K's injury and a lion

Yesterday was a hard day. K hurt her paw badly, probably rupturing or partially rupturing a flexor tendon. We saw our regular vet yesterday, and have an appointment with a surgeon tomorrow. If he thinks he has a good chance at success, he will try to surgically repair it tomorrow afternoon. This morning, K and I had a heart-to-heart during our short walk.
The range of prognoses stretches from here to the horizon, depending on whether the tendon can be fixed. My heart is aching partly because K's and my mountain biking adventures are over for now. I miss my girl, and I'll keep missing her by my side on the trails for as long as she's sidelined. I also simply hate watching K limp and feel pain. She's my sweet K who deserves no pain in her life.

At some point in every dog's life, the range of possibilities starts to narrow due to health and age - I've been through those life transitions with many dogs. However, tomorrow is K's seventh birthday - way too soon for romping to become a memory.

To soothe my soul, we watched a magical sky together yesterday evening with the moon and sunset-shaded clouds floating together and apart.My sweet K watched the sky too.
As we walked home through the meadow after the surreal sky show, I saw a tawny animal move through the ocean of dry grass that's as high as my shoulders. He was about 75 yards away, and simply lay down in the midst of the grass, moving no more. That's a cat behavior. A coyote would keep moving. While moving, he looked sufficiently big that I gave him a wide berth as I walked toward home, using a defiantly confident gait (an act, I assure you). I suspected it was a mountain lion but I had no way to know for sure. This was the scene, with the animal invisible out near the middle of the golden sea.
This morning, during my mountain bike ride, I found undeniable verification that a lion had visited our woods last night. He/she visited one of my trail cameras, marking the ground by kicking the dirt backward with gargantuan hind paws and then giving the camera a close examination. When I arrived to check the camera, one glance at the 18" wide pair of furrows in the dirt gave me chills - the scrape told the story of who had visited my camera. I didn't stay long, especially since I didn't have K with me to cover my back.
When I checked the camera's memory card, I found out who had visited...



Despite my excitement over my camera visitor, I still desperately needed to lift my spirits with some good hard pedaling through our brilliantly colored forest.
Dark paths often led to bright places.
May that be true for sweet K.