Pupdate and wildlife

K is about the same as yesterday. We went to the vet and isolated the problem to her left hind limb (that's not the one that had the original tumor). It could be several different things: a sprain or a tumor on a leg bone or her spine. We are giving her more pain meds and doing acupuncture, and we'll see how she feels in a few days. In the meantime, she's okay, just a bit more subdued than usual and not enthusiastic about walking.

Cancer can be so immune to our attempts to stop it. We've tried all the best therapies for K, and none of them has slowed it. I feel like we've been lobbing boulders at a brick wall, and they just keep bouncing back at us. K has been so brave in the face of it all. She's braver than I am.

A distraction from my heartache has been lots of activity at my wildlife cameras. I'll just show you footage from one of them. Here I am, leaving the other day after I set it up.

Here was the next photo on the camera - a bedgraggled looking mountain lion moving fast past the camera.

A few hours later, a bear passed the same spot, ignoring the bear marking tree in the background. I think that mating season is over.

Here's the last photo of that bear. Notice that it was at almost 1:08 PM.

Seven minutes later, a mountain lion appeared in the same spot as the bear had just vacated. The agile lion hightailed it up the hill. He'd approached from the same direction as the bear had been traveling toward so I wonder if they crossed paths or if they just avoid each other.

A half hour later, the lion came past the camera again. This is not a big lion. I suspect that it's a sub-adult male or a female. Yet, when I was standing in the same spot looking at this photo, the lion looked huge to me!

This time, he turned downhill and disappeared for a while.

Later that night, lion was still in the area and passed the camera yet again. Upon seeing so many photos of a lion in one small area, I got nervous, wondering if s/he was still nearby and perhaps had a kill cached in the forest close to me. I took out my pepper spray, and I finished my "camera work" quickly.

There's nothing like the chill that runs up my spine when I realize that I'm standing in a hotbed of lion activity. My guess is that this lion killed a deer near this spot and hid it. If I'm right, I may be getting some more photos of the lion in the coming days.

Of course, all of that was merely a distraction, I'm watching K with an eagle eye, hoping that her leg starts to feel better. Improvement would mean that it's a normal injury to her hind leg rather than the scourge of cancer spreading still further.

In either case, we'll enjoy what we're capable of doing together. Yesterday, we took a long relaxed nap on a dog bed together.