Summer's Bounty

The yellow flowers, a meadow species of Arnica, continue to astound me. I've never seen so many bloom for so long. A few are starting to wilt so I know that this phase of summer paradise will pass before too long. For now, I'll keep soaking it up!

Shyla adores running in this meadow.

And it's an amazing sight to see as she rhythmically pops up out of the flowers before disappearing down into them for an instant.

As we meandered toward home, I spotted a patch of Columbines. One had just opened and looked brilliant.

Also, on our way home, we stopped to check a wildlife camera. A pair of bachelor elk had been there with their fuzzy velvet antlers. Some male elk stay down at our elevation for the summer, and they are often called the "bachelor herd". The first bull elk didn't yet have a massive rack.

But the second one's antlers looked very promising!

Last, but certainly not least, a bobcat had looked straight at the camera as he passed it early this morning.

We have so many bobcats here that they fill my wildlife cameras' memory cards with photos. What I loved about this photo was the sensation of his forward motion combined with his obvious eye contact with the "hidden" camera.

Here's to the summer wildflowers, elk, and bobcats!

Recovery...

It's been quite a week. I had shoulder surgery on Monday, and then I tried to get started on my "active recovery" on Tuesday.

Shyla and I went out for a morning hike on Tuesday. When I say "hike", most people can insert the word "walk". Where we live, there are no sidewalks or safe places to walk near roads. However, there are many trails, which are literally outside our back door. So, we have short loops that we can hike just by stepping out our door.

I've always been one to push the limits after a surgery. I know that's not necessarily a good thing but I feel almost incapable of sitting around at home all the time during a recovery. My greatest challenge this time has been fatigue. I am bone-tired, capable of a nap almost anytime, which I'm guessing is an after-effect of the anaesthesia. This is the most fatigue I ever remember having after surgery.

Surprisingly, although my shoulder looks horrible with a humongous technicolor bruise, the pain of this surgery pales by comparison to my spine surgeries. It hurts but I can deal with it.

For that reason, I am capable of smiling and laughing as I watch Shyla's joyful play.

 

I love having Shyla to hike with during this recovery - she gets me outside even when I feel like I'd rather stay curled up inside my house. She can be off-leash, which is great, since I am afraid of holding a leash right now. I have the feeling that a hard pull on the leash would be very painful. Unfortunately, R is required to be "on-leash" due to his surgery so I haven't been able to hike with him unless the Runner is present.

This morning, Shyla and I did our longest hike yet, heading out to check a trail camera that I pointed at a mountain lion kill a few weeks ago. Previously, I showed you a photo from this camera, when a group of coyotes was feeding on the elk carcass.

Today, I discovered that the lion came back to the carcass a couple of weeks ago and had his photo taken many times. I still need to go through all the photos but here's one of the big cat with the snow-covered carcass.

Today, there was almost nothing left of the carcass so I brought the camera home, awaiting the next big event in our forest.

Amazingly, this carcass was not terribly far from houses yet I don't think that any residents were aware of it. Mountain lions are masters of moving in the shadows, unnoticed by people. Perhaps only the most secretive mountain lions survived back when they had bounties on their heads, leaving us with a population of mountain lions that is almost invisible to us.

The trip to that trail camera was enough excitement for one day. I am ready for another nap...

Thankful Thursday: Dedicated to R

The Duo and I have been catching the sunset light for the past few days during our afternoon hikes. I love playing with them in the forest. The sunset light filters softly into the trees, creating spots of golden light within the dusky forest.

I find myself so grateful for R - he's the stalwart older brother in the pack. He's still silly and crazy but he's also found his serious side.

Shyla's eyes are often on him, taking cues about how to handle situations.

Most of the time, he's a great teacher, except the rare occasion when he teaches Shyla something bad, like his habit of barking full-blast whenever arriving someplace fun (fortunately, Shyla does this one only when with R, and not without him). But, one of the things that R is best at is showing Shyla that things that spook her really aren't scary at all.

So, I am dedicating Thankful Thursday to R. I love him.

A mountain lion and us

As you know, my dogs and I love to play in the forests and meadows near our house.

We usually don't see the wildlife around us, although I am acutely aware that the wild animals are going about their business out of our sight.

This morning, Shyla and I had a close encounter with a mountain lion, although I didn't know it at the time. We were riding up toward Hug Hill, and I had my Garmin GPS going, recording our position at each instant during the ride. Shyla stayed close, right next to my bike.

A little later, after I'd dropped Shyla off at home, I checked a trail camera that was along our route up to Hug Hill that morning. My jaw dropped when I saw this.

This was taken by a camera that was within 30 yards of me and Shyla as we rode up to Hug Hill. The mountain lion was moving fast at first, away from the trail Shyla and I were on.

Part of what shocked me was that I believed that Shyla and I had been there at almost exactly the same time as the mountain lion was photographed. When I arrived home, I uploaded the GPS file showing my route (and the time that I was at each point during the ride). Indeed, the data showed that Shyla and I came very close to meeting this lion. I think that he was moving out of our sight when this camera captured his photo.

After a few very fast steps, he paused, hidden from our view behind some pine trees.

Although there wasn't snow on the ground right in front of the camera, there was snow just in front of the lion. I tracked him and saw that he walked purposefully and quickly away from where Shyla and I were after this long pause.

This reiterated for me that our mountain lions really prefer not to be seen by us. It also showed me that Shyla has some common sense. She didn't even take a step in the direction where the lion was hidden. She stayed right next to me the whole time.

People ask me if I'm afraid of being out in the forest with the mountain lions. I used to be when I first moved here... but I've come to believe, over the years, that the vast majority of mountain lions don't want to be anywhere near me. I spend enough time "out there" solo, that I would've seen many more mountain lions by now if they weren't so afraid of humans. Although it's a spooky thought, I feel certain that many lions have watched me pass by as they stood hidden in the forest by the trail.

It was another intriguing and beautiful day in the mountains of Colorado.

Good Morning & Bears

Shyla and I have not practiced "tricks" almost all summer because we've done agility instead. However, our agility course has been "snowed in" for the past week so we've been back to tricks!

Shyla waved good morning to everyone at sunrise today. These are three rapidfire photos of her wave!

After her "good morning" wave, we headed up high to survey the mountains. Winter has arrived there!

With winter taking hold, it's not surprising that I am not getting many photos or videos of our bears these days. However, the other day, I rode to a trail camera that is waaaay out in the hinterlands, and I discovered some new bear video! In late September, Cinnamom and her cubs passed a spring where they used to wallow in the hot weather.

For contrast, I first included a clip from mid-August, when the cubs looked little. Then, I added the clip from a month later. The first bear to appear in that clip looked like an adult to me, until Cinnamom appeared in the video. The cubs have grown immensely but they're still small compared to their mother!

Also, notice the weary gait of Cinnamom as she leaves the spring. I think she's getting sleepy!

You can watch the video here or at Youtube.

The cubs will den with Cinnamom this winter, nursing throughout the winter. They'll emerge from the den as a family, staying together until the start of bear mating season in May-June. I hope we see them all together again before family breakup!

Sunrise and Bears

After Shyla seemed hot yesterday during our bike ride, I promised myself to regularly get out on the trails earlier while the warm weather is here. We saw sunrise again today!

I think that Shyla loves it as much as I do. We play and relax in the early morning time when the new day is dawning.

I love Shyla's intensity. She adores scanning the forest with her nose but she stays nearby even with tempting scents all around her.

Some of those scents might be our bears. I've captured lots of bear action with my trail cameras in recent weeks but I've fallen behind in showing it to you. Much of the action has been at springs where the bears go to drink and cool off.

The larger female who we've dubbed "Cinnamom" has two cubs. Her territory overlaps with the black sow's ("Mabel") territory. It's been interesting to see the behaviors of the two of them. Cinnamom has taken to marking trees near valued resources like water sources.

Standing tall...

Rubbing her back hard against the tree (notice her enlarged teats)...

And posing for the camera...

Here are Mabel and her cub near the same tree. There is a spring within about 30' of this tree and another one within a quarter mile that both mother bears seem to value highly. As a side note, look how big Mabel's cub has become! Single cubs get lots and lots of milk and grow quickly.

I captured footage of both sows and their cubs in the springs. First, Cinnamom and both cubs visited a small pool fed by a spring (watch here or at Youtube).

Then, both mothers visited another spring within a half day of each other (Youtube link).

Based on recent sightings, it seems that Cinnamom has headed away from these springs while Mabel (black sow with one cub) is still near them. It'll be interesting to follow them as the summer season winds down.

Thank you to all of you who voted in the Trail Camera contest. I got third place in the US and Canada category due to your votes! Unfortunately, that doesn't come with a prize but it's a big honor because the competition was so tough. I'll enter again in the future!

Snow Day!

The calm after the storm prevailed, early this morning.

Trees drooped under the weight of the snow.

Because the trails weren't packed down very much, snow biking was slow and laborious. I enjoyed many breaks watching Shyla play in her first really deep snow.

Actually, she wasn't stuck in the deep snow in the photo above, although it might look that way. When I released her to play, she shot like a rocket through the powder.

She was fully submerged a few times, emerging as a hilarious "snowdog"!

But, she mainly stayed above the snow surface...

I've been in a phase of not teaching her new tricks but allowing her to consolidate her knowledge of the many tricks that I've taught her over the past month. One funny thing has evolved as we've practiced her tricks. She now waves to me whenever I wave to her (with no verbal cue)! It makes me laugh every single time!

Part of the reason why I've held off on teaching new tricks is that my pain has made me grumpy. And, in clicker training, being grumpy is not good. The whole underpinning of clicker training is that it's fun, and your dog never gets punished - not even verbally or by hearing you sigh in frustration. Your dog gets rewarded for doing good things and the only repercussion for making a wrong choice is that your dog doesn't get a click and treat.

Because Shyla is so sensitive, I see the difference in her when I'm grumpy. She seems to worry more about "making a mistake". So, I try to avoid training, especially teaching new behaviors. For the past two days, the pain has been easing for short periods so I started a new trick with Shyla today while I felt decent. The trick is that she covers her eyes with a paw. We made progress on it, and I'm hoping that I'll be showing you the trick sometime soon!

Shyla is so smart and trainable, as long as she's not in a stressful place like town. I'm trying something new to bring out her confidence when we're in town - I take short and frequent breaks in quiet spots to let her do her tricks, and I praise her lavishly for each one. I think it's helping a bit because she loves her tricks.

Tomorrow should be a very different day here in the mountains. The sun caused "snow bombs" to fall out of the trees this afternoon, creating a mystical aura in the forest and leaving bare branches.

It's our first major snowstorm yet we've already reached the springtime pattern of very rapid melting after the snow. What an odd year...

Cats and Happy Friday

Wintertime is always a slow time for my trail cameras. This year has been particularly tough - perhaps because the drought has changed everyone's movement patterns in the forest - both human and wildlife. However, I have captured enough cat photos to keep me amused.

I love the "low view" of a mountain lion that I captured in late January.

I'm guessing that, if a person ever got this particular view of a mountain lion, they might not live to tell about it.

Less than 24 hours later, a similar looking cat showed up a few miles away at a site that is usually choked with a few feet of snow by this point in winter. What a weird year we're having. I can still ride my bike where these lions are pictured, and the cats are still hunting there. Usually, this slope is devoid of life, aside from rabbits and squirrels, at this time of year.

Then, just the other night, I captured a photo of a mountain lion quite near our house. Lions mark this spot a couple of times per year so I keep one of my oldest cams there to document their behavior. This big male left a deep scrape with his hind paws, a huge pair of furrows in the pine needle covered forest floor.

Last, but certainly not least, the bobcats have been around our area extensively. This evening, as the dogs and I finished our walk, we somehow surprised a bobcat who was on our front walk despite the loud jingling of the dogs' bells. At first, I didn't think that the bobcat was going to flee but, when he spotted the two Labs, he bounded up the driveway. Here, I captured a photo of a bobcat, perhaps the same one who we saw tonight, in a nearby forest clearing.

I'll share some more cat photos soon... And, I'm counting down the days until the bears wake up. The bears are my favorite animals in our forest, and I love the season when I can capture their photos in the forest!

In the meantime, Shyla wishes you a Happy Friday!

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.