The leap and the animals

Soaking up quiet times of sunrise and sunset in the mountains keeps me happy. I especially love sharing them with my K. The sunrise behind K made everything glow, including her fur and the snow.

Although the world is peaceful as the sun rises, the sun itself is fiery, making K look like a red lab!

I like trying new things with my camera, especially in the special light of sunrise. Lately, I've been playing with backlighting. I decided to take a photo of K on a boulder with the sunrise behind her.

For some reason, she decided to leap off the boulder while I was taking photos of her.

When I saw her peeking over the edge, I told her to "stop, stay" in an emphatic voice. I didn't want her to leap. For those of you new to my blog, K had a toe amputated from her left front paw last year. That paw gets sore when she leaps. That's why I tried to stop her.

You can see just how effective my shout was in the next photo. Her front paws had left the boulder. I made the snap decision that I might as well keep pushing the camera shutter if she was indeed going to leap.

And, she stuck the landing, with an amazing "flying nun" profile.

She seemed extremely proud of herself after landing. Unfortunately, she paid a price later with a sore paw. We use the miracle drug, Rimadyl, when she does something silly like this. It seems to make her feel all better.

At the end of our sunrise snowbike ride, I checked a wildlife camera on our property. A bobcat had hurried past it at a trot. A trot is equivalent to a human run. You can tell that the bobcat was trotting because each pair of diagonal limbs (e.g., left front and right rear) moved in sync. His ears look much more flattened back than usual. I wonder if something scared him. It was at 11:30 last night.

When I snowbiked by myself after dropping K at home, I found this photo on a wildlife camera. This young buck was fascinated with the camera. Initially, he reacted fearfully, making me wonder if he was able to hear the shutter click inside the camera. This photo shows his fearful reaction. Notice how he's leaning backward, ready to flee.

The buck didn't stay scared for long. He proceeded to spend a very long time sniffing the camera and staring at it. I captured about a hundred photos of this guy. Maybe he wanted to be a blog star!