Insane puppy

Shyla has reached the "insane puppy" phase of her recovery. She completely lost her mind this afternoon, trying to do zoomies in a circle around me while on a leash.

This morning, she was still able to hold herself together for brief periods. Just as the sun rose, I found a shaft of sunlight that highlighted one small spot in the forest, and I captured Shyla's beautiful face in it.

She quickly became bored of just sitting serenely, and she started "offering" tricks. That means that, without me asking, Shyla started running through her repertoire of tricks that I've taught her. When she arrived at "rest your head on something", I asked her to "stay" for a photo.

The enthusiasm for "working" that dogs learn is what I enjoy the most about the genre of training that we've undertaken. Shyla is never punished. Rather, she is rewarded for "good" behaviors. For that reason, she adores training. This training style is completely different from how I trained my first Labs, umpteen years ago. The old methods - dominance and punishment based - worked for some aspects of training but they didn't create the love of working and the bond that positive methods do.

This was another example of how Shyla loves our training. We were simply sitting gazing over a meadow, when Shyla started waving at me, very insistently. I went with it... rewarding her and taking a photo. Her style of waving is funny because she almost always brings her paw directly in front of her nose!

As we hiked toward home, I spotted a few lingering red leaves from last fall being lit up by the rising sun. They were the only splash of bright color in the forest.

It snowed last night, a dusting that was gone by this afternoon but the delicate flakes captured my fancy this morning.

When we arrived home from our hike, I tried to engage Shyla's brain with some training but her excess energy made her unable to focus on anything! We'll try again this evening. Maybe she'll be sleepy enough to learn something.

Our snow from last night was great snow for tracking animals. Because each of our snowfalls has been so minor this year, I've had a lot of chances to track. Recently, I ran across big mountain lion tracks. They were very fresh and about 3.5" long.

In this photo, there's a mountain lion track on the left, pointed toward the top of the photo. There's a dog track on the right (Lab-sized), pointed toward the bottom of the photo.  It shows how much bigger and wider a lion track is.

I followed the lion tracks for a little while. The lion walked through widely spaced trees by going from tree-to-tree. He'd walk up right behind one, then curve around it probably brushing his shoulder on the bark, and then walk to the next tree. In the photo below, he walked just to the left of the tree, curved behind it, and then you can barely see his tracks emerging to the right and behind the trunk.

It's such fun finding tracks like these, and it gives me new ideas for trail camera locations! I hope that it snows more, for a million reasons, but one of them is that I love tracking.

Hilarious R and Happy K

Today was my day for hiking with R on the trails, since K was busy with chemotherapy. He and I tracked a bobcat.

R doesn't know "the rules" of tracking with me, and he tramples all over tracks before I get to see them. I'll have to ask K to teach him the rules.

He got a little ahead of me, and this photo looks pretty normal, doesn't it?

But, it only looks normal until you realize that the boy had leaped up onto a tree trunk that was a few feet off the ground. He was walking on it like a balance beam, following in the tracks of the bobcat. The bobcat had done exactly the same thing.

R proved to be an avid tracker, keeping his nose deep in the snow as he followed the bobcat.

He spent most of the hike with his snout plastered with snow.

R suddenly decided that he'd had enough of the camera... and barked straight in my face. He may be the most hilarious dog who I've ever known.

After his outburst, we continued following the bobcat tracks until the wind suddenly blasted us out of the west. Our bodies were sandblasted with ice crystals moving at mach speed.

We hurried home through erratic periods of calm and hellacious wind. R sprinted joyfully during a calm period.

R provided me with lots of fun on the somewhat tense day of K's chemotherapy.

This evening, with a day of chemotherapy behind her, K was unbelievably happy. As we walked at sunset, she picked up sticks and zoomed in circles around me. I laughed and laughed. I'm so happy that she's here and feeling good. (Yes, this photo is K, shortly after she arrived home from chemotherapy - unbelievable!).

As dusk fell, we saw a sliver of a moon in a purple sky. I felt thankful for the Runner, R, K, and our amazingly beautiful world.

Our identities

A pair of happy dogs explored together in the sunshine. The combination of white snow flying through the air and the golden grass made a gorgeous scene.

Dogs don't worry too much about the future or get frazzled about finding the right Christmas present. They just live with gusto - a fine example for all of us.

I've been researching my health situation on the internet, and I am struck, yet again, by the way some patients seem to let their identity become defined by their health problem. I found a forum about "lung nodules", one of the symptoms that I have. Each person who posts ends their post with a listing of how many lung nodules they have, the size and exact location of the nodules, and when the nodules were discovered. The people who post to this forum don't use names, just their list of nodules as their identifiers.

I hope that, regardless of what each of us faces in life (and I'm sure that many of you have faced tougher things than I have), we can keep perspective that we have many other qualities aside from our diseases. I found the a similar phenomenon, years ago, when I was battling endometriosis. I had a series of 7 surgeries to excise all of it, and I read forums on the internet that gave me the same impression - that some endometriosis patients forgot everything else about themselves aside from their disease. I'm sure that's not as prevalent as it appeared - but "basing your identity on your disease" seems like something to be avoided at all costs.

Thanks to all of you for your kind words after my last post. Your kindness means the world to me.

Along those lines, I keep doing the things that I love, and I'll keep doing them as long as I can. I've been tracking animals in our ever present snow, and I was astounded when I found bear tracks the other day! I was shocked that a bear was still awake and walking around, given the snow storms we've had and the sub-zero temperatures that we've endured. The photo below is of the tracks in relatively shallow snow. He also walked through areas where the snow was so deep that his body left a deep furrow in it, and his footprints were hidden by the furrow. I kept thinking that this bear needs to go to sleep!

These tracks were in the general vicinity of the den that I have a camera pointed at. Seeing the tracks made me hopeful that I might find bears sleeping in that den this winter. Here's a photo that brings back wonderful memories of the sow and her cubs playing outside the den in the spring of 2010.

Let's cross our fingers that there's a bear or three in the den! I won't be going near it yet - the bears need time to fall deeply asleep so that a KB peeking in their den won't upset them.

A bear in the desert

Winter is here, at least for the moment. The desert trip from last weekend seems like a distant memory.

"They" say that we'll have 10-20" of white stuff on the ground by tomorrow evening.

I'll ignore the snow for a moment and, instead, I'll remember the warm sun on my bare arms and legs as I relaxed in the desert.

The area where we visited has a maze of beautiful singletrack trails that wend among cliffs and canyons. It was gratifying to see how much K has improved since we visited this desert oasis last May. On that visit, her paw was still weak from the toe amputation, and her activity was severely limited. Not this time. She ran each day, and even played wildly with a young pup named Bubba who we met.

K got a serious case of the zoomies as she, R, and Bubba chased each other in the desert grass at sunset. Even after that wild flurry of play, K's paw didn't get sore. Yahoo!

Some of my bike rides were too long for a dog to come along. On one, I started before anyone else had been on the trails. The trails consisted of firm sand, perfect for tracking. I immediately dropped my bike and started cataloging the animals, including lizards, kangaroo rats, coyotes, snakes, a bobcat, and a BEAR!

When I spotted the bear tracks, I immediately swerved to avoid messing them up with my tire tracks, and stopped to check that they were truly bear tracks. Bears don't usually hang out in the desert. And, this particular slice of desert was penned in by the Colorado River on one side and Interstate 70 on the other side. It seemed like a very unlikely place for a bear to be ambling on the trails.

You can see three bear tracks in the photo below. One is near the very bottom of the photo, one is in the middle, and another is near the top.

The bear tracks were fairly large.The Gu container in the photo below was 4.25" long, and the hind foot track was about twice that. That makes me think that it was a fairly big bear. He was heading toward the Colorado River. Swimming the river would have landed him in suitable bear territory. I wonder if that's what he did? It looked like a tough swim to me.

At first, I thought that he might be eating acorns from the scrub oak that grew in the washes of the desert. The oak had gorgeous red leaves but the acorns were gone.

After a quarter mile or so, the bear headed straight up a rock cliff so I stopped tracking him and headed out toward the river. I followed a beautifully constructed trail that paralleled the contours of the cliffs above the river.

You can see the green and yellow trees lining the river in the distance in the photo below. The trail followed a much less direct route than the river, winding along curvy cliffs.

As I rode, my eyes constantly sought the beauty of the river and the autumn colors along side it. Can you visualize a bear swimming across that wide but calm river? I'm told that a bear probably can do it but I find it hard to visualize.

The beauty of our world never stops astounding me.

Cats and dogs

A couple of days ago, we had our first snow. It snowed close to 4" and brought down a carpet of golden aspen leaves still glowing on the snow.

Just after that snow, I had a spooky experience that I wrote about two days ago. I was riding my snow mountain bike (Fatback) that has 4" wide tires when I discovered that a mountain lion had walked in my tire tracks very shortly after I made them so he was someplace very close to me in the forest.

I wanted a size scale so that I could measure the lion track size later so I put my chemical hand warmer in the photo. It is 7.7 cm on its long side. By using that as my scale, I determined that the heel pad was 4.2 cm wide. That is not a big heel pad for a mountain lion, and puts this lion clearly in the female or young adult category.

I immediately knew that these were lion tracks based on a couple of things. First, the size - they were much too big to be a bobcat's tracks. Next, the asymmetry of the track, where the left half looks different from the right half. In dogs and coyotes, the track is much more symmetrical (and usually smaller). Third, there were no claw marks. Mountain lions, like other cats, have retractable claws. Finally, a unique characteristic is that the roughly triangular heel pad has a "bicuspid" apex. You can barely see it in the photo above but it was very obvious in person.

I was hoping that the mountain lion had hopped back onto the animal path after I departed and would pass my wildlife camera that he'd been heading toward. Alas, I had no such luck. I think that the mountain lions are as afraid of humans as we are of them. Consequently, this young one abandoned the established animal path after discovering that I was nearby.

I did, however, get bobcat photos. In the photo below, a bobcat is staring at a bear "whammy" tree that the bears rub their backs on during mating season and just before hibernation. This camera is set up to get photos of a bear marking the tree but it got a bobcat instead.

Then, the bobcat passed closer to the camera.

I have captured a plethora of bobcat photos all in the area where the mother and kitten lived this summer. However, I haven't captured a photo of the two of them together since the day when they appeared to "lose track of each other" a month ago. I plan to do a post soon showing you all the various photos to see if you agree with me that both the mother and kitten are still alive and well - they are simply moving around the territory separately.

Our snow has rapidly melted and we are enjoying some true autumn weather. K has been romping and I have been rolling with joy in our hearts!

 However, as you can see, it's still wintery up high in the mountains.

Based on the bank of clouds over the Divide today, I took lots of extra clothes in my backpack for my mountain bike ride. Of course, by doing so, I caused it to be a very warm day! As I learned last week, it's better to be safe than sorry when it comes to potential hypothermia.

On an unrelated note, we just learned that K has MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant staph infection, in her urinary tract. Do any of you have experience with dogs and MRSA? We have no further information yet concerning treatment or the prognosis. She seems to feel normal despite the infection.

Top of the food chain

On the night before the snow, I captured this photo of K in the setting sun. I love the winter light, especially at sunrise and sunset.

Also before the storm, I'm afraid that the rabbit who lived in the boulders behind my house became coyote food. Look closely at the lower left corner of the next photo and see the animal clasped in the coyote's jaws. It almost looks like the coyote is posing for his trophy photo.

Despite the successful hunting by the coyote the other day, the rest of the pack has still been hunting by the boulders. Perhaps there are more rabbits living near there. Here's one example photo from after the snow.

Yesterday evening, the storm oozed away from us, leaving magical mountains and valleys. This morning, some clouds still swirled around us as K and I took my Fatback snowbike out for its maiden ride.

We had a beautiful ride through snow and the remaining golden aspen leaves.

After K and I rode to our hearts content, I dropped her off at home and went to check some wildlife cameras. I rode along an animal path, leaving fresh snowbike tracks, almost 4" wide, in the unbroken snow. I decided to do an out-and-back along the path. So, I rode east to west, stopped, and then turned around to retrace my tracks by riding to the east.

On the return part of my ride, I was shocked to see that a mountain lion had walked in my tire tracks in the short 20 minute time since I'd made them. I spotted the tracks and screeched to a halt.

The lion had been walking to the west, so we'd been on a collision course as I rode my return leg to the east. He must have left the path as he heard me approaching. As I worked out this scenario in my head, I rapidly started scanning my surroundings, wondering where the lion was hiding. If I had to place a bet, I'd put a lot of money on the idea that he was watching me right then. He was probably completely stationary so I couldn't spot him.

The tracks weren't huge. I haven't made the exact measurements from my photos yet but I'm guessing that the lion was a subadult or a female. We may see photos of him from my cams tomorrow. Believe me, I didn't hang around to check any cams after seeing his tracks.

As the Runner pointed out, this incident was yet another example of the fact that our mountain lions don't want to eat us. As I pedaled along side the lion tracks, I was forced to focus on my riding, working hard to stay upright in the snow on a rocky trail. If that mountain lion had wanted to make me prey, I was an easy target. But, as usual, the lion held his fire and let me go in peace.

I did wish that I had a body guard with me. K always watches my back in dangerous situations. She's treed a lion in the past... but I'm not sure that I'd want to bet on one fleeing from her again. She's too precious to make that bet.

It's humbling and wonderful to live in an environment where we humans are not at the top of the food chain - rather, the mountain lions occupy that top notch. Today, I had an inkling of how the rabbit felt being stalked by the hungry coyote. It makes the mountains even more magical for me to have tawny ghosts with sharp claws, huge eyes, sensitive ears, and amazing intelligence floating silently among the boulders and trees.