Almost Wordless Wednesday - Labraduo at Sunset

A few words - I remember many years ago when we had a different generation of dogs that I learned about the "golden hour" by taking photos of our Labratrio in this spot at sunset on Valentine's Day. So, I decided to recreate that with our current Labraduo.

I love seeing them together!

Moose are Everywhere!

In the past three years, we've gone from never having seen a moose in our neck of the woods to seeing them regularly.

As some of you remember, a moose literally charged into my world. When moose first arrived in our area, I was charged on three occasions. Other people were also charged, usually by a mother moose with a calf in tow.

The great news is that both the humans and the moose seem to have learned about each other. The moose seem to know where they're likely to see us humans and to avoid those spots. And, if they're in a "high traffic" trail area, they are wary but usually let people pass.

The local people, including me, have also learned how to coexist with moose. My "moose radar" is almost always active. When I'm with Shyla, I watch her body language closely because it is usually the first hint of a moose in the area. They like to stand perfectly still among the trees, and it's very hard for the human eye to pick them out.

This photo was from about a week ago when Shyla froze in her tracks, leading me to scan the area. I would have never picked out this moose and her calf without Shyla "telling me" that they were there.

Indeed, on one occasion when I was charged by a mother moose a few years ago, I never saw the moose before she started charging. I was pedaling along with Shyla nearby, and a moose came crashing out of the forest. Shyla hid behind me, and I yelled and screamed, scaring away the moose. I'm so glad that I've gotten a bit better, with Shyla's help, at knowing where they are and giving them a wide berth.

A trail camera caught a group of moose coming into our area recently. I believe that this was the mother moose.

I think that this was a young male moose, probably not her most recent calf.

And, this was her calf.

These three lingered in our area for a while, with the male sometimes near the mother-calf pair and sometimes not. When I saw them most recently, only the mother and calf were together. Mom is on the left and the calf is on the right. I was using a very long lens.

Despite my presence, the mother went to lie down a few steps away.

And her calf just stood around while I was present.

I went on my way, heading out to do a loop on my bike. Unfortunately, this mother-calf pair were occupying a trail intersection that I had to pass through to get home at the end of my ride. I hoped that maybe they'd moved before my homeward journey but they hadn't.

On my way home, I first saw the calf, lying in the snow.

Then, I spotted mom. Something about her face made me head off into the woods making a huge arc around them. She scared me with that look.

I think that it was her focus on me that scared me. In any case, I waded through knee-deep snow while pushing my bike to get out of her range, and I passed the pair unscathed.

It's become a pattern in our neighborhood that we tell all our local friends where we spotted moose so that they can be extra careful in that area. I'm not sure how useful it is because these animals can travel a long way quite fast when they want to!

For the moment, it seems that we humans and the moose have reached a state of coexistence. However, I truly believe that our wildlife officials should have educated the locals when the moose started moving into our area. They are an "introduced' species, meaning that they were never naturally here until some were transplanted from other states. It seems inevitable to me that the local people would not know how unpredictable moose are when they first ran into them in the forest or in their own yard.

Moose certainly have changed the forest. They are the only wildlife that don't flee from humans which sets up some interesting situations. Last week, a mother and calf decided to settle in on our driveway. They moved on before it became an issue. However, a neighbor had to hitchhike rather than use her own car because it was being licked by two moose!

Now that's an interesting excuse for being late to an appointment.

An Astounding Animal Athlete

This dog may look contemplative sometimes but she's happiest when she's in action. She and I share that trait. We both love the forest and enjoy a quiet moment of sitting still. However, ultimately, we both love to move through the forest as gracefully as we can.

After I decided to keep her away from all things that she could take flying leaps from to prevent injury, I discovered that there are far more leaping takeoff boards in the forest than I thought. She finds them and surprises me - like in this moment of flight. I believe that she didn't want to run through the bushes at the bottom of the photo so she flew over them.

This moment was during a recall. It looks innocuous enough but there were some shrubs that she didn't want to run through so she took off!

And she flew.

She is, quite simply, the most athletic dog who I've ever had the honor of riding with in the forest. The only reason why I can keep up with her is that she slows down for me!

I've been worrying about her joints because several of her close relatives have ruptured both of their ACL's. I'd hazard a guess that there's a hereditary factor in those injuries. So, I'm trying to slow Shyla down when it comes to flying leaps, and I'm researching how to strengthen her leg muscles to prevent such an injury. After teaching R all his rehab exercises, I feel ready to teach Shyla her very own strength program!

Black Dog Sunday

I had the honor of having both halves of the Labraduo on a bike ride with me yesterday. Unfortunately, neither the snow biking nor the photography conditions were ideal.

For the second half of last week, we suddenly had very high winds (gusts up to 95 mph) and extremely warm weather. That means that some places have lost their snow but the majority of our trail system is covered in a thick layer of mushy slush. It's almost impossible to ride a bike on that stuff so the Labraduo and I didn't make it very far during our trail ride.

During our ride, the sun didn't rise above the cloud bank to the east until quite late. Then, it popped in and out, depending on where the scattered clouds were. Sadly, that made photography tough too!

Last, but certainly not least, I almost couldn't write this post at all because I lost access to my photo library for a few hours due to a corrupted file. You probably can imagine my panic.  However, after reading about a million Lightroom advice web pages, I found a solution. (I do have backups of everything but none were solving the issue because a corrupted system file was the culprit). Thank goodness I solved it!

After all of that, I'm glad to have any photos to show you! Here's the Duo this morning in an area that lost all its snow in the past few days. I love seeing them run together! If it were May, I'd be rejoicing that we could see the ground and some green. However, this is so weird in February that I'm not happy about it at all. It's supposed to be winter in February!

R looked magnificent galloping on dry land! There was a time when we thought that we'd never see him run like this again. He looks so good that people keep asking if he's a puppy!

He's so funny - he has no respect for my personal space so he basically barrels me over as I photograph him on a recall. This was a last quick photo before I barely dodged him! What crazy ears he has!

I get such joy out of sharing a bike ride with our Black Dog that the Runner and I have occasionally been "switching dogs" for our forest outings. It's been really fun for all of us. I love spending time with our Black Dog and getting to see the fruits of all the time we've spent rehabbing his elbow!

Our Black Dog's Puppy Friend

We had a bundle of cuteness visit the other evening. You all remember, Sadie, our friends' puppy, don't you? She's about 5 or 6 months old now, and she weighs more than Shyla!

It's looking as if she may be keeping the helicopter-ear look. She is part Lab and part Shepherd so having one ear of each type makes sense. I love it!

She and R picked up with their play exactly where they left off last time. I suspect that Sadie and R will have a special bond forever.

Even though Sadie is getting more mature, R still "self-handicapped" all evening long, throwing himself onto his back so that he wasn't threatening to his puppy friend. In this photo, he's on his back but has Sadie's paw in his teeth!

Sadie didn't hesitate to maul him, in play, of course!

The look of pure insanity of R's face at times made me laugh. You can also see that he was recovering from an "eye contusion" - based on the very red color of his left eye. We don't know how the contusion happened but R got to spend a day at the vet hospital this week getting it checked out.

We discovered that Sadie had fine tuned some new moves. The paw swat... (which scared me that she might get R's eye with her paw but I tried not to be a helicopter-mom ruining their fun).

And Sadie showed the start of a snarly mouth look...

But she still can't come close to the exaggerated snarly looks that R makes!

There's no doubt that Sadie is growing up - yet another case of puppyhood flying by too fast!

You'll notice that Shyla was not in any photos. She chose to snooze in the bedroom while the two black dogs played. I didn't try to lure her out of the bedroom because I do worry about the camera flash possibly causing a seizure.

However, at the end of the evening, the black dogs were tired. Shyla came out and lay down on a bed with Sadie. I thought that was a great step for Shyla. She's had a number of recent events that have reminded me that she'll never be a totally normal dog after her fearful start. However, she's made huge strides! I love her just the way she is.

A Coyote Pack on a Frosty Morning

Forgive me for a mostly-photo post today. I finally went to the doctor for left-over symptoms of a cold that I had at Christmas, and it turns out that I have a sinus infection. I started my antibiotics yesterday, and I feel as if I can barely function. I'm so tired! I'm hoping that's a good sign that the medicine is working.

Today I want to share some beautiful photos of coyotes on one of our hoar frost covered mornings recently.

As Shyla and I headed up toward where the coyote pack photos were taken, the world looked like this - simply gorgeous in my opinion.

Shortly beyond this point, the coyotes had gathered around a wildlife marking spot. I didn't know it but Shyla did. She added her two cents to the messages left earlier by the coyotes.

You'll see from these photos that Shyla's nose had told her to mark almost exactly where the coyotes had been.

The first coyote came through about an hour before the rest of the pack. He left a message.

An hour later, a group of coyotes came through. Here was the forerunner.

Then the pack arrived. I thought that it was cool that we were all so close together, gathered around the marking spot.

Then, they all seemed to become more wary for an instant.

Very quickly, most of them went back to sniffing except for the gorgeous one looking very noble on the left.

Then, they started to leave, one by one. Each of them left pee-mail on the marking spot.

The last message...

I love coyotes. I have a video of a coyote pack howling on Youtube, and I'm consistently shocked by the hateful comments people leave about coyotes. I delete them but there always seem to be more haters viewing it. I wish that these magnificent animals would be appreciated as our most successful wild canine.

Leaping and Snoozing

A leap involves a powerful takeoff.

Then it requires the ability to fly.

Finally, a successful leap needs a strong landing.

Shyla astounds me almost daily with her incredible athletic prowess. However, I have to admit that it scares me a little when I see her leaps in photos. I think that I'll try even harder to keep her away from ideal launching pads like this one so that she doesn't hurt herself on landing!

She's also very good at snoozing, especially when she's snuggled up with her brother.

Wordless Wednesday - Plowing through the Snow!

I took this photo almost exactly a year ago, and it's one of my favorites from 2016!

Positive Training - Our Incredible Nosework Journey!

For my positive pet training blog hop post, I'd like to share some of Shyla's nosework training.

We've been doing nosework for about a year, and Shyla has become quite advanced. She hasn't competed due to her fear of strangers, strange dogs, and bustling environments. I may work on that at some point because Shyla's love of nosework may end up outweighing her worries about a new environment.

I wanted to share where Shyla's training is now. You may remember that the first step in teaching nosework was me holding a tin of scent in one open hand and a bunch of treats in the other open hand. Shyla learned that she needed to put her nose on the scent tin for me to let her have treats from my other hand.

The incredible part is how that simple little exercise translates into very complex searches before too long with the constant being that Shyla always gets lots of treats for finding the scent source. Today, we were working on situations where I'd hide the scent in one place but air currents would cause the scent to accumulate in another place. Shyla had to figure out where the source of the scent was.

In the short video, you'll see a classic example. I hid the scent in a kitchen cabinet under the sink (together with our stinky garbage). We had a heating stove burning for a couple of hours across the room while the scent was in the cabinet. The heating stove pulled room air into it, including the scent in the cabinet. You'll see Shyla closely examine the area near the stove, the butcher's block between the stove and the cabinet, and then finally she focused on the crack around the cabinet. Believe it or not, when I called "alert", she'd put her nose almost exactly where the scent tin was inside the cabinet.

The outdoor searches were based on a similar set-up except that the wind was what was causing the odor to pool in areas away from the scent source. Shyla was very sharp today, sorting out the puzzles very fast.

Also, notice her incredible enthusiasm! That's what positive training does - it makes training super fun for a dog so that they look forward to every session. Shyla was so excited before we started each search. Notice how she sprinted into the search areas in the outdoor searches. That's what I love to see!!!!

The dance among the lion and scavengers at an elk carcass

I'm sure that some of you remember the story of the mountain lion who killed a cow elk on my friend's land that I talked about in two posts (Post 1 and Post 2). I set up trail cameras all around the carcass to capture footage of the lion and the scavengers who ate every last bit of the elk.

I haven't had a chance to tell you about the scavengers who moved in in the mid-day hours as well as after the lion abandoned the carcass on December 17. They included magpies, ravens, a golden eagle, and coyotes. The coyotes even howled occasionally!

I put footage of the scavengers together into a video that I thought that you might enjoy seeing. I think that a fascinating aspect of it is the interactions among the scavengers and the lion.

It was interesting to see how worried the coyotes were when they dared to go near the carcass during the phase when the lion was still nearby. The first coyote clip shows an example of that behavior. No doubt, the lion would kill a coyote he found the coyote eating his hard-earned elk meat.

I also enjoyed watching the magpies and ravens brazenly continue to eat while the coyote or golden eagle was on the carcass. Seeing a Golden Eagle was really a treat!

Then, in the last clip, I loved watching and hearing the coyote howling while at the carcass!

You can watch the short video here or at Youtube.

Silhouette Sunday

Look at how fast a brilliant sunset changes.

It morphed from orange to a purplish color in a minute.

It's a glorious sight.

Mother Nature's Wonders in Colorado

Just when I thought that it wasn't possible, it was even more beautiful this morning than yesterday! This photo was at sunrise so the snow was tinted red by the sunlight. If you look really closely, you can see Shyla waiting for me at the top of the hill.

The hoar frost was stuck to everything, again! With the sun out and a light breeze, I knew that the frost wouldn't last for long so we played like crazy in the magical world.

Sometimes, I wonder how I got so lucky as to have Shyla as my riding companion and best friend. Her joy is infectious.

I smile and smile as I watch her zoom around.

Our trails, most of which have a deep layer of snow on them, are in superb condition right now. The snow is packed so solidly that I can ride fast, with the only danger being the icy spots. Lots of the trails wend through aspen groves. The aspen trees lining the trails were delicately beautiful this morning.

Happy Saturday from Colorado!