Black Dog Sunday

Our vet wants to honor our Black Dog on National Specially Abled Pets Day.

Although his one-eyed look is his most obvious way of being "specially abled", he actually has an even more amazing way in which he's specially-abled. He was born with elbow dysplasia. He had a series of "clean out" surgeries starting with his first one at Age 1.  Each worked briefly but not for long enough because the weight bearing surfaces inside his elbow were gradually getting more damaged.

A few years ago, he was reaching the point that he couldn't run because he had no cartilage left in the joint. So, he had a rare and complicated surgery to replace the weight-bearing surfaces in his elbow.

It worked!!!! He's been running ever since. He's now over 11 years old. We see some stiffness in that elbow every now and then but he can run. I'm smiling even just writing those words. This photo was R sprinting atop a mesa in Utah last fall.

 We love our Black Dog, and we smile all the time about how well he's doing.

Happy Black Dog Sunday!

Saturday Sunrise

I discovered that I have some "flying camera" videos of sunrise that I haven't shared yet. Because we are in an uncharacteristically gray phase of the year, I needed a boost, and these colors did it!

Just before the sun peeked over our eastern hills. Look at the fog in the low lying areas, trying to creep up to higher elevation.

Ah, the sun!

It's amazing how fast the world lights up when the sun rays hit it!

I made a video from my flying camera of a 360° view of our area. You can watch it here or at Youtube.

Nature Friday - The Elk Herd

For most of the winter, I caught glimpses of our elk herd from a great distance. I used a very long lens to get photos of them.

One day, Shyla and I were out in the morning, and I was taking photos of her up on a boulder.

She frequently looked past me and into the distance. I didn't know why.

Later, I found out why.

The elk herd seemed to move back and forth on the land near our house all day that day.

And, they came very close to our house. They were so close that they were videoed by a trail camera that I had set up on the trail that we use to go in and out of our house. They seemed to swarm past it very close to it. I found the video to be fun to watch because it felt like the camera was almost in the midst of the herd.

I hope that you enjoy the video. I don't think that I will ever stop being so awed that we live someplace where an elk herd saunters past our house on a regular basis!

Thanks to the LLB Gang for hosting the Nature Friday Blog Hop.

Thankful Thursday - Bears and Amaryllis Flowers

This has been one of the tougher winters that we've had in a while. It's beginning to feel as if the snow may never melt, and sunshine is a long way off.

But, I saw one great sign today - bear tracks! This is around the time of year that a few eager bears emerge from their dens every year but the trail cams that usually capture their footage are virtually impossible to access now due to deep and sloppy snow. Thus, I have to rely on tracks on a dirt road to know that some bears are waking up.

The handwarmer (yes, still needed!) is for scale. It's 3.25" on its long side. Bears often overlay one track on another, and I believe that I see signs of that here.

One source of smiles over the past couple of weeks has been my amazing amaryllis plants. They have bloomed endlessly!

Every time I arrived home, it seemed as if yet another flower had opened.

I decided to try to make a time lapse movie of an amaryllis flower opening. It turned out to be much harder than I expected. I tried on four different flowers, and even my last try involved mistakes.

Despite that, I decided to share the video here. It's quite short (3 days compressed into 30 sec), and I hope that it makes you smile.

Many thanks to Brian for hosting the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop.

Almost Wordless Wednesday - Puppy Peeks

Puppy Peeks

Puppy glows in sunset light

Shyla Mimicks Me (part 2)

Shyla is a multi-talented dog. She can leap to great heights and then wag her tail as she descends toward the ground. But she's not just an amazing athlete...

...she is also brilliant at learning new things. Last week, I showed you video of her mimicking me doing some fairly simple things. Today, I have another short video of her mimicking me doing things that were somewhat more difficult for her to figure out.

Enjoy it! The video can be found here or at Youtube.

Puppy Hachi

Hachi is healing from surgery so he hasn't played like a puppy in 10 days. He's starting to go crazy but his siblings are helping him stay grounded.

To the extent that we can while he recovers, we've been working on helping Hachi with his fear-based issues. To help with resource guarding, I like to play a game that is designed to teach Hachi that great things happen to him after one of his siblings gets a treat. So, I give Shyla a treat and then immediately give Hachi three treats. I pause. Then, I give R a treat, rapidly followed by another three treats to Hachi. I'll continue on for several minutes with Hachi getting almost a meal's worth of kibble during the game.

It seems to work, in the short term at a minimum. Hachi doesn't guard food at all during the game. We are lucky that his resource guarding is relatively tame (compared to cases that I've read about) so it's safe to have all three side-by-side for the game.

After the game, R and Hachi were exhausted yesterday, and they snoozed in a sun puddle.

There have been no big changes since my last puppy update. The best thing is that Hachi has had no outbursts since that update. We are managing his environment carefully, taking care not to stress him or push him too fast.

It took the better part of six years for Shyla to become comfortable in her own skin. If I had known at the start of our journey that it would ultimately lead to a happy Shyla, I would have been far more patient along the way. However, in real life, we never know how something will turn out... and so I find myself feeling a similar urgency about "solving" Hachi's issues as I felt about Shyla's fears.

I need to take a deep breath and remember that important things don't happen overnight. I wish that they did!

I am still overjoyed with how united our pack is. We all love our puppy.

Black Dog Sunday

Our Black Dog had a treat-filled week.

And that's how every week should be, says he!

He and his sister tossed treats in the air with glee.

They even clashed teeth as the tried to snarf the treats raining through the air.

And, at the end, strings of slobber hung between their faces.

Only now do I realize how extraordinary it is that neither of them feels the need to guard their treats. They've had lives filled with plenty of food, and they are both secure in the knowledge that food will fill their bowls every day for the rest of their lives.

Poor Hachi is not yet able to grasp that idea. He's improving, two steps forward and one step backward... but I imagine that overcoming early experiences of needing to fight for your food is very hard.

His Zen Black Dog Brother is here to help him.

Our Black Dog has now been off of antibiotics for a full week with no relapses of his UTI/kidney issues. I am very hopeful that he's finally kicked this infection! Yay!

It is indeed a Happy Black Dog Sunday.

Silly Saturday

Shyla and I played some very silly games earlier this week. You can't tell but she is saying - toss that treat now!

I tossed it. Shyla trained her eyes on it and opened her mouth in anticipation.

For once, my toss was decently aimed. Shyla snarfed it.

Shyla looks insanely happy!!!

We BOTH love this game.

Wild Springtime

We had a few days of spring! Shyla and I had fun on our morning outings in the sunshine and warmth.

The bluebirds flitted around in trees full of bursting buds.

And, best of all, the elk herd is back! They retreated to lower elevation after our big snowstorm a couple of weeks ago.

The elk spread out across a vast meadow with the snowy mountains in the background. Less than half of the herd is in the photo. I will never stop loving watching our elk.

And, as regular readers probably know, the predators follow the elk herd. My trail cams showed how true that is as a mountain lion was out viewing the herd in broad daylight.

I have a short video of the mountain lions and other animals at a scent post to share. The scene shown as the "cover photo" of the video shows one of the biggest bobcats who I've ever seen in the middle of a serious snow squall.

And, not unexpectedly, winter is returning tomorrow. Ah well - spring was fun while it lasted!

Thanks to the LLB Gang for hosting the Nature Friday Blog Hop.

Thankful Thursday - Thankful for our Goofy Puppy

Last week, Hachi had the dreaded neuter surgery that strikes almost all puppies at some point. It went smoothly, and he's acting as if he's feeling 100% of normal already.

Yes, he's had to wear the cone of shame whenever we're not closely supervising him. It hasn't hindered his goofiness even the slightest bit.


He's been applying his substantial intellect to the cone problem. Here, he demonstrates an experiment in using his hind paws to pry it off.

Then, he contemplated biting at the velcro seam. That technique actually worked once but we're still not sure how. I'm guessing that our puppy genius will never tell us.

Finally, he made his last attempt of that morning...

... or perhaps he was holding his head in frustration and despair. Only 8 days to go, Hachi.

We thank our puppy for entertaining us even during his coned recovery from surgery.

And we thank Brian for hosting the Thankful Thursday Blog Hop!

Wordless Wednesday

Just before our puppy was taken out of action by neuter surgery

Playing with our good friends' dog

Mr. Big Paws with his sister

His sister took flight shortly after playing with Hachi

Training Tuesday: Shyla Mimicking Me

You all might remember that I dabbled in teaching Shyla to mimic me more than a year ago. Back then, she learned to mimic a few of my behaviors, and then I let it drop. Until about two months ago, I think that both Shyla and I had forgotten all about it.

Two months ago, I decided to dedicate some time to it again. It is one of the most fun ways to teach a dog new behaviors. In fact, after two months of practicing, I've taught Shyla more complex combinations of behaviors than I've taught her any other way.

When teaching a dog mimicry, you start with very simple behaviors that your dog already knows how to do. One of the hardest parts is figuring out how to imitate a dog's way of doing something like crawling or carrying a toy in their mouth. In this video and the next one (probably next week), you'll get to see my silly imitations.

One of the behaviors that you'll see me do and then Shyla imitate it is the one shown in this photo - resting her chin between her front paws. It was one of the first ones that she learned to imitate.

Here is the first video of Shyla mimicking my behaviors. Enjoy, and don't hesitate to laugh at us!

I really love teaching our dogs new ways of learning and fun games that we can do together. Mimicry falls into both of those categories!

In case you're interested, there is a book lays out how to teach your dog to imitate you.

Full Moon Setting and Beautiful Shyla

I absolutely love when the full moon sets because our entire western horizon is snowy mountains.

Unfortunately, it was very very cold as I tried to take these photos so I didn't do a great job. I have Raynaud's Syndrome, and I couldn't feel my shutter finger at all! So, I captured the random moments when my finger touched the shutter button almost by accident.

My favorite part of the setting of a full moon is that the sun is rising behind me as the moon sets. You can see the alpenglow and the brightening sky from the rising sun in the next photo.

For the grand finale just before the moon disappeared, I managed to quickly put on a wider angle lens when I saw the whole mountain range lighting up from the sunrise. Standing there in the mountain silence, I was so glad that I'd braved the cold to watch the moon set.

I shouldn't say "I". Of course, my best furry friend was with me during the magical moon set. After the moon disappeared from view, we hustled to a good spot to see the reddish light of the rising sun on her fur.

To my eyes, she is as beautiful as the setting moon.