You’ll Definitely Fall In Love with This Adorable Coonhound

By
Emily Johnson
-

Meet Theron Humphrey, a traveling photographer from Tennessee who’s been to all 50 states together with his best pal, Maddie the coonhound. And whenever Humphrey is on the road working on a project, he is sure to find some time to photograph Maddie and showcase her two great talents: Standing on practically anything and sleeping on any surface.

Pictures of Maddie doing her thing proved so popular that Humphrey even released two books centered around her antics, 2013’s Maddie on Things: A Super Serious Project About Dogs and Physics, and its 2017 follow up Maddie Lounging On Things.

View this post on Instagram

Pretty big morning over here ✨

A post shared by Theron Humphrey (@thiswildidea) on

But there’s more to Maddie and her friendship with Humphrey than just acrobatics. A casual scroll through their Instagram page shows the depth of affection they have for each other. 

“I had rescued Maddie from a shelter in Georgia about two months before I began traveling,” said Humphrey in an interview to The Great Disconnect. “Coonhounds are very loving, but they’re also very aloof; they follow their noses and do what they want to do. I was unsure about Maddie because she didn’t give me an affectionate, Labrador-style greeting, but as I walked her back to her kennel, she pressed her body against my leg the whole way. I thought, ‘I can’t put you back in a cage—that’s so sad!’ So, $40 and very little paperwork later, I had a dog.”

“I decided to take photos of Maddie in various places,” Humphrey explained how the concept of the Instagram came about. “One day, I shot a photo of her standing on the hood of my truck. My friends all loved it, and it grew from there.”

And grew it did! With two books published and 1.3 million followers on Instagram, there seems like there’s no stopping our dynamic duo. Check out more of their heartwarming moments below:

View this post on Instagram

“If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line – starting, say, in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King's Highway past the appropriately named dangers, toils, and snares, and finally cross the River of Death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circling or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led – make of that what you will.” – Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

A post shared by Theron Humphrey (@thiswildidea) on

View this post on Instagram

‘Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.’ . I have a deep love for Wendell Berry. In a brilliant book Jayber Crow he wrote: ‘I was a young man. I hardly knew what I knew, let alone what I was going to know.’ . I turn 35 this year. When Instagram was still wet behind the ears I was 27. Wild how days go slow and years go fast. . But I’m feeling every bit of 35, in the best possible way. I’m looking less for those 4×4 roads, roads to test my sanity and truck. My finger tends to wander towards rivers and streams on the map these days. . So here’s a tiny slice of our life today. My best dog watching from a rock and I coming back for kisses every so often 😊

A post shared by Theron Humphrey (@thiswildidea) on

View this post on Instagram

Making better friends in Nebraska 🍦⁣ ⁣ This is likely most difficult photograph I’ve ever taken! It’s also everything I love about photography, a spark of an idea and tons of hard work, and then a 1/60th of a second later it all compacts into a single frame.⁣ -⁣ The past few days I’ve been driving through some of the smallest map dots across Nebraska and I’ve truly loved it. These midwestern states don’t get as much love online as the epic mountain peaks and California sun but they are honestly lovely and worth seeing. If you ever have to drive across our amazing country I encourage you to take the smallest of roads, those winding ones that curve with the land, those sort of roads that hit all the little spots you haven’t heard of yet.⁣ ⁣ And if by chance you happen to be on the city council in one of those map dots, I’m talking the countless towns with populations of 300 folks, I hope y’all open up to Overlanders! I passed by so many cool abandoned ball fields and such that I would love to have camped at for a night and grabbed a brew in your town but there’s no where legal to stay in your town! I truly believe that’s a low cost way to grow tourism in these little spots, welcome travelers and use land in a fresh way. (Some larger population towns do this already, towns with a chain restaurant, but they often want $15-30/night)

A post shared by Theron Humphrey (@thiswildidea) on