tiny terrier, big skies

Her destiny was made in the streets of Rome. She was a starving young orphan. He was an Italian builder of airships (think zeppelins) between the two World Wars.
He was walking by. She sat up and begged. And that is how Col. Umberto Nobile found Titina, his staunchest ally and fellow explorer, who would be by his side all the way to the North Pole and through years of disgrace.
Titina, a fox terrier, was with Nobile on a historic 1926 flight across the North Pole. Nobile had designed and built the ship, called the Norge; the expedition's commander was Roald Amundsen, who was not thrilled to have a small dog along. Yet Titina got a respectable amount of fan mail and drummed up interest in the adventure.
Unfortunately, her next big trip with her master in 1928, in which the airship Italia crashed in the Arctic with loss of lives, left Nobile's reputation in ruins for the rest of his days. Yet Titina never wavered in her devotion. Read an excellent article about her in the Jan/Feb 2006 BARk Magazine here.