Amanda Tromp met Kyro the husky three years ago, when she stumbled upon a Craigslist ad for 10 husky puppies in need of a new home.
Amanda contacted the owner and volunteered to raise the pups until a new place for them to live was found. But after bottle-feeding and nurturing Kyro for awhile, the thought of not having him around was too much to bear — so she officially adopted him.
“Kyro ended up coming home with me because I couldn’t resist his chunky puppy belly!” Tromp remembers.
Since the age of 18, Amanda was trapped in an abusive relationship. “He’d come home from work stressed or upset and I ended up being his punching bag,” she explains.
Amanda struggled to find the strength to leave her violent boyfriend, saying, “You get beaten down and you feel stuck and trapped. I don’t think anybody that hasn’t been in this situation would know how that feels.”
But when she adopted husky pup Cairo, things started to change: “He became pretty much my only source of happiness.”
And when her boyfriend struck Cairo, nearly blinding him, Amanda found the push she needed to walk away from her abuser.
“It’s like, it’s okay to hit me but it’s especially not okay to hit [Cairo], that’s kind of when everything changed and turned around.”
Now, Amanda has turned her passion for photography into a career and blogs about her experiences and relationship with Cairo, to offer support to other people in abusive situations.
Amanda has been overwhelmed by the number of people thanking her for sharing her story and strength.
And now she’s looking to the future: “Now, I wake up with the thought of, ‘What am I going to do today? Where am I going to go?’ And I’m excited.”
With the help of Amanda’s parents, she and her four-legged Siberian friend were liberated and set out to live a happy life on their own.
Adventuring with Kyro inspired Amanda to tap into her passion for photography. She started posting shots from their travels under the name Goldilocks and the Wolf, and soon enough the whole world was drooling over their winter wonderland-ish fairy tale.
Their Instagram account has 96,000 followers.