Wildflowers Galore in Crested Butte

I haven't written much about our trip to Crested Butte or showed many photos of the "Wild Flower Capitol of the US". One of the things that I adore about Crested Butte is the many high altitude mountain biking trails that are lined with flowers as tall as me.

We tried to time our visit for the peak of the wildflowers but the drought was starting to hit the area, and the flowers were a tiny bit past peak - but still no complaints from me!

I got to ride trails that looked like this one for days on end. The only downside was that the rides were too long for Shyla so she couldn't join me. She went running with the boys instead.

There was a super mellow vibe among the mountain bikers. These weren't crazy dudes out to rock the trails at top speed - a small faction of the mountain biking population drives me nuts because it gives all of us a bad name. In contrast to that faction, almost everyone I saw while riding in Crested Butte was stopping to take in the flowers and incredible scenery.

One day, I managed to crash quite badly when I was only 100 yards into my ride. I was going down a very steep slope with loose rocks when a group of motorized dirt bikes appeared out of nowhere. I braked, lost traction, and fell hard. It was my worst crash in years, with a big gash in my elbow, a bruise (or maybe a small fracture) to my ulna (a forearm bone), and a gashed and swollen knee.

I really didn't want to miss a day of riding in paradise so I went back to the van where the Runner helped me clean the wounds and then bandaged me up to go back out on the trails. I was okay to ride - albeit with more pain than usual - but lifting my bike was impossible due to my elbow. I came upon a section of trail where carrying your bike across a chasm is the only option. For a moment, I thought that I'd have to turn around.

To my surprise, a pair of very nice guys who I'd chatted with at the start of the trail were waiting for me so that they could carry my bike for me. They'd seen my elbow and knew I'd need help. People can be so generous and thoughtful. When they are, it makes my day. I don't know these guys' names - but a big thank you to them and to all the thoughtful people in the world!

Thanks to their help, I got to see these sunflowers who were leaning into the trail to say hi!

And I swooped downhill to a section of trail where the purples took over. Purple is my favorite color so I had to stop to enjoy this section of trail lined with fireweed!

Tall Larkspur also added a bit of the "Color Purple".

I'm still recovering from that crash. Today was the first ride that I took without yelping in pain at least once due to banging my elbow or going over a big bump. I think my elbow is going to heal fine all on its own.

Happy Saturday to all of you from Shyla and me!

Black Dog Joy

I think that you understand the joy it gives me to see R romping with his sister.

He's 4 months post-CUE surgery. He still limps sometimes. Like today - he dug a hole worthy of being a bear den when he was done! That was a bit too much for his elbow so now he's limping. I try not to let that affect my spirits too much.

Now we are off to the vet for a rehab appointment. R has become a true "circus dog" in the past couple of weeks with his rehab exercises. I'll share a video soon!

Happy Friday!

Positive Training - Two Examples

Today, I am participating in the positive pet training blog hop.

I've become more dedicated to positive training with every passing year. Shyla, with all her fears, has shown me that the compassion and understanding inherent in positive training can help a dog build the trust in her human that is needed to help her find confidence.

Today, I saw a bad scene where the opposite of positive training was used. I was riding my bike past a transients' campsite, and a dog came running at me barking. I stopped and quickly assessed the dog's body language. I thought that the dog was probably just alert barking and was not aggressive. However, I still hoped that someone would control the dog so that I wouldn't have to test out my assessment.

The guy who emerged to call the dog was awful to the dog. Yet, despite the guy's angry voice, the dog returned to him. However, the dog cowered onto the ground in a submissive position when the guy leaned over the dog screaming awful things at him. Based on the body language, I thought that the dog had been hit before. I predict that this dog will not continue to come when called for long. For my protection, I had a body cam running during the encounter. Here is a short clip that you can watch here or on Youtube.
Of course, we all have moments when we lose our patience with our dogs. No one is perfect. The main thing for me is to realize what I've done and do my best to never let it happen again. I actually mentally rehearse how I'm going to respond when Shyla "misbehaves" by blowing me off. That helps me to behave better, using positive techniques, in the midst of a charged situation.

On a happier note, I've been continuing Nosework training with Shyla. We've been having an absolute blast. I thought that I'd share some of our recent training games in video form.

In the video, we are playing with boxes. There are boxes with target scents in them and there are boxes with treats in them. Shyla has learned to single out the boxes with the target scents and ignore the ones with treats. Basically, she's learned that the path to getting treats is to show me where the target scents are!

Here's a fun video of Shyla doing Nosework. My favorite part is how she dove into the pile of about 15 boxes to find the single one with a target scent in it while ignoring the boxes with treats in them. At the start of our training, she was afraid of a pile of boxes but positive training has totally healed that fear!!!

You can watch the video here or at Youtube.


We've learned all our Nosework skills through Fenzi courses. Many thanks to the reader who suggested that Nosework and Fenzi courses would be good for Shyla. That reader was absolutely right! Not only have we learned nosework but Shyla's confidence has skyrocketed and her behavior in everyday life has improved immensely due to the "Fenzi" approach to building our relationship.

Wordless Wednesday

Walking on Water

Levitation

Paradise

Hello Sunflower!

The Bad Humans and the Cute Bear Cubs

On my first bike ride after returning home, I found a scene that made my blood boil. It was on a short forest road that I use to access some other places but "campers" have discovered it in recent years.

They are not classic campers but people who choose to live in filth in the forest. They call themselves "travelers", "crusty kids", or a host of other names. They set up huge encampments. I was the first to find this one so they weren't aggressive toward me. They ignored me. That included the guy passed out on the road and the girl who had a needle in her arm.

This was the scene at one tent site two days ago. That's a pile of junk on the left and a tent. There was porn and food all over the ground. Since then, a couple more tarp shelters have been built in this spot.

Just across from that tent, there was a pile of garbage. It was horrifying, including household stuff, clothing, a barbie doll, a weed wacker, a computer printer, and food remains. A neighbor went into the area last evening, and his photos show this pile to be substantially bigger already. He was aggressively harassed by the "campers" who literally forced him out of the area.

Here was the main camping area. I couldn't show the many tents and tarp shelters but there were probably five. There are even more today.

A girl had a needle in her arm, as you can barely make out in this photo. They ignored me the whole time because no officers had been there yet to investigate.

Now, the situation is explosively tense because officers have been to the area many times since it was discovered. The "campers" are gathering more and more of their cohorts to join the site. They are preventing everyone but them from using this section of forest or the forest road that they are on. I am too scared to go near the area.

I've been working tirelessly contacting authorities, writing letters, and networking to try to get this site shut down. I'd like it to be permanently shut down with a big gate blocking vehicle access to the area but I may be dreaming too big.

Thank goodness that there was footage on my trail cams to make me smile and laugh in light of the terrible situation relatively nearby. Mabel (our den sow) and her cubs are together, despite that scared cub video that we saw recently.

Here they are near our house.

Mabel's mange has healed well, and her two cubs are looking healthy.

I also got video of Dot and her cub at a bear tree, which the cub seemed to think was a jungle gym. And, I got the first footage of Mabel with her cubs in a watering hole!!! I hope that you enjoy the video as much as I did. You can watch it here or at Youtube.

Now, let's all hope that the bear family does NOT go near those awful "campers" despite the food that is lying on the ground all over the area. If only law enforcement would just take action, we wouldn't have a dark cloud hanging over our neck of the woods.

A Healing Vacation

After the wildfire, evacuation, and my string of bad migraines, we decided that we needed a serious break from everyday life. We packed up the LabMobile, including all of R's rehab devices, and we headed to the Crested Butte area of Colorado. We camped above 11,000', and we had many lakes around us for most of our days there.

It was exactly what we needed, and it also seemed to be what R needed to get stronger. We'd felt like his post-surgery improvement had slowed down a lot. Before the trip, he was still limping almost daily, and we were nervously controlling his activity to make sure that he didn't hurt himself. Ironically, our vet was encouraging us to increase his activity even more despite the limping because she thought that the limp was simply a "habit" rather than a sign of pain. I'm embarrassed to admit that we'd been afraid to actually follow her advice.

But, in Crested Butte, we had lakes galore. We let R play as if he'd never had elbow surgery. He was the happiest dog in the world. His limp vanished despite intense activity like this leap off the shore of a lake.

After the first day of letting him play around the lakes with no restrictions, I held my breath, watching to see if his gait got worse. It didn't!!!! So we played more!

In between multiple swimming (and diving) sessions per day, R went on progressively longer trail runs with the Runner. He still didn't limp!

I was doing his intensive rehab with him every day in our campsite, and he seemed to be getting stronger at an incredible rate. I'm going to share an update on his rehab soon.

By the end of our trip, we humans felt sure that we'd made a good decision when we chose CUE surgery for him back on April 15.  We hadn't seen him walk with no limp in a couple of years before this trip.

His sister was thrilled to have him playing with her again.

I'll tell you more about our trip in future posts but I had to share this very happy highlight first!

Sky Day - Clouds and a Silhouette

In the late afternoon one Sunday, the view to the east showed storms hovering nearby above a verdant meadow.

It was no surprise when those eastern skies lit up gloriously around sunset. They were beautiful with a dog silhouette.

And they were beautiful all by themselves.

I love clouds and how they light up around sunrise and sunset!

Happy Sky Day to all of you!

The Eyes Have It

One of Shyla's new favorite games is to go behind me and then peek at me from under my legs. I love getting my camera ready for her wide-eyed look.

The gray highlights in her brows are growing on me. I think they're beautiful.

What a sweet girl Shyla is!

Flower Friday

Even Shyla stops to soak up the scent of the flowers. Those are our snowy mountains on the horizon behind her.

We have been incredibly fortunate to have an aspen grove where a very rare "Wood Lily" has been blooming for a week or so. Our local botanist has seen this flower only twice in her life. I've found six separate blooms in the past week. Wow, I feel lucky. It's a gorgeous flower that leaps out at me from the vegetation on the floor of an aspen grove.

I've also seen lots of these moths, called the Gaillardia Flower Moth, resting on the very common "Blanket Flower". The moth is colored so that it is perfectly camouflaged by the flower when it rests during the day. It positions itself so that the line between its yellow head and red body is at the same line on the flower.

Here's another angle. I've become so attuned to these moths that I notice them when riding past a flower on my bike.

Another favorite flower of mine is the Shooting Star, a flower that flourishes in wet meadow areas. It bloomed much earlier this season but I didn't get to feature it. I love the color and the unique shape of this flower. I don't love how I have to lie in the mud to get photos of it :)

A flower that is often overlooked here because it blooms at the same time as some other flashier flowers is our wild rose. It seems to blanket the forest in late June and early July. Its scent is so sweet!

Shyla notices the scents of flowers - and, if I have my camera ready, it's fun to capture her look as she sniffs the air near them. Those are Columbines that she was focused on.

Happy Flower Friday!

Thankful Thursday - Our Black Dog

We are thankful to see our crazy black dog finding his spirit again.

His recovery is still going as expected, very up and down, but generally in the right direction. He's running daily in addition to his rehab exercises, which are becoming more and more intense.

We are very hopeful that he'll be frolicking with his sister in mountain lakes before the summer ends!

Wordless Wednesday

This lighting is my favorite but is much more common in autumn than summer!

Playing in the flowers

It's been an amazing year for wildflowers. I can't get enough of them.

With the flowers, the bees have been abundant. Somehow, I've managed to get stung by bees four times so far this summer. In one case, a bee landed on my lip as I rode my bike and stung me before I I could brush him off. Fortunately, I'm not allergic to bee stings but they do hurt.

I'm glad that the flowers and the bees are doing so well. Sometimes, it feels as if Shyla and I are navigating a jungle of flowers.

I love it!

Sun Puddles in July

I know it's only July but I am already seeing little signs of the changing of the season. Early the other morning. Shyla was lying in a sun puddle when I awakened, with her golden eyes glowing in the low angle sun. Sun puddles are a winter-time occurrence around here. What's up with that?

I'm not going to show you the other signs I've seen - the occasional yellow leaf and the late summer flowers that are already blooming due to our drought. I'll save those for later in the summer, when those thing should be appearing.

Shyla wishes you a Happy Summer Monday.

Silhouette Sunday

I love when the eastern sky lights up at sunset so I can photograph a silhouette of my graceful Shyla.

Happy Sunday.