Which answer is correct? Finding the limit of a radical as $x$ approaches infinity. When I take $$\lim_{x \to -∞} \sqrt{x^2+7x}+x,$$ I multiply by the conjugate over the conjugate to get
$$\lim_{x \to -∞}\frac{7x}{\sqrt{x^2+7x}-x},$$ and multiply by either $\frac{\frac{1}{x}}{\frac{1}{x}}$ or $\frac{\frac{1}{-x}}{\frac{1}{-x}}$ to get an undefined answer or $\frac{-7}{2}.$
My teacher's solution involves multiplying by $\frac{\frac{1}{-x}}{\frac{1}{-x}}:$
$$=\lim_{x \to -∞}\frac{-7}{\sqrt{x^2/x^2+7x/x^2}+1}$$
$$=-\frac{7}{\sqrt{1+0}+1}$$
$$=\frac{-7}{2}$$
However, I multiplied
by $\frac{\frac{1}{x}}{\frac{1}{x}}$ and got the following:
$$\lim_{x \to -∞}\frac{7}{\sqrt{x^2/x^2+7x/x^2}-1}$$
$$\frac{7}{\sqrt{1+0}-1}$$
$$\frac{7}{0}$$
Which is undefined.
Why does multiplying by what is essentially $1$ cause different answers in general, and in particular for evaluating limits?

Let's see what happens to $$f(x) = \sqrt{x^2 + 7x} + x$$ when $x$ takes on actual negative values.  When $x = -100$, we get $$f(-100) = 10 \sqrt{93} - 100 \approx -3.56349.$$  When $x = -10000$, we get $$f(-10000) = 100 \sqrt{9993} - 10000 \approx -3.50061.$$  So, from a numerical standpoint, this seems to suggest that the limit should exist.  When we rationalize the numerator, i.e. $$f(x) = \frac{7x}{\sqrt{x^2 + 7x} - x},$$ we are still okay, but the next step, division by $x$, requires care because when we write $$\frac{7}{\frac{1}{x}\sqrt{x^2 + 7x} - 1} = \frac{7}{\sqrt{1 + 7/x^2} - 1},$$ we inadvertently commit a sign error:  this is because if $x < 0$, we no longer have $$\frac{1}{x} = \sqrt{\frac{1}{x^2}}.$$  The LHS is negative; the RHS is positive.  Instead, when $x < 0$, we should have $$\frac{1}{x} = -\sqrt{\frac{1}{x^2}}.$$  So to preserve the sign in the denominator, we must write instead $$\frac{7}{\frac{1}{x}\sqrt{x^2 + 7x} - 1} = \frac{7}{-\sqrt{1 + 7/x^2} - 1},$$ and now the correct limiting behavior is retained.
