A Glowing Saturday

No news must be good news, right? We haven't heard about R's tests so that's our mantra.

Shyla and I had our normal morning outing, enjoying the sunrise.

We have only about a month left while the sun will hit our little slice of forest right after it rises, creating the magical light that makes her glow. After that, it will rise too far to the north for us to be warmed by its earliest rays. That's part of why I take advantage of every sunrise that I can in the winter.

This morning, we played retrieving games at sunrise. Shyla will retrieve almost anything now. She's even willing to hold a few metal things which is a big step forward. I'm working so hard on this because of my spine problems. After my spine surgeries, K acted as my "service dog" picking up things from the ground and low shelves and handing them to me. If my doctors are right, I'm not done with spine surgeries so I'm working on getting Shyla ready ahead of time.

Indeed, I've been having some serious issues with my neck, creating numbness, tingling, and lots of pain in my hands. I thought that it was improving but I was unable to sleep, yet again, last night due to hand pain. So, it's time to see my spine doctors. Hopefully, it's something that can be treated conservatively rather than with surgery. For new readers, I already have 2 sections of my spine fused, in my neck and lower back, due to a genetic problem that is causing rapid degeneration of my discs.

Enough of that... here was Shyla playing a retrieving game this morning. I try to make all of our "training" into games so that she loves it.

After my time with Shyla, I headed out to snowbike on my own, and I saw the huge flock of Bohemian Waxwings again. It has been such a treat to have these gregarious and beautiful birds in our forest for the past month. They've been eating juniper berries which are very abundant here.

They all took off at once with the snowy mountains behind them. Ah, gorgeous.

My snowbike ride was easy and warm. I explored for animal tracks and checked some wildlife cameras, which had fun photos on them. I'll share them soon.

Upon arriving home, Shyla was basking in a sun puddle so I had fun with a loaned macro lens taking whisker photos. Aren't a dog's whiskers incredible? Have you ever noticed how they change depending on your dog's mood? If your dog is excited or simply alert, their whiskers stick out. But, if your dog is sleeping or super mellow, the whiskers relax, resting against the snout.

I'm so glad that Shyla seems to like being a model dog for me! We're having such fun together.