Life of Bears

After the last time that I posted about bears, a couple of you asked about whether my dogs tangle with our wildlife. The short answer is that we have an occasional scare but it's very rare. I tend to manage our dogs' off-leash time carefully. There are certain areas where I'd never let our dogs off-leash, like the areas that the bears frequent. That's why many of my photos of the dogs are in open areas... where our largest mammals (black bears and mountain lions) don't visit much.

An occasional danger in open areas is coyotes but I do my best to keep our dogs out of those areas at the times of day when a coyote pack might be around. When the dogs are off-leash in the meadows that coyotes frequent, we practice stays and recalls before I let them romp.

At this time of year, I sometimes take Shyla for mountain bike rides in pine forests, to keep her out of the warm sun as she runs. I've been monitoring our wildlife long enough to know which parts of the pine forests are wildlife "hot spots" and which ones are safer. I stick to the safer ones, for the sake of Shyla and the wildlife.

With all of the training that I do with our dogs plus choosing where they can be off leash with deference to the wildlife, I hope that I am striking a balance between happy dogs and happy wildlife.

Today, while checking trail cameras, I found the most beautiful clip of video. It's our first bear cub sighting of the year! You can watch the video here or at Youtube.

I believe that the mother bear is Mabel, an experienced mother bear who has raised lots of cubs while I've been watching our bears. I've never known her to have just one cub before. I wonder if a cub was out of view of the camera. Or, perhaps something has gone awry for Mabel early this summer. Time will tell whether there was a cub just barely out of view of the camera.

You also saw that a big male is out marking trees. He is Milton, a big male with a white blaze on his chest. It turns out that he's the one with the injured right front leg. You can see him limping on it although it is a bit difficult to pick out. When a bear has just marked a tree, they do a "cowboy walk" afterwards, swinging their hind legs out to the side and stomping the ground as they depart. The cowboy walk is super obvious after Milton marks trees.

I adore our bears, and I was SO thrilled to see the first cub of the year! I also saw one of their foods starting to mature - Pin Cherry blossoms! I think that this summer will be much easier on the bears than last summer, when food was scarce.