The house is too quiet tonight. Sweet Shyla was stricken with terrible GI issues a lot like Hachi's of a couple of weeks ago. Even though we got her to an ER vet pretty fast, she was already very dehydrated. She's staying in the hospital for 24-48 hours so that she can get fluids and medicines via IV. They will also try to figure out what caused it.
We glimpsed springtime for a couple of days. It has been sweltering - ha ha - actually, it got up to about 29°F. But, after a very cold February, I felt too warm when I was outside riding my bike. I am surprised by the return of the hot sun every March. It's a transition that I enjoy.
On those warm days, the mountain bluebirds made their first foray up to our mountain region. I was riding in an open and grassy area when I spotted a strikingly blue bird flitting ahead of me. I kicked myself when I wasn't fast enough to get a photo. But, a little later, I rode into the midst of a flock of them! One posed for me with a little snow in the background. Happy Day!!!!
It is hardly the end of winter. It will snow tomorrow, and the bluebirds will retreat to lower elevation. I have enjoyed the cold winter weather more than ever before so I am not unhappy about the return of winter. We need snow to nourish the flowers, grass, and wildlife so I am thankful for it.
Here was a recent wintery sunrise over Lab Valley. What a sight!
On an unexpected cam, I found some wonderful footage of our mother mountain lion and her three kittens.
First, you'll see the mother in darkness. I believe that she is staring toward where she either had just heard her prey or where a carcass was stashed. It was my lucky day because the carcass was close to my cam, and the lion family passed the cam many times.
In the next scene, in dim daylight, her kittens emerge from behind the cam. Notice how the second one places his paws exactly in the first one's paw prints, saving just a little bit of energy. One of them comes back to look for the third sibling who soon emerges from behind the cam. What amazing young kittens!
At about the 2 minute mark, a kitten appears from the right and sits to stare down at the area behind the cam. I suspect that his family was down there. He calls in a high pitched chirp and his mother answers from behind the cam. Be sure to have your sound on to hear their vocalizations.
The final scene is the best. Mom appears in front of the cam. She makes a "scrape" in the snow while staring down behind the cam. Then, one kitten joins her. The affection between them is so clear. Mom does both low pitched and high pitched vocalizations in this clip. Enjoy!
Here is the video:
Hachi seems physically completely recovered from his hemorrhagic diarrhea. It was such a scary illness. I've never seen one of our young dogs so obviously gravely ill. He was unable to eat or drink and pathologically subdued. I repeatedly checked that he was still breathing.
In the midst of it, we had a lot of trouble getting vets to help us. They'd say things like "we don't have time to treat Hachi today" or "he must come to the hospital to have another full exam before we can prescribe for him" (when he'd been in for a sedated full exam the day before - and we felt that the stress of another exam would hurt him).
One thing that I've learned is that we will need to advocate for Hachi more than for any of our other dogs. It's one thing for a pet professional to verbally laud our efforts in rescuing and rehabbing him but it's quite another for them to come through with care when he needs it. We will hold our behavioral vet close because she truly understands. Helping dogs like Hachi is her calling.
I fully expect to see Hachi playing with Shyla like this again soon. His behavior has returned to normal - it was indeed a blip that he acted aggressively toward Shyla while sick. We are staying at our old place to avoid subjecting him to the stress of living in a construction zone. Our old place is great for stress-reduction but there's no place for them to run and play like at Lab Valley. Like so many things, it's a tradeoff.
We are so glad that Hachi has mended.
He had that same intensity for almost everything including eating a meal, getting a frozen kong, his "Manners Minder", greeting a friend either human or canine, going swimming, running through the flowers, trying to dig up a rodent, and playing in the snow. To the very end, he did nothing half-heartedly.
I wish that I could be more like him - finding joyful focus in everything. Happy Black Dog Sunday!
Shyla and I had such a beautiful morning out in fresh snow a couple of days ago. We were out very early, just as the sunlight was touching our spot in the mountains. The forest was still dark but the open areas were bright. The white snow was fresh and powdery.
We were at our old place so we visited some familiar spots. This was a spot where Shyla often raced our Black Dog. It reminded me of how pleasantly surprised I've been that Shyla was ready to be the eldest dog in our pack. I feared that she might crumble when she lost her big brother but she did not. That doesn't minimize how much we all miss him. However, I am glad that Shyla has zoomed onward on her own. She is a reminder of how far a dog can come when they are given the time and space to grow.
Shyla makes every day brighter for the rest of us. I hope that we do the same for her.
Happy Shyla Saturday.
In the fast pace of our life this fall, I almost missed that my trail cam had captured a true gem. Somehow, a big family of bobcats had flown under the radar all summer!
Bobcat kittens are born in the spring, and they usually stay with their mom into the winter. In the past, I've seen a mother with one or two kittens. In this case, she has THREE! My first glimpse of this family wasn't until October in the video that I'm sharing here.
I love what a peaceful scene this is. It isn't close to a main trail so the bobcat family wasn't under pressure from humans. They simply moved as a unit through the forest, with two kittens pausing to investigate my camera. When they briefly exited the camera's view, they were probably investigating a rocky outcropping where bobcats sometimes hunt for rodents.
Check out the short video!
Foxes weigh a small fraction of what a mountain lion weighs. Yet, they love to share scent posts with mountain lions. Both red foxes and gray foxes show up at mountain lion scrapes regularly. They move with such agility as they mark the spot and then disappear.
One of the scrapes that I've monitored for years was visited by red foxes, gray foxes, and a mountain lion over the past month. It's a great example of this mix of foxes and lions that I see so often. Also, you can see and hear the crazy wind that has dominated our weather this winter. It's been intense.
Check out the video if you have time!
Hachi made sudden improvements after we gave him fluids and medicine on Saturday night. It was amazing to see how fast he seemed a million times better. He started eating and drinking within about 30 minutes of the infusion. His eyes looked brighter and happier. Even his body language looked more energetic. We have our behavioral vet to thank for this. She went the extra mile to get us meds on Saturday after other vets wouldn't help us.
Hachi now has to rest for a number of days before he can exercise again. The tests did not show what caused his illness. My hypothesis is that he got very stressed out at Lab Valley last week. There were a lot of workers here, and they were all over the house and noisy. Outwardly, he seemed to be handling it well but perhaps it took a toll. We won't spend such a construction-heavy time here again.
This photo was from just before he got sick.
During the illness and afterwards, his behavioral issues got worse than they've been in quite a while. He's behaved aggressively toward Shyla on a number of occasions both indoors and outdoors. He was on a leash each time so he did no physical harm. And, to my surprise, Shyla didn't seem to take it seriously.
For now, we are strictly separating them so that this behavior doesn't become a habit for Hachi and so that Shyla doesn't become afraid of him. We want them to play together again in the future.
Puppy Hachi loved to be as close as possible to his big brother. And R loved it too. He never passed up a chance to play or snuggle with puppies.
As of Saturday evening, Hachi has not yet started eating or drinking. He had one drink of water all day Saturday, and nothing more. A normal dog would be in the hospital but we and his vets feel that he's better at home in a low stress environment. We delivered fluids and anti-nausea meds under his skin last evening (Saturday night), and we hope that they help. I was very nervous about it but he was remarkably well behaved despite being afraid.
If you can spare some good thoughts for our Hachi, he sure could use them.
After a very long Friday of worry, I am going to break from my normal posting pattern.
You might remember a fairly recent post about Hachi. It focused on how to take him to the vet given his extreme fear and reactivity. We decided to wait until the Covid risk had lessened before taking him for his annual exam so that we could be with him before and after sedation.
On Thursday-Friday, Hachi had extreme GI distress, including diarrhea and vomiting. By Friday morning, he was acting very subdued and was not willing to take a pill pocket. He takes behavioral medicines a few times per day so he was getting behind on those.
At about 5:30 AM, we realized that he truly needed to go to the vet. We feared an obstruction because of how much blood was involved in the GI distress. As early as possible, we called his regular vet and his behavioral vet. His regular vet basically said that her hospital could not help on short notice due to Hachi's special needs. That felt like a small betrayal, even though we understood the reasoning.
Our behavioral vet came through in a huge way, giving us her cell phone number for texting throughout the day and suggesting a course of action. That was to take him to an emergency vet hospital that is known for their ability to deal with almost anything.
Prior to leaving for the vet, the first task was to get a muzzle on Hachi. He was getting increasingly reactive because he felt so awful. But, our training came through! We've played the "muzzle game" with him hundreds of times. We set up in the place where we most often play it, and acted as if it was nothing more than one more game. He stuck his nose in the muzzle, we fastened it, and one problem was solved.
The next issue was how to induce sedation at the vet hospital. We've been playing the "syringe game" for that. Around the house, we fill a syringe with chicken broth and randomly squirt it into his mouth. That has made him want to lick all syringes. That game worked at the vet where the Runner gave him a very strong oral sedative via a syringe. The only downside was that Hachi was not very affected by the sedative so he eventually had to be given an injection. That upset him greatly but hopefully he won't remember it.
Then, he had an ultrasound which, thank goodness, showed no blockage of his GI tract. So, they gave him fluids to offset 30 hours of vomiting and diarrhea and gave him injectable meds to get his GI tract to calm down.
So, we survived an emergency vet visit with Hachi. To make it even more worthwhile, they also did all of the routine stuff that Hachi needed at an annual exam so that ordeal is checked off our list.
Until we adopted Hachi, I could not have imagined how much stress a simple GI issue can cause. Going to the vet is a traumatic event for him so we kept hoping that he'd naturally get better. Then, after deciding that we had no choice but to take him to the vet, we considered all of the worst possible outcomes to prepare for them. I am completely wiped out from it.
I sure hope that our little guy recovers fast and gets back to snow play.
