One night in the desert, we were awakened over night by rain pounding on the roof of the LabMobile. The driving rain continued throughout the night and into the morning. There is no sound that makes me want to sleep late like that one.
At about sunrise, the Runner was outside the LabMobile making coffee. At one instant, the sun found a slot in the seemingly endless cloud cover and shined through. A clear and gorgeous rainbow appeared to the west.
He called to me to hurry and see the rainbow. It was a full rainbow but I didn't have a super wide angle lens on my camera. I captured about half of it but the whole arc is seared into my memory.
That was a far better start to the day than I'd expected. However, soon thereafter, the rain started pounding on the roof again. My mood soured and then went further south when my phone rang to tell me that someone was trying to use my credit card hundreds of miles away. Argh.
I thought that we wouldn't see the sun again that day. Fortunately, I was wrong! As soon as it burned through the clouds, Shyla and I were out of the LabMobile preparing for a ride.
The rock world was covered in water. I enjoyed the reflections, as you can see!
I am thankful everytime Mother Nature gives us the gift of sunshine. It can turn my day around in an instant!
At one desert campsite that we love, a ridge of spires sits on the horizon. You can see it to the left on the horizon in this photo.
I love those spires. Over the years, I've taken photos of all of our dogs with the spires in the background.
And here's a closer up of sweet Shyla with the blurry spires in the background.
On this visit, I decided to use my drone to view the spires from above.
I decided that they looked a bit less dramatic from high above them so I did a flight where the drone was floating at about the same elevation as the spires. This is one photo from it. The top of one spire is in the lower left of the photo.
If you look out to the lower right of the photo, you can see a white speck. That's our campsite with the LabMobile sitting in it.
I made a video with my drone floating around the spires that you might enjoy. You can watch it here or at Youtube.
Those who have followed along for a few years know how excited I get when the bears reappear after a winter of resting in dens.
Well, my favorite day of the year happened recently. A huge bear, who I believe is one of our biggest resident males, began to mark trees. He looked magnificent!
When he first appeared, Tiny marked the same tree FOUR times. As you watch the video, you'll see that he started by leaning into the poor small tree with his considerable weight, as if he was about to fall asleep again.
Then, each time, he'd rear up on his hind legs to rub his scent all over the tree.
After repeating his marking four times, he departed but stopped at one more tree on his way out of this area that I think of as the "Banana Belt" because it melts out before other parts of our forest.
A few days later, a smaller male bear showed up first at the same tree that Tiny had marked multiple times. You can see how much thinner he is than Tiny - he still needs to bulk up to rival Tiny.
This bear didn't dare mark over Tiny's scent. In fact, he seemed to deflate after smelling Tiny's scent (see photo above). However, he was very interested in my camera. I believe it may be "Bandit", the bear who destroyed my trail camera last year. I am very lucky that he didn't attack the camera that he sniffed on 4/7.
Then, Bandit went to the second tree that Tiny had marked. He sniffed it, looked upset, and then heard a sound from a distance. That was enough to make him bolt into the forest, probably out of fear that Tiny was around. Males fight fiercely for territory, and Bandit would definitely lose a fight with Tiny.
After all of that excitement had occurred a distance from our house, I was hiking with the dogs on leash one evening near our house. The dogs seemed extremely hyped about a scent in the air. I thought it was elk or a moose. We kept walking, and we almost walked up to a bear! R went insane (on leash), barking like a lunatic. The bear went straight up a pine tree. He initially stopped about 20' up, making very mournful moaning noises because he was terrified of R's barking. I snapped a terrible photo in the dusky light and departed. I believe that it was Bandit but I'm not certain.
We hiked in the other direction. However, at the end of our hike, we went past that tree again. The bear had gone higher in the tree. He was draped across a big limb with his human-like hind paws hanging down below the branch. It was too dark for a photo but it looked as if he'd taken a nap while he waited for it to be safe to descend. We headed home, and the bear was gone the next morning.
I am overjoyed that the bears are out foraging in our forests. Life is so much more colorful when these characters are around!
Enjoy my video of the first bears of the season either here or at Youtube!
With every passing day, I adore our black dog even more. He keeps me on my toes because he's so mischievous (he ran off to explore just after this photo)! He has a mind of his own but he's learned how to listen to me most of the time over the years.
During this trip to the desert, I made sure to get some time with him and my camera. With his age having reached double digits at the end of last year, I don't want to miss a single day when he can still run like the wind!
I also don't want to miss a chance to see his eyes sparkle with happiness as he sprints to me across a mesa!
We all love you, R!
He has an ultrasound tomorrow to check on the tumors on his adrenal gland and spleen that were deemed to be probably benign a few months ago. I feel fairly confident that the conclusion will be the same this time... but you all know how it is. I won't totally relax until we hear the results.
Shyla and I are taking a class to try a new way to address her fears. It involves me playing with her. Ideally, we'd play together, just the two of us, without toys or food involved.
We've done a bit of this in the past but not much.
I'm finding it to be incredibly hard to draw her into play without any toys being involved. Then, I realized that it's parallel to how she interacts with every dog on Earth besides R. We've had puppies come to visit many times. R wrestles and fake bites along with them for hours on end. In contrast, without toys being involved, Shyla has no clue how to interact with other dogs or puppies.
R knows how to make other dogs not feel threatened by him. He repeatedly throws himself on his back to "self-handicap". I've never seen Shyla lie on her back either when playing with other dogs or with me.
When we first knew Shyla, she didn't even want to try to play with other dogs - she'd go hide in the bedroom when they came to visit. Now, she wants to try but her overtures are not successful. In this photo, Shyla had just tried to get the puppy to chase her as she carried the nylabone. Shyla eventually gave up and let the puppy have the bone. Shyla is lying in the background.
On the very next day after one of the puppy's visits to our house, we met the puppy and her humans on a trail. Shyla again tried to play with the puppy with slightly more success than in our house. She tried to get the puppy to chase her and was successful. This was Shyla zooming in a circle around us.
And this was the puppy, about 20 yards behind Shyla. The puppy sprinted her heart out but there was no way for her to keep up with an athletic grown-up like Shyla.
The puppy was so cute and beautiful as she ran through the snow. She's growing up so fast!
That was a partial success for Shyla. I'm very glad that Shyla is now trying to play with this puppy.
In the meantime, we thank our lucky stars that Shyla has such a wonderful big brother. She trusts him completely, and they play together almost every day.
For our "fearful dog" class, I'll be continuing to try to figure out how to get Shyla to play with me. I'll let you know how it goes! Do you all have favorite games to play with your dogs?
Because we don't have many flowers yet, I'm going to focus on the beauty of the desert for this Flower Friday.
I love the rock formations that tower on all sides of us while we're in the desert. The combination of the deep red ground and blue sky makes me smile the whole time that I'm there!
Even more than the rock formations, I love seeing our Labraduo sprint joyfully on the desert mesas. My favorite spot to photograph them is Shyla's Mesa. That's the mesa that they're sprinting over in the next photo.
The mesa that the Duo was running atop is in the next photo, to the right.
Each night, I set up my camera on a tripod to take photos of the night sky. While we were at this particular campsite, the moon started out half full and was almost completely full on our last night there. It was so bright that it lit up the landscape as if it was daytime. You can see the reddish color of the desert floor due to the moonlight.
For comparison, this is what the same sky looks like when there is no moon. Look how many more stars are visible - but also notice that the landscape is black!
On a night when the moon was almost full, I took a series of exposures over about an hour and a half so that we could see the stars appearing to rotate around the north star. Due to the bright moonlight, a limited number of stars was visible but that actually makes this type of photo better. It's as if the stars are making their own art as they spin around our night sky!
I find the desert to be absolutely gorgeous, both during the daylight hours and the dark hours. I always look forward to our next visit there!!!
I am so thankful to have had time in the desert with our pack. Last year, we didn't get much spring time in the desert due to Shyla's epilepsy. Her recent seizure has reminded me of how much better she is doing than a year ago.
Yes, Shyla, we'd all love to squeeze our eyes closed and forget about that bad phase.
She and I had tons of fun together on our recent desert trip. I especially love sunset with her because of the light and the amazing color of the boulders.
She's learned to be a great model, except for her tendency to squint into the setting sun. I have to click the shutter lots of times to get a picture of her beautiful eyes. But I understand that!
And then she shoots me a look like this one, and she melts my heart.
Although I still often wish that she could shed her fears and leave them totally behind us, I am incredibly grateful for the fact that she totally trusts me. She's funny and sweet. What else could I want?
Just about a year ago, Shyla started taking phenobarbital to try to control her seizures. It took a long time before I appreciated how well it worked because it turned Shyla into a zombie. It wasn't until about six months later that I thought that she was back to about 98% of her normal self.
I'm going to pepper this post with photos from the desert to keep it happier than a discussion of seizures.
Despite the very long acclimation time, phenobarbital worked wonderfully - she had no seizures for a year, until the other night. We had some warning because a blood tested showed that the phenobarbital level in her blood had fallen below the therapeutic range late last fall. Because we didn't want to subject her to the "zombie phase" again if we didn't need to, we decided to wait to see if she had any breakthrough seizures. Darn, now it's happened.
We are waiting to hear back from our regular vet and neurologist to see if this recent seizure means that we need to increase her dose of phenobarbital. I'd rather err on the safe side so we probably need to do so. I truly hope that the zombie phase isn't as long it was when she started phenobarbital. Does anyone have experience with this to share?
Since her seizure in the wee hours of Sunday, she has had no more seizures and seems to feel good. That's good news because she used have clusters of seizures - which were no fun for anyone.
Shyla has proven herself to be amazingly resilient over the years. From a rough start in life, she is plagued by myriad fears yet she's figured out how to navigate our world with happiness (most of the time).
I have little doubt that she'll continue her resilient ways no matter what happens.
Some of you may remember the trail camera experience of a lifetime two years ago when I had cams placed outside the entrance to a bear den. In December, I'd discovered that a single bear was occupying the den. That discovery was amusing because I absolutely did not expect to see a bear in the den.
It had last been occupied in 2010 by a sow and her two yearling cubs. That year, I'd stumbled upon the den for the first time to find an extremely scared sow looking at me as I peered into the black abyss of the cave.
Since 2010, it had not been occupied. Every year, I'd left a cam outside the den and then gone to check after I believed that all the bears in our area were settled into dens. And, every year, I'd seen no bears looking back at me. In December of 2015, I'd trudged to the den and cavalierly peered into the den. I yelped and jumped when two dark eyes were looking back at me. Then, the bear snorted at me... which sent me away in a big hurry.
After I calmed down, I went back with multiple trail cameras and placed them carefully outside the den. I stayed out of the bear's line of sight so she didn't snort at me again.
All was quiet at the den until January 30, when the bear began relentlessly pacing outside the den. We found out why when a trail camera caught the sound of cubs bawling inside the den in the wee hours of the morning of January 31, 2016.
Then, all was quiet again for a few months, aside from a visit by a fox who went halfway into the den in March. The mother bear's rest was over on April 10th when her two cubs began trying to escape the den.
Each time a cub made it outside the den, mom would capture the cub in her jaws to drag the cub back into the den.
The cub would dig its paws into the snow, trying to resist the sow's pull. All the while, the cub was screaming like a human baby having a tantrum.
After mom pulled the cub back into the den, the cub would bawl inside the den for the next 10 minutes or so. The mother bear's restful winter was most definitely over!
By late in the day on April 10th, both cubs had escaped the den and were
out in the snow. Mom gave up on trying to control them and instead
began watching them from the den entrance. They'd continue this pattern, with mom watching the active cubs from the den entrance, for the next 5 weeks until the family finally departed the den on May 18.
I have two videos for you. The first one is very brief but shows one example of mom going out to retrieve a cub on April 10th. It gives you a nice view of struggle between the big sow and the feisty cub. This is a clip that I just discovered that I overlooked two years ago. I hope that you enjoy it! You can watch it here or at Youtube.
The second video is a little bit longer and shows how the interactions between the mother and cubs changed over that pivotal day from 5AM until late in the afternoon of April 10, when mom gave up on keeping the cubs in the den. The video is below and also available at Youtube.
It's fun for me to revisit the winter of 2016 because I keep finding video clips that I didn't fully appreciate then. I was overwhelmed with video at that time, and now I have time to slow down to look for great clips. I think that the new video (the first one in this post) is a very fun example of the feistyness of the cubs and the patience of the sow.
