The lesson of the elk leg

K and I are continuing our tradition of morning mountain bike rides. I find myself amazed at how much she still can and wants to do! If I hadn't seen her xrays, I wouldn't know that she's sick.

This morning, we rode through shafts of sunlight in a pine forest, heading up to Hug Hill. K pranced out of the dark forest and into the light.

I've run into a pitfall that I bet is common for dogs with terminal illnesses. Since I found out about K's cancer, I've been giving her a lot of latitude with training. I let bad behavior slide... rather than addressing it. For example, before she was sick, I'd do a training session immediately if I felt that her responses to me were sluggish while we were out in the forest. We'd do some recalls, leave-its, stays, and other training exercises right on the spot. I do positive training, rewarding good behavior with lots of treats, so K thinks that training is fun.

Since she became sick, I've been lackadaisical, letting her do what she pleases, as long as it's not dangerous to her.

Well, K has started taking advantage of my attitude. One example which is potentially dangerous is that she found an elk leg during a bike ride a few days ago and refused to leave it. She hid in the woods gnawing on it while I became increasingly panicked about where she was. Finally, she emerged from the woods looking guilty. I backtracked her paw prints in the remaining snow patches, and I found the elk leg.

Today, she peeled away from me at exactly the same spot as the day that she found the elk leg. Fortunately, I knew exactly where the elk leg was, and I marched down the slope to find K licking it. This time, I hung the elk leg in a tree so that K won't be able to reach it if she decides to visit it again.

In the meantime, the coyotes are going to be puzzled by the leg in the tree - they are usually the ones who clean up the final bones from a carcass in the woods! This guy visited our clearing this morning.

My advice is, don't slack off on training, no matter what, especially if you have an off-leash lifestyle like we do! After our elk leg incident today, we did some training. A recall...

Then, after training, we continued up to Hug Hill. K was joyous atop the hill. She leaped right out of my camera frame in a dance of happiness!

Then, she gazed at our mountains with a serene demeanor. She and I agree that Heaven looks like our mountains, especially in the summer when they are covered in wildflowers.

As an aside, I recently saw my blog on an iPad for the first time, and I discovered that the photos get cut off because they're too big for the screen. Can you leave a comment if this affects you? I'll reduce the photo size if a lot of people are reading this blog from iPads or iPhones. Thanks!