A New World - Seven Years of Blogging Later

We were out at sunrise this morning but it was a somewhat more exciting morning than usual. I loved seeing the first sign of the sun, burning through the trees near us.

Almost daily recently, we've been seeing a female moose, who has no calf, near our house. Based on her slightly lanky build, I'm guessing that she's a yearling. It's my first experience with a cow moose who doesn't have a calf to protect. I'm relieved that she runs from people rather than charging them!

This morning, I was photographing Shyla, enjoying the quiet and the light. We'd seen no moose on our way up to this spot.

It was, for the first time in a while, warm enough that we were both comfy. Shyla was even happy to lie in the snow.

A little bit later, we were playing some training games when Shyla's stare at something behind me became intense.

Because Shyla is overly sensitive, I don't always look to see what has caught her attention. I usually see nothing when I look over my shoulder. But, then, she raised her head with serious intensity.

That intensity led me to look over my shoulder. I saw our lone cow moose galloping through the snow behind me. She didn't even glance in our direction although she was quite close to us - I don't think she even saw us. Shyla remained still and silent, thank goodness.

I've never seen a moose just barrel right past us and out of sight - so it was a first. After snapping one photo of the moose, I went back to training Shyla. Then, almost immediately, the reason for the moose's flight appeared - a human with a pack of off-leash dogs. When I saw them, I felt lucky that the moose hadn't turned her anger on us. I've read about that happening to innocent bystanders.

The dog pack and their human turned around when I yelled about the moose to them, and everyone remained unscathed. Shyla and I went back to our training/playing.

It's a whole new world with moose sharing our forest (indeed we saw the same moose again this afternoon). Back when I started this blog, exactly seven years ago, it never even crossed my mind that we might have moose sharing our forest in the near future. A moose was occasionally sighted up closer to the Divide but never on our trail system.

I am amazed that I've been blogging for 7 years. I continue to love doing it so I see no reason to stop. It's been the impetus for learning about photography, which I've come to love. And I enjoy meeting all the people and their pets who visit my blog. It's a wonderful community! Thanks for a great 7 years!