Summer! And, bears...

We've rocketed directly from snow and freezing temperatures to summer. There is no springtime in the mountains. Glorious blue skies, sunshine, and temperatures in the 70's. Days to savor...

My friend the bobcat who appeared in my post two days ago showed up again directly in front of my wildlife camera. You can see from the look in his eyes that he had a plan for this visit. His plan was to reclaim his territory from me.

In the next photo, Bob the cat was peeing in exactly the spot where I kneel to check my camera. When I arrived the morning after his visit, the ground was still wet and the branches of small shrubs were still soaked in urine. I didn't notice the wet area until I'd knelt in it. I must have reeked of bobcat urine for the rest of my bike ride, an occupational hazard for a wildlife camera nut. Bob wins this round!

K and I have been enjoying summertime bike rides together. Although I didn't mention it, I was really worried about her a few days ago. We tried a tiny bit of agility practice for the first time since her initial paw surgery last September. The next day, K was limping and acting sad.

However, after I gave her a day off from any vigorous exercise, she's been zooming around like a young puppy during bike rides. Her paws seem to be working beautifully!

K, also known as "Goody Four-Paws", has even been mischievous, sprinting away with her nose following hot wildlife scents. Each time, I call her back, and she sprints to me.

So, perhaps I worry about her too much. I can't help it - she's my one and only K.

We'll try agility again sometime soon... but, if it hurts her even the slightest bit, her agility days are over. I can pack up the equipment until the next puppy joins our pack sometime in the future (R doesn't do agility due to elbow dysplasia).

R's paw seems to be healing on schedule too (R's "bad" paw is a hind one so its bandage isn't in the photo below). I must say that we seem to have bad luck when it comes to paw health in our pack!

The mountain biking has been sweet recently! I'm wearing shorts and sleeveless jerseys after wearing full winter regalia and riding my snow bike last week. The feeling of the sun kissing my shoulders is glorious!

Our world has turned green, and the birds are nesting. Flickers nest next to a favorite trail of mine every year. They seem to be sitting on eggs now.

Hermit Thrushes have arrived from far south of here. Their sweet melodies waft from the treetops of pine forests in the mornings and evenings. Their songs are one of my favorite parts of summer. Below, I included the first photo that I've ever managed to capture of a Hermit Thrush. They are called "hermits" for a good reason!

Predators are watching for newborns to snatch away.

Flowers are bursting and reaching for the sun. Bluebells...

Wallflower...

I am on cloud nine, enjoying the sudden burst of summer!

There is also a flurry of bear action as mating season is in full swing. The heart-tugging part of mating season is that sows must separate from their yearling cubs. Sows nurture their cubs, protecting them and playing with them, for the first 17 months of the cubs' lives. Then, they send the cubs away so that they can mate again. I've captured a whole series of photos of a family of bears (a sow and two cubs) in the process of breaking up. One yearling is alone and wandering around looking confused. A second yearling is still with his/her mother. The worrisome part is that the mom and remaining yearling have a male bear with them, waiting to mate with mom. That yearling needs to cut the apron-strings soon! I can't wait to show you the photos and footage but my internet connection is too slow today.

I was able to upload one photo of the yearling cub who has already left his/her mom. This cub tried to mark the same bear whammy tree as the big male bears have marked recently. However, he/she looked clumsy and unsure of how to do it.

I've dubbed this yearling "Socks" because this mostly cinnamon bear appears to be wearing knee-high black socks! More tomorrow...

The Duo Plays

The Duo have been playing together, with K remaining lying down and R dancing around her. They usually don't frolic indoors very much so it's wonderful to see.

After playing, they snuggled together. Throughout each day, R regularly checks on K, sniffing her head and then her bad leg. Purple Octopus always oversees their play and naps.

Meanwhile, I've spent time with each of the Duo separately. K and I take short walks. Now, as we go to the door, she lifts her paw and waits for me to put on her cast protector. The vet will change her cast tomorrow so it looks a little frayed now.

I love my morning strolls with K the most. The forest is peaceful and dappled in sunshine.

 The sun lays so low in the sky that K's head makes a shadow on her own body if she turns it just right.

When she hears an alien sound in the forest, her tail goes straight up and she assumes her stiff, "I'm the boss", posture. It's a posture that always seems out of place for gentle K. We've noticed that this posture is one of her main tools around the house in getting R or other dogs to do as she wishes. When her tail goes straight up, they follow her orders.

I have continued my intensive training with R, both for the sake of the better behavior that comes out of it, and because his obsessive-compulsive tendencies diminished almost immediately after I started the program. His water drinking has decreased dramatically, a huge relief for us. One of the games that we're playing is that we hide a toy at sometime in the day when he's not looking. Then, when he starts a water-drinking binge, we ask him to find the toy. With a little prodding, he'll stop drinking and start searching. The hope is that, after many repetitions, he'll respond to the urge to binge drink by finding a toy instead. For now, we have to prompt that behavior.

As part of his training, I'm giving him more mental challenges such as learning some agility. I started with the teeter-totter propped on wood blocks so that it was almost level. Now, I've decreased the blocks to about 9" thickness, and he's still very comfortable with teetering! Here, he started across our home-made teeter-totter.

And, after successfully crossing it, he decided to sit for the photo! That's fine with me for now. I'm having a blast teaching such an eager pupil!

We've also been practicing recalls and other basic training in all sorts of settings but the forest is my favorite training ground.

My mountain bike rides have mostly been solitary and contemplative affairs. I've been seeking the deep forest, where I mingle with the animals but don't see other people. I'm suffering from withdrawal - I truly miss my mountain biking with K. During my solitary rides, my mind wrestles with worries about whether she'll ever be able to return to it. Hopefully, I'll eventually reach peace with the notion of no more mountain biking with K - and be pleasantly surprised if she can run with me.

This is the kind of trail that I've been frequenting. Many more bobcats, lions, and bears travel this trail than people.

Despite my tinge of melancholy on my bike rides, I still get shocked into a happier frame of mind when I emerge from the forest depths to the fleeting brilliance of autumn.

Life is such a mix of happiness and sadness simultaneously. With age, I'm learning that's the way life is, and I can't change it. My dogs remind me to enjoy the good in each moment. Indeed, in that first photo of K, she's playing like a puppy despite her bad paw. Carpe Diem!

Wind, wind, wind - and a tiny bit of dog agility

Yesterday afternoon, the dogs played in the meadow, sans elk or coyotes, and the skies looked threatening. The sunlight from the west gave the meadow a unique hue.The clouds on the western horizon told me that another shot of winter weather was imminent.
At the end of our walk, there was enough daylight for K and me to play agility. Only about 2" of snow remained in the agility area (that's unprecedented for March) so I had her run through the weave poles a few times. Below, I've embedded a video from last fall when she'd practiced consistently for about a month (for most of the summer, she was afraid of the agility equipment - a situation that rapidly changed when she started taking confidence-inducing thyroid supplements). You can see that she 'single-foots' some poles but not others. Can the experts tell me if dogs naturally start single-footing all the poles with practice? Does a dog as large as a lab normally 'single-foot' weave poles? She turned back toward me at the end because the camera made me hesitate to throw a reward toy (for fear of hitting the camera) - normally she sprints through to chase the toy.



This morning, as predicted by the ominous sunset, a coating of snow frosted the forest floor and trees. The temperature hovered at 10 degrees and the wind gusted to 60 mph. So, this is the wonderful winter weather we've been missing! Actually, I didn't mind any of it except the wind. The snow made the pine trees look like ghost trees.When I saw the coating of snow, I knew that I needed my new studded tires to stay upright. A few days ago, a similar dusting made me crash on hidden ice. I'm horrendous at mechanical tasks, especially installing tight new tires early in the morning, and my husband came to the rescue. A task that would've taken me at least a half hour (optimistically) took him about 10 minutes. Voila - almost magically awesome traction! In the right photo, photogenic K sits next to my brand new studded front tire.



Thanks to those tires, I confidently navigated even a ledgy trail that I knew harbored ice under the new snow. This trail is one of my favorites because it's challenging and lots of wildlife use it.















Along the ledgy forested trail, K and I found Blue Grouse signs. I saw tracks and K picked up the scent. In a flash, she flushed the grouse off the forest floor. The grouse looked awkward taking off and gained altitude slowly. But, as usual, he outfoxed K and taunted her from high in a tree that was swaying in the wind. K must wonder why I never do my job of shooting the grouse so that she can retrieve it. She stands and stares at it, waiting for it to fall so that she can bring it to me. I feel bad - she ended up with the wrong human!

I started wondering why a grouse was hanging out on this west-facing windy slope. When we see grouse, they're always on the forest floor, and snow covered everything that I thought was edible. Moreover, the icy wind made it feel like the Arctic - although I guess the grouse normally wears a down coat! Some research told me that Blue Grouse prefer to eat conifer needles in the winter. They like Douglas Fir and Lodgepole Pine needles, and those two species dominate the forest where we saw the grouse. Moreover, they're picky eaters - they specifically like needles that are 1-2 years old, and they eat only the ends of the needles. The image to the right is borrowed from North American Birds Online and shows a Douglas Fir branch after a grouse has munched on the lower needles.

After dropping off K, I headed out on my own and the wind seemed to rise to the occasion. In a fruitless attempt to stay out of the wind, I dropped down low to an unexpectedly wind-blasted reservoir. Believe it or not, this freezing spot is where I saw flowers blooming the other day. I was too cold to search for them today.I climbed from the water's edge in a gulch thinking that the wind would be gentler down low. Instead, the gulch funneled the wind directly in my face, slowing my progress to a walking speed. The climb took 50% longer than usual. More than once, the wind literally stopped me and I put down a foot to avoid being knocked over. The one upside was that I was climbing toward blue sky. I kept reminding myself to climb patiently - not to get angry at the wind. I found myself ridiculously chanting in my head - I love the wind, I love the wind!