A sweet ride and K' s first scent training

A sweet mountain bike ride - a chocolate lab running along side me, soft dirt trails, beautiful blue skies with dramatic cloud formations, and peeking snowy mountains. What more could I ask for?After a couple of days of riding through a ghostly forest with trees barely recognizable in the fog and almost no mountain views, blue sky punctuated by fast-moving clouds dominated today. I brought along full rain gear because the creeping clouds seemed to chase me at times but they never caught me!I rode along a ridge, watching the horizon for glimpses of the white mountains. I ran into a number of local trail users, bikers and runners. It was wonderful to catch up with my kindred spirits who I haven't seen on the trails in ages.
On my way home, I spotted a Wyoming Ground Squirrel, who was so curious about me that he couldn't help himself from poking his head out of his burrow to watch me. At the same time, a Golden Eagle soared overhead so I considered myself the little squirrel's guardian, and kept him from scampering into the open until the eagle had moved on.
I felt like doing something novel with K so I decided to try training her in scent discrimination - i.e., teaching her to find a particular scent. Scent training has been on my mind since reading about it at Champion of my Heart. I videoed the first session, and I was amazed by how well it went.

I used two identical pill bottles, both of which originally contained the same supplement to avoid K accidentally learning to sniff out a certain supplement. Inside one closed bottle, I placed a used chemical handwarmer as the object that K would learn to find by using her nose. I chose this because it probably smells strongly like a combination of my sweaty hands and the chemicals inside it.

Also, K has experience with a 'Find it' cue that tells her to search for a lost handwarmer out on the trails. I drop them all the time in the winter, and they're hard for me to find in the snow. So, I trained K to find them, pick them up, and bring them to me. It was super easy to teach her to to this because I've trained her to pick up all sorts of things for me when my back is hurting. So, this training was an extension of something she'd already mastered. However, dogs are not good at generalizing so I didn't expect the new exercise to be easy.

At the start of the session, I used just one bottle containing a handwarmer. I was using 'Free-shaping', meaning that I clicked to mark behaviors that were even vaguely related to the final behavior (retrieving the pill bottle with the handwarmer in it) and gave her a treat after each click. K and I have done this type of training many times before so you'll see that she simply tries something new if a certain behavior doesn't earn a click/treat.

At the start, I gave K no cue - I just waited to see what she did when faced with the pill bottle on the floor. When she showed a glimmer of interest in the container by nosing toward it, I clicked and gave her a treat. Next, I waited for stronger interest to give a click - pawing at it. Once it was lying on its side, she tried nosing it but I didn't click because it wasn't a new step toward our final goal. Instead, because we've played many games where she picks up objects, I waited for her to mouth the container for a click. Finally, she needed to pick up the container and place it in my hand to earn a click and treat. After doing this once, she repeated it several times in a row which I spared you from watching. I apologize that the first video is zoomed in too much.


Next, I added a verbal cue 'Find it' - so I could elicit the same behavior later with a verbal cue. We repeated the same exercise, with one pill bottle, 5-10 times with the cue 'Find it'.

The big step was adding the second bottle, which had no handwarmer in it, so that K had to choose the correct container from two visually identical ones. At first, you'll see that I placed the correct container (the one with the handwarmer) closer to K to make success more likely.


I gradually moved the containers so that neither one was closer or easier for her to retrieve. At the very start of the clip, she did one her favorite naughty tricks - sticking her head in my treat bag to chow down. Aside from that antic, her success rate was very high. I forgot to signal the camera about which bottle was the correct one. But, as you can tell by the click at the instant that she delivered the bottle to my hand on every trial, she was 100% accurate during this clip.


Then, R sniffed loudly under the door. K heard him just as I said 'Find it' for the first repeat of the next clip. She paused to listen and then forgot everything that she'd learned so far. Once she started moving again, she chose the wrong bottle twice in succession. On the second of the failed trials, I made the mistake of encouraging her verbally after she started moving because I thought that she was heading for the right bottle (I usually try to keep my mouth shut). Her only 'punishment' was that I didn't click or give her a treat. Despite how minor that 'punishment' was, before the third repeat, she started whining. In my experience, if she fails more than a couple of times in succession, she goes into a frenzy of whining and randomly tries behaviors that she thinks might earn a click/treat. The training session falls apart because I can't pull her out of her frenzied nervous behavior. To avoid that during this training session, I placed the correct bottle closer to her for the last repeat of this clip. Then, although it's not shown, I repeated this easier pattern about 5 times to rebuild her confidence before placing the bottles side-by-side again.


After recovering from her minor setback, K was doing so well that I was worried that she was noticing something in my body language that told her which bottle to pick. For the last couple of repeats, I mixed up the bottles really well and I pointed at the correct one so that only the camera and not K could see it.


It's interesting to notice that she often goes directly to the correct bottle and does no debating before deciding which one to retrieve. However, after picking up the correct one, she sometimes carries it on a path so she can sniff the other container. Perhaps she's double-checking that she made the correct choice.

This session was, by far, more successful than I expected. The most surprising part to me was that her nose led her directly to the correct container, with no need to sniff both of them.

I think that, for our next session, we'll review what we did in the first session and then try adding a third empty container.

Dog life and spring wildlife

Yesterday evening, we decided to try hiking on the parts of our trails where the snow was the thinnest to see if S could handle it. S trucked along, looking very pleased to be out with his pack. And, we felt grateful to have him with us after almost a week's hiatus from the trails for him due to deep snow.

S's hind end is getting noticeably weaker, despite the steroids that he's been taking for almost 2 weeks. His cancerous lymph nodes deep in his abdomen may be causing it by reducing the blood flow to his hind legs. We're hoping, however, that the setback was partly caused by too much exertion in the deep snow - and that he'll rebound now that he can walk easily on our trails again. Only time will tell. For the moment, I'll simply enjoy having S with us on our evening hikes.

I've been trying to spare everyone my daily ruminations on S's cancer, as I know that some of you have endured this odyssey in your own lives and might not want to have it replayed for you. I find myself closely watching him each day and putting far more significance on every nuance than I should. One day, I think that he's losing the battle quickly, and the next day, I think that he might be with us through the summer. I had a good talk with my vet last night. The bottom line is that we don't know and we can't control it - all we can do is take each day as it comes and be grateful for each one. Some days I'm better at that dance than other days.

During yesterday evening's hike, we saw that some patches of dirt had emerged from beneath the original 4.5' of snow. Amazingly, a couple of blooming Pasqueflowers stubbornly persisted despite their week-long snow burial. The blossoms looked a bit worn and tired, as if the effort of surviving almost depleted them. Knowing these tough little flowers, they'll be rejuvenated after a few days in the sun.
Then, the five of us watched the sun fall behind a shadowy curtain of gray clouds over the Divide. Actually, I don't think that the dogs noticed the visual show - they were focused on the wildlife scents wafting down the hillside next to us. This morning, to my delight, I heard the wing trill of a male hummingbird near our deck. He spotted our feeder and zipped in for some food. Have you noticed that hummingbirds either hover in place or zoom at mach speed? Studies show that Broad-tailed hummingbirds zip around at speeds of 18-29 mph and almost never use slower speeds. Moreover, their wings flap at an incredible 40 times per second during forward flight and 50 times per second during hovering. Imagine how many calories they must burn as they migrate from Central America to the Rocky Mountains. They feast prior to migration, gaining as much as 40% in body weight as extra fuel. It must be a delicate trade-off between the advantage of carrying extra fuel and the disadvantage of the extra calories they burn to haul it over their long distance migration.

Regardless of the physiology behind it, I think that the word 'awesome' is appropriate for describing the feat that these hummingbirds pull off every spring and fall.Wildlife sightings dominated my ride today. Within minutes of leaving the house, I noticed that the Wyoming Ground Squirrels, who stood out like flashing neon signs on the snow just yesterday, now foraged on mostly bare ground. They blend into their environment perfectly when no blanket of snow ruins their cover.Just after seeing the cryptic ground squirrels, I spotted a familiar form moving carefully across the still snowy meadow toward the ground squirrel colony. A lone coyote walked next to a pond with his tawny form reflected in the water.Up until about three weeks ago, I sighted a pair of coyotes in these meadows almost daily. Since then, my rare sightings have been of lone coyotes. I'm wondering if something happened to his mate, if his mate is in the den with a litter of pups, or if this is a non-breeding pack member on solitary hunting expeditions. I think that our blizzard probably presented terrible hunting challenges for the coyotes so I hope that they weren't trying to feed a litter of pups then.

Still within the first 30 minutes of my bike ride, I spotted the elk herd for the first time since the blizzard. The elk huddled in the shade of some trees, with a craggy mountain overlooking them. They obviously found the sun and the 45 degree air temperature to be beastly hot! Every spring, they become heliophobic and rarely leave the shade at the meadow's edge. Later in the summer, the bull elk have an extra cooling mechanism. The velvet on their growing antlers holds a dense labyrinth of blood vessels that can easily dump heat into the surrounding air. Scientists believe that the antler velvet helps keep the bull elk cool - until they shed the velvet shortly before the fall mating season.

After all of my wildlife observations at the start of the ride, I simply enjoyed riding my bike for the rest of my time outside. I tried to access the trails at four different spots but biking was still impossible. Either the slurpy snow was too slippery for my tires or the mud was up to my axles. At the rate that the sun is melting the snow and drying the world, it shouldn't be too long before I'm back in the forest on my bike.

Life's ambiguities

An amazing about-face in our weather led to 60 degree temperatures yesterday. The sun baked the snow, leaving its surface cupped and its depths soupy like oatmeal. In the evening, the two younger pups and I played in the snow while S took a road walk.

The setting sun glowed on the textured snow surface as K porpoised purposefully as if she smelled a deer or elk.R still imitates K's behaviors and zoomed in the same direction. A recall brought the two of them porpoising toward me with K in the lead and R trailing. I trudged on my skis through the wet snow to a view of the setting sun over the mountains. The rough snow surface reflected the sunset with an other-worldly glow.It feels wrong to have only a pair, and not a trio, of dogs with me on my evening wanderings. I get a heavy, indescribably sick feeling in my gut, when I ponder the missing S. Although I optimistically believe that he'll likely join us soon again when snow conditions are better for his arthritis, a day will come when he won't. Life never seems long enough.

On a lighter note (literally), the rising sun gently wakes me earlier and earlier as its rays shine on our bed through our towering east-facing windows. This morning, I pedaled my mountain bike on the dirt roads again, as the trails are bogged down in deep soupy snow that's not passable with my Fatback snowbike. The deep blue sky behind snowy mountains awed me.
The wildlife has started venturing out on the snow, likely at night when it's firmer and easier for travel. This set caught my eye because of the gait, a non-direct-registering walk (i.e., the hind print overstepped the front print), the relatively long stride length for a walk, and the purposeful path taken by the animal.

In my observations in our forest, coyotes and bobcats always use direct-registering walking gaits in snow. That gait probably saves energy because only the front paw has to 'break trail' by packing down the snow and the back paw simply falls into its trough. Indeed, coyote observers say that when a group of coyotes move through deep snow, they move single-file and carefully step exactly in the tracks of the coyote in front of them, just like a group of cross-country skiers precisely follow in each other's tracks. The coyote's tracks can trick someone into thinking that only one coyote traveled the path. So, the lack of direct-registering front and hind paws suggests that the tracks that I saw today are not from a coyote, a group of coyotes, or a bobcat.

The track pattern made me think of the big cat tracks that I've seen this winter - but I couldn't see any paw details so that's a wild guess.













As I passed a meadow, the Wyoming Ground Squirrels peeked out of their snow-capped burrows again - having recently stirred from their six month hibernation. Indeed, four heads popped out of one hole in the snow, briefly making me wonder if I'd misidentified these rodents. I wasn't aware that any squirrel species lived communally. However, some reading has told me that Wyoming Ground Squirrels live in colonies in high elevation meadows. It's not clear how strong their social ties are but my observations of the last couple of days suggest that they like to hang out close together. The females go into estrus within 5 days of waking up from hibernation - and that fact may explain why these squirrels are venturing outside their burrows despite the risks of being exposed to predators on the snow.

Today, I was slow with my camera so I captured only two squirrels at one snowy burrow. At almost the same instant, a Red-Tailed Hawk swooped over the group and perched in a nearby small Ponderosa Pine tree. I think that the sharp contrast between the dark squirrels and the white snow has made this colony's territory a feasting spot for hawks and other raptors.













After this wildlife stop, I pedaled around most of the area's drying dirt roads. When my life feels out of kilter (and S's illness, among other things, has tilted my world), the single-mindedness of riding my bike helps me focus on soaking up each moment rather than projecting into the future. I love focusing all my energy on something as simple as riding fast up a hill. Pushing my physical limits is simple compared to real life. Of course, at times during my rides, I lose myself in the wandering paths of my mind - but the sheer physical challenge of riding soon pulls me back to the present. At other times, the snowy tapestry of our mountains is a magnet that keeps me living in the moment.I love the crisp lines between the snowy mountains and the deep blue sky. Sometimes I wish that life felt so clear-cut. At other times, I'm able to appreciate that the ambiguities of life are part of what makes it so precious and wild.