Black Dog Pupdate - Week 7 post-CUE surgery

Our black dog keeps improving, now more than 7 weeks after his CUE surgery. He still has a noticeable limp but every other sign is looking great. Moreover, he walks really fast and enthusiastically compared to just a few weeks ago.

It is astounding to me how much of my day seems to be spent either doing R's exercises with him, walking with him, stretching his elbow, or icing his elbow. I feel as if there aren't enough hours in the day! I need a rest day :)

Here's a video to show his gait and his exercises for Week 7. His exercises have become far more challenging. He still targets with each paw while standing on a squishy disk but now he must alternate paws so that he learns to catch his balance quickly with his left front leg. He also does "push-ups", although they are now with only one front leg (I hold the other one up). He also crawls forward and backward, walks backward, and plays tug. Obviously, the vet is now focusing on rebuilding the strength and coordination in that his left forelimb.

Here's a video to show you the "state of affairs". One thing that you cannot tell from the gait part of the video is how much faster he's walking. He's speeding up by the day. You can watch the video here or at Youtube.

One unexpected twist has been that Shyla seems to lose confidence when I spend a lot of time training R during his rehab. So, I've been making sure to spend plenty of time training and playing with her. She's a lucky dog to get to play in meadows full of flowers.

But she and I are excited for the day that R joins us too!

That's the goal - and that's why I've been running myself ragged trying to keep up with all his rehab!

Short Update on our Black Dog

Yesterday, on the 7 week anniversary of R's CUE surgery, he went to our vet for physical therapy. Our vet likes to call herself a "rain cloud" because she tends to talk about all the "not so good" aspects of a dog's condition. She's a great vet - so we don't mind this habit one bit.

With that background, you can imagine how happy we were to hear her say that R was doing fabulously! He now has a greater range of motion in his elbow than ever before in his life. He was born with elbow dysplasia so his flexibility was inhibited right from the start.

Our vet gave us a new set of exercises to do this week with R, including things like a one-armed push-up on his "bad forelimb", playing tug, and crawling forward and backwards under a chair. Obviously, he's reached a whole new level where we are working hard to bring back the strength around his surgical elbow.

I will soon have a video of his gait and his exercises. The only slightly worrisome thing is that he still has a rather obvious limp but our vet feels confident that it will go away as he learns to trust that limb again.

R's favorite rehab instruction is that he must chew a bone while holding it between his paws for 10-15 minutes per day. This helps strengthen the small muscles around his elbow. Until a few days ago, he figured out ways to chew the bone without touching it with his left paw (that's his surgical limb). As you can see, he finally started using his left paw a few days ago! Another great sign!

He's thinking to himself, "this is waaaay better than one-armed push-ups!".

As a celebration of his great checkup, we walked him up to our "sunset lookout point". He's supposed to do four 20 minute leash walks per day now. Our celebration walk pushed the limit a tiny bit (26 minutes - don't tell our vet). We won't do it again but it sure was nice to have a pack sunset hike for the first time in 7 weeks.

The sunset was incredible!

The brilliant orange clouds spread all across the horizon so I couldn't get them all in one camera frame.

As the bright orange started to fade, the rest of the sky was filled with pastel colors. As we watched the sky, a hermit thrush started singing its mournful and beautiful song. Hermit thrushes are my favorite birds due to their song. They'll sing from now until around the middle of July.

For R, next week will be 8 weeks post-CUE surgery, and he'll have elbow x-rays taken to check that the implants (new weight bearing surfaces) are looking good. If they are, he'll be allowed to start running just a little bit. The first day will be 5 minutes... but it will be a happy day!

Taking Stock...

Today was a turning point. It stopped feeling like autumn and started feeling like winter was knocking on our door. Of course, that made me yearn for summer even more!

For some reason, every year, the beginning of winter makes me take stock of my life. How many more glorious summers will I get? I have no reason to think it won't be many more summers but I can't help but wonder.

This isn't a new thought pattern - I've wondered the same thing every year ever since my mother died of cancer at a fairly young age. That life-changing event shaped my thinking so that I try to make the most of every day I'm given.

Visiting the high mountains with my hiking buddy...

Sitting in a verdant aspen grove whose floor is covered in Columbines in early summer...

Lingering out in the woods to see the amazing sunsets that grace our mountains...

Standing out in the cold when camping high in the mountains to enjoy the stars...

Trekking all over our forest to keep up with my trail cameras so I can "observe" the wildlife who I love sharing our world with...

As I look back over our summer adventures, I feel satisfied that I truly lived it - rather than just sleepwalking through my days.

In the end, that's my real goal - not to let my life slip away without doing what I love. The Labraduo knows how to do that better than most people!

After mulling over our great summer, I think that I can handle the season change. I can't look forward to it with quite the wide-eyed innocence of Shyla - but I can focus on the parts that I love.

Like the incredible red glow of sunrises and sunsets in the winter.

In that spirit, I think that I'll try to be out in the mountains early enough for tomorrow's sunrise.

Shyla in the forest

Shyla is continuing to make huge strides with our new training. To be honest, it's not really all that "new" - it's primarily that my trainer reminded me that Shyla is so sensitive that she needs me to focus on reinforcing good behavior rather than reprimanding her for "bad" behavior. Otherwise, her fearfulness dominates her personality, making her more prone to misbehave.

So, I continue to act like it is tons of fun when she finds random wildlife body parts in the forest. I don't mind the hooves and foot bones as much as other parts. Shyla seems to find an incredible number of hooves next to the trails.

At the start of each ride, to prime Shyla's state of mind, we've been doing fun tricks. Shyla loves to add a tongue flick to "waving", which always makes me laugh. But, I do remind myself that tongue flicks are a sign of low-level stress. She usually stops tongue flicking after a few well-rewarded waves.

Another "trick" that Shyla loves is picking up things that I drop. This morning, she "found" my neck warmer that I'd dropped on the trail (yes, it was cold enough for me to wear full winter gear!).

This is a skill that I've been grateful for quite a few times this summer. I've had a few severe exacerbations of my spine pain, during which it is agonizing to pick up items from the ground. At those times, I am so glad that Shyla adores picking up things that I drop. When Shyla hears something hit the floor or ground, she comes running, hoping to have the chance to pick it up for me. What a wonderful girl!

In general, with the change in my approach to training, Shyla is behaving about a zillion times better when she's off-leash than she did a few weeks ago. It shows me how much my "attitude" affects her behavior. Reinforcing good behavior is much more fun than reprimanding bad behavior for me too so it's a win-win situation.

I know how much wildlife is around, so her re-found love of staying close to me in the forest is a huge relief. To emphasize the wildlife being all around us, my wildlife camera captured photos of a coyote right next to a mountain biking trail that we use regularly. In terms of my dogs' safety, coyotes scare me more than any other animal. I am thrilled that coyotes are flourishing but I am very cautious about my dogs encountering them.

Isn't that a handsome coyote? I think so but I hope that my dogs never tangle with him and his pack-mates.

A New Favorite Place

Frequently, I tell you about our trips to our favorite places in the West. As we explore in our LabMobile, we search for new "favorite places", but very often, we end up in less-than-optimal new campsites during our explorations. We visit those sites once (and you never see photos of them here), and then we start searching all over again for new beautiful spots.

This summer, we camped in a new spot that I think is going to become a favorite for us. It was at almost 12,000', high above treeline. It was chilly and a little bit stormy but the surroundings were gorgeous.

There was almost no one else around so the dogs could play in the mountain tundra as I mountain biked and the Runner ran. We started out each morning as a pack, and it was fun watching the Duo run together.

After R and the Runner went off to tackle a high peak (too steep for a mountain bike), Shyla and I explored the trails and small 4wd roads.

She loved clambering on the boulders that speckled the tundra. Don't worry - there's no cliff behind her. Rather, there's a gentle slope down into a deep valley.

An upside to the tumultuous weather during our visit was that we saw more rainbows in a few days than we usually see in an entire year. The pot of gold looked very close based on this late-afternoon rainbow on our first day there!

Then, as I sipped coffee the next morning, a double rainbow appeared. Have you ever noticed how the order of the colors is opposite in the second rainbow? I wonder why.

Rain sprinkled from the sky intermittently that morning. Between rain squalls, it was bright and sunny. Sometimes it was both raining and sunny at the same time, like during my bike ride with Shyla.

Shyla seemed to dance among the rainbows.

After one last smattering of rain during our ride that morning, the rainbow show abruptly ended.

And Shyla and I proceeded with our mountain bike ride in bright warm sunshine. The banks of clouds stayed on the other side of the valley.

What fun days those were! I have the feeling we'll be back to that spot again. I love being so high among the Rocky Mountains.

I have no doubt that Shyla approves of that idea!

Alas, summertime is fading here. The first "chance of snow" has appeared in our forecast for later this week. So it's a good time to look back at our summertime adventures and to plan for our autumn adventures.

Our Big Adventure

Life is, again, seeming to return to normal. We've had a whirlwind August, filled with lots of fun and adventures. I'm tired, in a pleasant sort of way - from doing the things that we love so much.

We spent the vast majority of August living in our LabMobile, a modified high-clearance and 4wd camping van (commonly known as a SportsMobile).

We spent a number of days in the San Juan mountains, high in alpine territory. Shyla and I had our biggest adventure together so far. We took a long mountain bike ride to an alpine pass. Although Shyla visited this area with us last summer, she wasn't strong enough for such a physically demanding ride yet. Moreover, last summer, she didn't have the training for me to feel certain that I could count on her to stay by my side for such a long ride, no matter what we might encounter.

This year, with a tiny bit of trepidation, we undertook the ride together. The first mile was on a rarely used 4wd road. You can see that the sky was blue, and Shyla was bursting with energy.

I took almost no photos on our way to the Pass, partly because I wanted to beat any brewing thunderstorms to the treeless world near the Pass. Physically, it seemed to be an easy run for Shyla.

Here she was, as she arrived at the top.

On our way to the Pass, we had passed a woman backpacking with llamas. I called out to her from behind so she'd know that we were there, and I watched Shyla's reaction to llamas. I know that Shyla is great with horses... but I didn't know if that training would extend to llamas. It turned out that Shyla was afraid of llamas and kept a pretty big distance from them. I liked that - no llamas were spooked!

After we reached the Pass, we could see the Llama Lady climbing up behind us. The llamas were carrying all her gear for about 10 days out in the wilderness.

For sentimental reasons, it was heartwarming to see Shyla stand atop that Pass. The reason is that K and I did this ride together several times in her life. Indeed, I suspect that K stood exactly where Shyla was in this photo.

It felt like Shyla also knew that this was an important moment. She stood tall, head above the mountains.

The wind picked up while we lingered on the Pass, enjoying a rare alpine day when the sun was strong enough that we weren't cold in the wind.

Alas, we couldn't linger too long. Clouds were building all across the horizon. We needed to start making steady progress back to camp just in case a thunderstorm developed.

The meadows below the Pass were crowded with bright wildflowers so I had to stop for one photo.

We followed a breathtakingly beautiful trail back to camp.

When we returned to camp, it felt as if Shyla and I had achieved a big milestone. I sometimes feel as if my bonds with my dogs are built through our shared adventures. That evening, Shyla's eyes seemed more mature and softer to me than I'd ever seen them.

I feel as if Shyla is reaching that "sweet spot" in a Lab's life when they are physically so strong and their training is getting good enough for big adventures. I'll admit that Shyla has had her share of "teenage" moments this summer - but she was wonderful on our big ride together that day.

After K's death at a relatively young age, I find myself hoping with all my heart that Shyla and I get to climb many more mountains together, like these ones that we gazed at as the sun set that evening.

Sweetness

We've been at our lookout point during the sunset light most evenings recently. I love taking photos a of certain chocolate labrador in that light.

You can see the unique yellow background in these photos. The yellow flowers covering the bushes all over our area are blooming, making the entire world smell sweet.

As the sun fell below the mountains, I captured Shyla's image at an instant when she was looking adoringly at the Runner and R. You can see the love in her sweet eyes.

Another wonderful thing is that has happened recently is that a pair of Cordilleran Flycatchers have chosen to make a nest under our deck. I love watching the pair hard at work raising the next generation. Now, they are just about at egg-laying time... so they have a long haul ahead of them.

I'll be watching over their nest for the next four weeks or so!