Winter and summer plus canine mischief

It's that crazy time of year where it can vary in weather from one day to the next or from one slope to another. It was still winter this morning near our house, and K sprinted in the snow.

She's been taking her "metronomic chemotherapy" for almost a week now. It's a daily chemotherapy medication designed to prevent the growth of blood vessels to tumors like her lung mets. I wonder everyday if it's having any effect. Our next checkup will be in three weeks for a lung xray - and that's when we'll know if it's helping. One good sign is that K certainly still loves to run when we're in the woods!

Our world also varies from north-facing slopes (like in the first photo) to south-facing slopes. Today, after riding through 6" of snow on shaded north-facing slopes, I found a Ball Cactus blooming on a perfectly dry south-facing slope. For such tough plants, they have the most spectacularly vivid blossoms.

Then, after admiring the cactus, K and I wended our way back to a snowier area, back to winter. Pretty amazing.

After I'd dropped K off to rest at home, I ran into an acquaintance who I haven't seen in a while. He asked about the dogs, and I told him about K. Tears sprang to his eyes. He lost his last Lab to osteosarcoma before I knew him. What an evil and awful disease. His Lab was a year younger than K when he died.

We commiserated, and I managed to hold it together to ride home. Such sadness. Yet, my friend agreed with me that the love that we have with our dogs more than offsets the inevitable end-of-life grief.

I checked two trail cameras at the end of my ride. Remember that I had incredibly good photos at the cameras that I checked yesterday. I got so much footage of a mountain lion that I'm going to have to take an afternoon to collate it all. Here's one more photo - I'm not sure what the lion was doing with that front paw up in the air.

Well, by comparison, today's photos were funny. The mischievous canines of the world decided that Tax Day was "Poop in front of KB's cameras Day".

First the coyote. This is the male in the breeding pair, as you can tell by the scar under his left eye. He peed first.

 Then, he looked straight at the camera and deposited a pile. The joke is on me!

Finally, to top it off, a dog who wanders our neighborhood (and who I take care of sometimes) came onto our land and pooped within a foot of another camera, leaving this gorgeous photo (this was the least gross of his photos)!

Yup, I think those canines had it in for me yesterday.