Updates on mountain lions and Shyla

We've had quite a flurry of mountain lion activity near us recently. One lion, in particular, has been spending a lot of time in a small area. Here she was, one morning, ambling along.

She walked at least 6 miles in between the first photo and the next one. I know about her travels because I captured her image 3 miles away in the middle of the afternoon, before she returned to this same spot in the evening.

This spot has been extremely interesting to our mountain lions recently. They've been displaying behaviors that I've never seen before. I also have never seen them in anyone else's trail camera photos.

She rolled around, rubbed her face on a rock, and stayed at the base of this bear marking tree for quite a while. When I looked closely at the rock that she was rubbing in these photos, it's completely covered in mountain lion fur.

The next photo explains to me why I've seen this lion in one area so frequently. She has enlarged teats on her abdomen. A wildlife expert emailed to say that she saw enlarged teats on an earlier photo from a couple of weeks before this one. This photo confirms it for me.

So, I believe that this is a mother mountain lion who has kitten(s) stashed somewhere nearby. She's hunting in a small area because her kitten(s) are not ready to move long distances yet. I thought that we might get the chance to see her kitten(s) but I've just learned that I have to move this camera. I am incredibly disappointed, as I've never captured a trail camera photo of a young mountain lion kitten yet. That'll be a challenge for another season.

In other news, I still haven't heard the most important result from Shyla's appointment on Monday. I finally called today and left a message with the vet, asking if they knew the results. I haven't heard back yet. It's the test for fungal infections that attack bones... and, if it's positive, we won't need a bone biopsy. Rather, we'll just treat with anti-fungal medications.

Shyla just learned to "take a bow"!

Shyla's limp is barely perceptible but the lump on her bone has not shrunk even the slightest bit. I don't know what to think of the combination of an improving limp but a still large lump.

I do know that our girl is going crazy with excess energy. She arrived here near the end of August and did nothing destructive or even mischievous until the past week. We gave her lots of exercise until her limp started, and when the exercise decreased, the mischief increased. By chewing the zippers out of some of my favorite clothes within the past week, she taught me to put them all out of her reach.

However, while a surprise visitor was at the door today, Shyla discovered the wonders of unrolling toilet paper and spreading it in a long ribbon all over the house. I didn't think to take a photo before I cleaned it up. I was too shocked. My little angel has some serious mischief in her!

This morning, Shyla and I took our short leash walk to visit K's Boulder (the boulder where K is standing in the banner photo). Just below Shyla's snout in the photo, you can see two small white granite rocks that I placed there early last summer. I put them there to represent K and my friend's dog, who was also having a tough time. For some reason, I didn't let Shyla stand in this spot, one of K's favorite spots, until this morning. But now, I feel that Shyla has earned this place of honor.

The spokes change but wheel keeps turning, and I never stop loving life and my dogs despite the many bumps in the road.

The past and the future

Many dog-lovers have traveled the road that I'm on now. I lost my heart dog, K, and I am trying to regain my footing. K and I had a very special bond - she was truly my best friend. When I learned that she had osteosarcoma, I literally collapsed, and I couldn't visualize how I'd go on living after she was gone. Somehow I have gone on, although it feels as if I've been in a trance-like state.

Almost a year ago, K had a birthday. In retrospect, it seems as if I had an inkling that it would be her last even though she wasn't old. She and I had multiple celebration adventures. We hiked, we played fetch, and she played with R in mountain lakes. I treasured every instant of them, and K did as well.

I knew that I'd eventually invite a new dog into my life after K passed. I thought that it would "help my heart to heal". Indeed, six and a half weeks after K died, Shyla arrived. She is sensitive, smart, and incredibly loving. Her spirit and resilience are incredible.  I already know that Shyla is going to be a special part of my life for a long time. I also believe that the hard socialization work that we're doing now is helping to build a deep bond between us.

Shyla is a chocolate Lab and so was K. I've always adored Chocolate Labs. When I first saw one as a young adult, I declared that he was the most beautiful dog that I'd ever seen. Ever since then, when it's been my choice, I've always chosen a Chocolate Lab. Fortunately, each dog has such a unique personality that the physical similarities among my dogs are no big deal for me.

By the time K was about 2 years old, she and I were seasoned partners in life. We moved in sync and could anticipate each other's actions and moods. In contrast, because Shyla is a young dog and new to me, we are still getting to know each other. Shyla is a naive puppy, through-and-through. I have to supervise her carefully, and she surprises me every single day with some off-the-wall behavior that I didn't expect. I took this photo when an unexpected case of the zoomies possessed Shyla, and my shutter speed wasn't fast enough! I love the blurred and crazy effect - just as "zoomies" should be!

I've laughed every single day since Shyla arrived, and I smile when I look in her eyes. I spontaneously tell her that I love her when she looks to me for reassurance as we navigate the big new world that can be scary for her. I'm ecstatic that she and I have so many adventures to look forward to.

But, I have to admit that I don't think that my heart will "heal" from losing K anytime soon, even though Shyla is wonderful beyond words. So, I'm in a funny in-between state of reveling in getting to know my new puppy's spirit and remembering my best friend K. At least once a day, a memory of K hits me so hard that I stop in my tracks and tears fill my eyes.

Today, I remembered how K loved to put her head on my shoulder and then let out a long and contented sigh. I'd always answer her with a contented sigh of my own. We both knew how lucky we were. A bond like ours leaves paw prints on a person's heart forever.

Yet, at the same time, my heart is falling for Shyla. What a goofy combination of emotions - grief and optimistic happiness - to have mixed up inside me.

I think that R is falling for his new sister too. They like to snuggle up together for naps, and I watch with deep tenderness.

Thanks for reading this post... I wanted to write it all down so that I could read it in the future when I am further along in this journey. I also thought that my thoughts about this transition time might help someone else who is recovering from a loss as deep as mine.

Dancing bears and frozen treats

The bears are still dancing, despite the end to mating season! Up on his tippy toes...

All over the forest, I am seeing evidence of bear foraging - ripped up logs, flipped rocks, excavated ant hills - but they're still finding time to dance!

K is enjoying her frozen kong treats. Our walks are quite short now so we're finding other ways to keep the sparkle in her life.

Licking her lips.

Analyzing the best approach to emptying the kong...

K has an amazing spirit that lets her find happiness regardless of the situation. I am treasuring every moment with her.

Right now, she's letting me know that it's time for a little walk... Like I said, her spirit astounds me. Her wish is my command so we are heading out!

Pupdate and wildlife

K is about the same as yesterday. We went to the vet and isolated the problem to her left hind limb (that's not the one that had the original tumor). It could be several different things: a sprain or a tumor on a leg bone or her spine. We are giving her more pain meds and doing acupuncture, and we'll see how she feels in a few days. In the meantime, she's okay, just a bit more subdued than usual and not enthusiastic about walking.

Cancer can be so immune to our attempts to stop it. We've tried all the best therapies for K, and none of them has slowed it. I feel like we've been lobbing boulders at a brick wall, and they just keep bouncing back at us. K has been so brave in the face of it all. She's braver than I am.

A distraction from my heartache has been lots of activity at my wildlife cameras. I'll just show you footage from one of them. Here I am, leaving the other day after I set it up.

Here was the next photo on the camera - a bedgraggled looking mountain lion moving fast past the camera.

A few hours later, a bear passed the same spot, ignoring the bear marking tree in the background. I think that mating season is over.

Here's the last photo of that bear. Notice that it was at almost 1:08 PM.

Seven minutes later, a mountain lion appeared in the same spot as the bear had just vacated. The agile lion hightailed it up the hill. He'd approached from the same direction as the bear had been traveling toward so I wonder if they crossed paths or if they just avoid each other.

A half hour later, the lion came past the camera again. This is not a big lion. I suspect that it's a sub-adult male or a female. Yet, when I was standing in the same spot looking at this photo, the lion looked huge to me!

This time, he turned downhill and disappeared for a while.

Later that night, lion was still in the area and passed the camera yet again. Upon seeing so many photos of a lion in one small area, I got nervous, wondering if s/he was still nearby and perhaps had a kill cached in the forest close to me. I took out my pepper spray, and I finished my "camera work" quickly.

There's nothing like the chill that runs up my spine when I realize that I'm standing in a hotbed of lion activity. My guess is that this lion killed a deer near this spot and hid it. If I'm right, I may be getting some more photos of the lion in the coming days.

Of course, all of that was merely a distraction, I'm watching K with an eagle eye, hoping that her leg starts to feel better. Improvement would mean that it's a normal injury to her hind leg rather than the scourge of cancer spreading still further.

In either case, we'll enjoy what we're capable of doing together. Yesterday, we took a long relaxed nap on a dog bed together.

Dark clouds

I cannot lie - this has been a hard day, so far.

K and I headed out for our morning hike, and I immediately noticed that she didn't feel good. She stayed right on my heels at first as we walked through the drenched forest.

Then, about 100 yards into the walk, she stopped and sat behind me. Her message reached me loud and clear... she didn't want to hike through our beloved forest. For K, that's serious. I let her rest, and then I checked whether she was interested in walking. No, she didn't want to walk. I cannot lie - I wept.

I took K home, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she's just tired from playing with our nephews yesterday. In the photo below, one of them put the Duo through their paces. Everyone seemed to be having fun.

After our aborted hike this morning, K stayed home to snooze with the boys, and I headed out on a bike ride with a heavy heart. I spent the beginning of the ride trying to convince myself that it was just a bad day and K would rebound. Only time will tell if she will climb to Hug Hill again, like she did so easily yesterday.

My mountain bike ride was rough... My spine hurt, my tooth hurt, my knee hurt, and my heart hurt. The world was gloomy due to dark clouds hovering over it. I rode through big piles of hail left behind by last night's storms. It's hard to tell from a photo but this pile of hail was about 3" deep.

I only felt worse the further I rode, counter to the usual soothing effect of bike riding for me. So, I turned toward home just as the clouds truly enveloped the forest. Never has a nature scene reflected my mood so perfectly.

K is still snoozing, hopefully rebounding for a better day tomorrow.

Fire and Floods

Thanks for all of your supportive comments. You all help me so much each time we get bad news about K's cancer. I know that it must sometimes be painful to read about our journey - but I am grateful that you are sticking with me through thick and thin. It helps more than you can imagine.

It's been a rough week in more than one way. Not only did we get the bad, but not unexpected, news about K but I got a very painful tooth infection and abscess. It was shocking how fast it progressed from a barely noticeable twinge to excruciating pain that prevented me from eating. I've been on heavy-duty medications, and I had a root canal today, and now the pain is screaming.

Regardless of my tooth pain, I've been getting out in the woods with K every single day. Today, K charged to me when I called her off a scent. When I see photos like this, I literally cannot believe that she is terminally ill. I think that I'll just try to forget for as long as I can.

And, we visited Hug Hill with foreboding clouds already enveloping the Divide early in the morning.

Later in the day, we got hard rain and hail, and it was wonderful. I can't remember the last time it rained so hard.

Believe it or not, in this land of fires, we had flooding after the rain. The areas that have been burned in recent years cannot absorb the rain and it runs off rapidly, creating flash floods.

Fortunately, aside from a few closed roads, the flooding wasn't too bad. I think that this is the definition of "global weirding", a term coined by Friedman.

On the wildlife front, bear mating season is winding down, as the bears head into the phase of the year when they eat all day and try to gain enough weight to make it through the winter. They essentially eat enough calories to survive the whole year in a couple of months of summer after mating season. I worry about them this year, with the lack of food due to the drought.

A male bear marked a tree a few days ago, either as a closing act of mating season or simply to mark territory. The tree is so much smaller than him that you can barely see it behind him.

He rubbed his back vigorously.

Then, he leaned his whole weight into the tree, before lumbering on his way. No other bears followed his scent, as I would expect for waning days of the mating season.

I've also been getting a lot of photos of a small band of bull elk with velvet antlers. Some bull elk stay at our elevation all year long while the cow elk go up to high elevations to raise their calves in the land of lush green alpine meadows.

Look at the size of this guy's rack, so early in the season! He also doesn't look too thin, which I'm happy to see.

Let's hope that it rains some more here and that both K and I feel well enough to play in the morning!

Inspiration

We were out hiking fairly early this morning, and we made it up to Hug Hill. K loves to stand with her paws on a stump atop the hill.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought that we'd made our last hike to the top. Then, K rebounded and we climbed to the top of the hill again. On that hike, I started adding a small pebble to the crevices in the top of the stump each time we made it to the peak together. You can see them in the lower left of of the photo below.

You can see that we've made it to the top quite a few times after I believed that we'd done our last Hug Hill hike.

K has been able to climb Hug Hill easily in recent days despite the endless heat and the smoke. Another lesson learned - don't ever give up when there's still a wisp of hope.

I'm not feeling very well today, and I'm loopy from pain medicines so I'm signing off, hoping for a better tomorrow. I'll use K as my inspiration.

The Little Rascals

I'll start with the little rascals. I spent a lot of time trying to squirrel-proof our bird houses, adding sheet metal so that the squirrels couldn't chew through them and adding hole-guards so that the squirrels couldn't enlarge the holes. However, despite my efforts, I was puzzled to notice that there seemed to be no birds in the houses this year. Then, I saw this.

Grrrrrr. Doesn't he look self-satisfied? He's even sticking his tongue out at me! Here's another angle of the rascal. He looks like he might be stuck in there, like Winnie the Pooh got stuck in a hole after eating too much honey.

 

On a different topic, although K has been doing a million times better than I expected, I've noticed how much the heat slows her down. So, I decided that it was time for me to fight my natural night-owl tendencies and get up really early to walk her around sunrise. We didn't quite make it out for sunrise this morning but we were out in the cool air. K was happy! She led the way happily up a hill in the reddish light just after sunrise.

Then, K paused in the dappled shade of an aspen tree.

It was really worth getting up early because K was so much peppier in the almost nippy air. I'm going to try to get out early consistently, even though it's incredibly hard for me to be awake for sunrise at this time of year. I wish that I were a natural early-bird.

It would be fun to see both sunrise and sunset when the days are so long. K and I consistently see the sunsets. They've been incredible due to the smoke and the thunder clouds. It makes it look as if the Continental Divide is on fire (it's not).

As I took these photos of the sunset, I didn't try to deter K from her job. She covered my back. I realized that protecting me is an important part of who K is - even if she makes me worry that she might get hurt protecting me.

After the sunset, we spotted two male Western Tanagers nearby. They are the most colorful bird in our pine forests. Some summers, I never see one. This year, I've been lucky to see several. I wish that I'd see one in full light so that I could get a photo that really showed his brilliant colors. You'll have to take my word for it because this photo was at dusk and from a long distance.

On the fire front, everyone is still on high alert, and it's nerve-wracking. We have a pile of things right next to the door ready to be whisked to a vehicle if we have to evacuate, and our van is packed with the things that we'd need for living while evacuated. Moreover, our most precious things, like the incredible painting of K, are now stored down in the city and will stay there until the fire danger moderates. Thank goodness that the weather has been good to us in recent days with little lightning. Now, if we could just have days and days of rain, we could relax.

I hope that you all had a great weekend!