Oh man, this one hits you like a battering ram.
“Trail Dog” is a simple film. Gaëtan Ugnon-Fleury and his dogs, Pépite and Jolyn, run in the mountains of eastern France. That’s it.
And yet the video — produced in 2016 as part of Salomon’s #MyTrailDog competition — is incredibly potent. In four short minutes, the filmmakers touch on friendship, loss, love, and of course, the eternal joy of running freely in the mountains.
The footage is crisp, the music on point. But it’s the poetic narration that lands the hardest, juxtaposed as it is with imagery of the trio bouncing nimbly over boulders, saddles, and peaks.
The experience of loving and losing a four-legged companion is nearly a universal constant of the human condition. And that’s why this video will retain its power far into the future. In fact, if the YouTube comments are any indication, folks seem to come back and watch this one over and over again.
Maybe you will too.
A scene from “Trail Dog.” Photo: Salomon
