Photo Wednesday

I'm getting to know a new set of eyes that are growing more beautiful to me with each day.

Gaze into the distance

Focus on me

Intensity

Happy Intensity

The mountains before the snow storm that's going on now...

Shyla's courage

This little girl continues to astound me. She's sensitive, loving, and incredibly smart (in my unbiased opinion).

After a morning hike in our forest, we headed into town for some training.

First, we met our trainer to walk around a park area, letting Shyla observe children, tennis players, a city bus, bike riders, geese, and all the other odd things that pop up in a town park. Our goal is to reward good and calm reactions to these relatively novel things. We don't want to "put Shyla over threshold" (i.e., get scared) so we tip-toe along a balance beam, gradually bringing her closer to novel things as she's able to handle it with a calm demeanor. My trainer is so good at reading Shyla's body language that she knows just when we've gone far enough. Believe me, we take baby steps each day, especially when it comes to exposure to children, but I'm truly seeing the progress that we're making.

I was thrilled with Shyla's calmness today in a setting that would have been very scary a month ago. So, at the end of our training session, I took her to a dog park with a small lake to let her celebrate. And, I discovered that Shyla has learned to swim very smoothly and efficiently, unlike her first attempts which involved lots of splashing a little forward motion. I wonder if she took secret swimming lessons?

She retrieved tennis balls from the lake.

And shook off water with that crazy look that dogs can get!

Afterwards, I did errands in town. At one point, I parked in front of a big pet store to go into some other nearby stores. When I came back to the car, I saw Shyla intently focused on the dogs who were going in and out of the pet store's automatic doors.

I saw a training opportunity because automatic doors have terrified Shyla in the past. I took her out of the car, and we watched numerous dogs walk through those automatic sliding doors. I gave Shyla treats each time the doors moved, and within minutes, she was doing her "relaxed tail wag" whenever a dog went through the doors. So, I ratcheted up my courage and waited for the next human/dog pair to walk toward the doors. When the next pair appeared, I walked Shyla through the doors right behind them.

She walked through those doors tall and proud, just like I promised she'd do someday! I was so happy to see that our slow and steady approach is working. The human world is becoming more manageable to Shyla each day.

I think that our girl, with this slow and steady approach, will undoubtedly learn that most of the world is a fun place before too long.

On a different note, several of you asked about the smoke plume from Rocky Mountain National Park that I showed yesterday. It's a wildfire of about 1000 acres that's only 30% contained. The good news is that there's snow in the forecast so that should help slow the fire.

Surprises

Often, I show you photos of my beautiful dogs at sunrise or sunset in my posts.

Or, the beauty of nature in the mountains. Some cottonwood trees still have their golden leaves.

But, recently, I've seen some odd and surprising stuff while out on the trails.... like this huge plume of smoke from Rocky Mountain National Park that I saw today.

And I saw this medi-vac helicopter in the middle of nowhere. It turned out that they were doing a wilderness rescue training session. They jokingly told me that, if I planned to crash my bike anytime soon, right then and there would have been a good time and place.
I also saw this "cat" next to a trail... which was foretelling my wildlife stories. I visited a trail camera at the end of last week. You can see my hand approaching it to check it.

Then, shortly after I checked the trail camera, a mountain lion came past the same spot. This big guy and I almost met! Many of you have asked if I'm scared to share the forest with the big animals who are capable of hurting me. I generally am not - because I know that they don't want to meet me any more than I want to meet them. But, I'll admit that the proximity of this mountain lion and me scared me a bit.
The mountain lion checked out the bear tree and then followed in my tracks. He did follow my path and was photographed by several trail cams (I captured lots of great photos that I'll share later). Fortunately, with distance, the lion fell further and further behind me (I know based on the times that I checked the cams compared to the times when he passed them). So, I don't think that he was actually following me. He was simply following the route that I've figured out that the lions like to use and have staked out with cameras.
Then, this morning, I found this absolutely delightful photo of a mother bobcat (facing the camera) and her kitten. It was one of about 60 photos of the two of them interacting. I've never captured such extensive footage of two animals interacting in the past. I'll share more of the photos in the coming days.

It's been a surprising, exciting, and beautiful few days in the mountains.

Black and White Sunday: Big Brother, Little Sister

Orange Season

The season of orange has begun. We all don orange vests so hunters see us.

Streaking dogs can look like deer, I hear.

Even sharp-looking dogs need orange.

Apparently, the deer didn't get the memo about hunting season. A trio of does stood about 50 yards from me during my bike ride, seemingly ignoring me. Don't they look up the season dates on their iTails?

Not only did they have to worry about human hunters, but they also had to evade this guy who patrolled our area last night. Interestingly, a human was out and about last night in the same area. I doubt that the human had any idea that this huge cat was nearby.

Another marker of the season is that most of the aspen leaves are on the ground... but I spotted a few golden and red leaves on a tiny aspen seedling.

Here's one of the fallen leaves, like a work of art nestled among the leathery kinnikinnick leaves.

That leaf is a gorgeous orange (as opposed to the blaze orange that we have to wear at this time of year). I know that I'll be sick of donning orange garb every time we go outside for the next month or so... but it's a small price to pay to live in paradise!

Mountain Peace

Shyla was wide-eyed and ready to charge out into the world this morning.

To my utter disbelief, we stumbled upon a blooming harebell flower, a flower that usually shines in mid-summer. I suspect that the summer drought prevented it from blooming until very late. Now, it has to endure regular freezing temperatures and snow!

I stopped to appreciate the flower... but Shyla just wanted to run! The fire that has ignited in her eyes over the past weeks absolutely astounds me. In some ways, she seems like a completely different dog from the girl I met at the end of August. Her confidence and joy grow daily.

Our morning outing was the highlight of the day. After an emergency visit to the dentist and some town socialization/training for Shyla, we returned to the peace of the mountains just in time to see a spectacular sunset together with R.

At the end of the day, there's no place that I'd rather be than on the trails with my pack.

Have a great weekend!

Dog Training - Why?

I ran into a mountain neighbor the other day. I know her from when her dog and K were puppies, and they'd play together. My neighbor, of course, wanted to know all about Shyla. After expounding on how wonderful Shyla is, I started talking about our training and all the hard work we're doing. Her question was: Why?

I was momentarily flummoxed. It's so natural to me that I'd train and socialize Shyla so that she can go anywhere and do almost anything with me that I didn't have an answer on the tip of my tongue.

While I paused, my neighbor pointed out that her dog is happy just living at their mountain home, rarely riding in the car, going to town only for vet visits, and knowing only how to "sit" (but no other fancy commands or tricks). I have to agree with her - her dog appears to be very happy, even joyful, when I see them on the trails together.

After we parted ways, I kept mulling over her question. I realized that the Runner and I ask a lot of our dogs. We ask them to be partners in our family for all sorts of activities. We do long trips to the deserts and the mountains of the west, living out of our camping van and adapting to whatever conditions we find. In total, we spend about 6-8 weeks per year living that way.

We take our dogs to our friends' and family's houses in the big city, Denver, and we want them to be comfortable in the urban environment that clashes so completely with our everyday life. Most years, we take our dogs trick-or-treating with our nephews. The dogs walk the streets with the hordes of kids in costumes without blinking an eye at the outrageous scene. (We're going to wait a year before asking Shyla to try that one - but we hope that she'll adapt to kids and other crazy stuff enough to be able to do it next year).

In addition, on a daily basis, we are out in the woods, often at sunrise and sunset, and we expect our dogs to resist the temptation of chasing animals. We expect them to come when called even if they're in the midst of a squirrel convention, an elk herd, or a coyote gathering. Of course, the dogs are never perfect because they are living beings... but as long as they can stay out of danger, we are happy.

So, we expect a lot of our dogs. To do all those things, they need to know a very large vocabulary of "commands", and they need to be able to deal with novel situations easily. So far, with tons of hard work, all of our Labs have been able to do it.

I guess that our lifestyle explains why I am working so hard with Shyla that I am actually exhausted (more so than Shyla, I think). We work on "commands" every single day. Today, I had her sit, down, and stand in one spot, depending on which one I asked for, while I stood about 30' away by a trail. The main idea is that she learns to listen to me and follow cues from a distance, since that's key to good off-leash behavior.

I had her do her sits, downs, and stands on a boulder so that she wouldn't inch toward me when she switched from one position to another. That's a common mistake that young dogs make.

We did 10 recalls from varying distances during our hike. Shyla is getting so good at recalls that I try to do them when she's distracted by something in the forest.

I asked Shyla to "leave" a pile of treats that I'd put on the trail, until I gave her permission to eat them. Then, in the midst of all that training and hiking, we met a friend on a new horse, a novel situation for Shyla and the new horse. We hung out with them to let Shyla get used to the horse and vice-versa. Finally, when we arrived home, I ran the vacuum cleaner for a little while, not because the house needed to be cleaned, but because we're gradually helping Shyla become comfortable with its sound and other odd noises.

I work on "stays" with Shyla daily. I even practice going out of her sight while she's in a stay (although I'm often peeking at her without her knowing it). I use stays frequently in daily life, when we're in town or on the trails. For example, I ask her to "stay" while I pick up her poop next to a sidewalk in town or while I take a photo in the woods. Today, she practiced a stay in the pine forest.
She also did a stay while I took this photo of a bright rose hip.

And, she did a stay while I took this sunset photo two days ago.

Another major part of my motivation is my absolute awe at how smart dogs are and at the amazing fact that two different species can communicate so well. I would be sad if I didn't use the incredible intelligence of dogs to expand their (and our) horizons. Indeed, I adore watching them learn - and seeing the light in their eyes when they have that "ah ha!" moment when they understand what I'm asking them to do. It's a joy to train Shyla because she is so smart and eager to please.

Moreover, the bond between people and dogs grows even stronger through the shared experience of training. I love training dogs... unlike a lot of other people. I think that a big reason why K and I had such a strong bond was all the training that we did together - we did so much together that words were no longer needed for us to communicate by the end of her life. I'm quite sure that a dog can be happy without all the training that we do... but I couldn't be!

So, Shyla and I will keep pecking away at our list of things to learn and to experience. And, we'll have fun in the process - I have no doubt about that. She's leaping with joy!

Bearproof means....

We have a bearproof garbage can. I've had trail camera pointed at it since June, thinking that I'd get a census of the local bears who would all sniff it. Believe it or not, I captured NO photos of any animals near it until the other night (4 months after posting the camera). I'm fairly certain that the bag next to the garbage can attracted the wildlife. It contained a very old dog bed (~15 years old) that doubtless emanated canine scents very strongly.

The first visitor was our friend the bobcat. He appears to have walked toward the bed with great purpose.

Then, a coyote looked toward the bed with interest.

Either the same coyote returned... or another one came through.

Then, Tiny the Black Bear showed up. He walked toward the garbage can.

And, in the next photo, he was hard at work trying to open the bear-proof garbage can. He was unsuccessful. It is *truly* bear-proof.

After giving up on the garbage can, Tiny walked 100 yards to the other side of our house, and he tried to break our bearproof bird feeding station. Birdfeeders are hanging about 6' over his head.

Tiny is looking good this year. He's very fat and ready for hibernation. If he follows last year's schedule, he'll keep wandering around our area for at least another month before he disappears into a den. I wonder where he goes for the rest of the year. I see him around here only in autumn.

He gave up on the birdfeeders and walked dejectedly away.

The next morning, Shyla and I were out at sunrise. She was intensely interested in Tiny's scent. After we had walked far enough away from Tiny's scent, we worked on some recalls in the sunrise light.

 Life in the forest is always interesting!