Above is the most popular Daily Catskills image of the year, a picture of our Black Lab Alfie, who regularly gets a 60% engagement rate on his own, modest Instagram account. Videos on Instagram of Alfie in his element – snow – regularly get many hundreds of likes on our own social media. We adopted Alfie from the ASPCA in Kingston in 2014 and we began hiking the Catskills 3500 just to wear him out. He’s had his portrait taken by NYC photographer Shannon Greer and we wrote a post here about him that was so popular it was picked up in New York City by Mrs Sizzle. I’ll be writing Part 2 of Alfie’s life in the New Year. He loves snow and swimming regardless of temperature because he has a thick layer of furry Labrador blubber and webbed feet. He loves hiking and turns six years old in April. If I could take him skiing, I would. There’s a chance you will find us snow-shoeing the hiking trail from Giggle Hollow to the top of Belleayre Mountain this winter to catch a glimpse of the skiers flying down Cathedral Run. Alfie appreciates his country life here in the Catskills and is such a good dog, he gets fresh, warm marrow bones straight out of the oven. I sometimes think he’s the only reason that we have readers at all.