman says, laughing.

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The family took beautiful photos of gumbo and shrimp while hiking in Canada, wearing matching Halloween ghost costumes, and even traveling at Disney.

Gumbo turns 10 in December, and both he and Shrimp (who “needs surgery,” Brickman says) are slowing down. But even though she continues to explore with her other dogs — whose outings she shares on @mycaninelife — Gumbo remains Brickman’s favorite.

“He’s always by my side,” she says. “He’s just a good dog.”

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