Serendipity - A Mountain Lion and the Stars

With my new computer, I've started using some new software for organizing my photos. I can ask it to "filter" the photos in lots of different ways. It's fun to see what my trail cameras were capturing while I was taking other photos with my regular camera. One night last month, a big male mountain lion came through our neck of the woods while we were far away on a camping trip.

He walked toward one of my motion-activated cams.

At first, he seemed as if he'd just walk briskly past it. Then, he turned on a dime and started sniffing the bone that a dog deposited there six months ago.

This bone has obsessed the local bobcats but this was the first mountain lion who was mesmerized by it.

I couldn't see what he was doing as his nose was toward the bone. Then, he stood up and shook.

He seemed to contemplate his next move before he started walking again. Look at that full belly!

Just a few minutes later, he arrived at another spot that mountain lions love to mark. Over the years, I've gotten footage of many lions scraping the ground and urinating here.

He didn't stay long but he left his own big "scrape" just outside the view of the camera. He's a strong specimen!

Meanwhile, we were camped high in the Rocky Mountains. At the same time as that mountain lion was making his rounds, I had my regular camera on a tripod, and it was taking many exposures of the stars. I layered them together so that we could see the stars' paths.

The stars spun around the North Star. You can see the bright lights of a town below us.

The mountain lion didn't see the town lights but he saw the same stars as we did!

A New Favorite Place

Frequently, I tell you about our trips to our favorite places in the West. As we explore in our LabMobile, we search for new "favorite places", but very often, we end up in less-than-optimal new campsites during our explorations. We visit those sites once (and you never see photos of them here), and then we start searching all over again for new beautiful spots.

This summer, we camped in a new spot that I think is going to become a favorite for us. It was at almost 12,000', high above treeline. It was chilly and a little bit stormy but the surroundings were gorgeous.

There was almost no one else around so the dogs could play in the mountain tundra as I mountain biked and the Runner ran. We started out each morning as a pack, and it was fun watching the Duo run together.

After R and the Runner went off to tackle a high peak (too steep for a mountain bike), Shyla and I explored the trails and small 4wd roads.

She loved clambering on the boulders that speckled the tundra. Don't worry - there's no cliff behind her. Rather, there's a gentle slope down into a deep valley.

An upside to the tumultuous weather during our visit was that we saw more rainbows in a few days than we usually see in an entire year. The pot of gold looked very close based on this late-afternoon rainbow on our first day there!

Then, as I sipped coffee the next morning, a double rainbow appeared. Have you ever noticed how the order of the colors is opposite in the second rainbow? I wonder why.

Rain sprinkled from the sky intermittently that morning. Between rain squalls, it was bright and sunny. Sometimes it was both raining and sunny at the same time, like during my bike ride with Shyla.

Shyla seemed to dance among the rainbows.

After one last smattering of rain during our ride that morning, the rainbow show abruptly ended.

And Shyla and I proceeded with our mountain bike ride in bright warm sunshine. The banks of clouds stayed on the other side of the valley.

What fun days those were! I have the feeling we'll be back to that spot again. I love being so high among the Rocky Mountains.

I have no doubt that Shyla approves of that idea!

Alas, summertime is fading here. The first "chance of snow" has appeared in our forecast for later this week. So it's a good time to look back at our summertime adventures and to plan for our autumn adventures.

Black Lab Sunday

This boy never ceases to make me laugh with his hilarious enthusiasm for life.

As I took this photo, he decided that he wanted to wave at the camera. His wave totally surprised me so only his nose is in focus :)

Then, he had a word or two for the camera - again, unexpected, but funny nonetheless!

We love our R. His spirit is unique and infectiously happy!

The Amazing Shyla

The sunlight is changing. Since I started loving photography, I've noticed how much warmer the light is as we move out of summer and into autumn. It makes Shyla's chocolate fur glow.

We are beseeching the heavens for more warm and sunny days to enjoy before our first frost and snow. We know that they are not far away.

I haven't mentioned it, because I've been afraid of jinxing it, but Shyla's confidence seems to have suddenly and unexpectedly grown wildly strong. She's meeting all sorts of people politely but very warmly. She gives kisses to people who she just met (but never forces kisses upon non-dog people). I watch her with absolute amazement. She's my girl, and I'm so happy that her true spirit is starting to shine through.

All in a Fall Day

Our world is definitely inching toward autumn, yet some flowers are still trying to shine brightly. This is one I planted last year.
A Columbine in my garden... I treasure any Columbine blossom in September!

And, one of many aspen leaves that have turned gold. Most are still green but these ones are telling us what is just ahead!

I love autumn but I know what comes after it. I feel a little like Shyla - I want to cover my eyes and pretend that autumn isn't on the way!

Happy September!

Wednesday on Thursday

It's been a week of lots of things going wrong - but none are huge in the larger scheme of life. One of them is that our internet is kaput, until a technician can visit this weekend to attempt to fix it. I will have a very brief internet window at a friend's house each day, and that's it (I may have withdrawal symptoms!).

So, here are the photos that I planned to post yesterday for Wordless Wednesday before we were cut off from the world.

Do you see the shooting star in the next photo taken at a new Moon? This was from yet another place named after K - K's Kampsite, high above Salida, Colorado.

And these were the trails left by the stars over hours in the same campsite. It's a heavenly place.

I don't think that I'll ever get tired of trying to photograph the night sky. The stars are mystical.

I think that Shyla likes looking at the sky too, based on the next photo!

I will be trying to keep up, but don't worry if there is silence here any day in the near future. It's really hard to live without any internet access these days!

Positive Training - A New Game

For this month's Positive Dog Training Bloghop, I want to tell you a little about the retrieving games that I play with Shyla, trying to make them more challenging than simple retrieving. It was very easy to teach Shyla to do a simple retrieve because it's written in her genes!

In our new game, I place Shyla's toy between her and me. Of course, she expects that I'm going to ask her to "bring it" to me.

 And, sometimes I do.

But, other times, I ask her to "come". Over the past two years, I've trained her that "come" means to ignore everything else (like that red toy) and come directly to me. At the start of this new game, I'd have to say "leave it" as she got close to the toy because she really wanted to pick it up.

You can see that not retrieving is stressful for her. A tongue flick, like she did as she passed the toy in the next photo, is a subtle sign of stress in a dog.

She showed that stress signal even though I never punish her for making the wrong choice. Rather, she gets treats if she makes the right choice, and I happily ask her to try again (without giving her treats) when she makes the wrong choice.

On a later repeat of our game, she was already tongue flicking while she waited to hear what I'd ask her to do. She wants to do the right thing so much that she worries while waiting for my command.

Her innate tendency, even when I say "come", is to gallop toward the toy. In the next photo, I caught her quickly correcting her course to avoid the toy when I'd said "come".

In this repeat, I had her stand over the toy for a moment before I said "come", and she was already flicking her tongue.

Seeing this small sign of stress even though my training method involves rewarding the right choice and ignoring mistakes tells me that Shyla would wilt under more traditional "dominance" or "punishment" based training. This is a dog who needs positive reinforcement.

The stress signals also tell me to keep the training games short and fun. Now that's a happy looking Shyla!

I thought up this game simply to help reinforce the difference between a recall and a retrieve. I also wanted to make our training games more mentally stimulating for Shyla. I have no doubt that I succeeded in that part!

I think that Shyla is a poster dog for the type of personality that absolutely needs to be trained by positive methods rather than by harsher methods. I believe that a lot of Shyla's growth in confidence comes from the positive training games that we play. However, I think that most dogs flourish with positive training. Indeed, I have to pose the question: Is ever fair to teach a dog something new by punishing them for making mistakes? My heart says "no".

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Happy Labor Day!

May your day be fun!

And restful.

Enjoy!

Black Lab Sunday

When the time for his morning run approaches, R pays rapt attention.

He buzzes with happy energy. Then the excitement overcomes him, and he breaks into happy barks.

He does this, every single time he gets to go for a run. Life is pure joy for him.

Beautiful Animals and a Thief

I love my trail cameras. They let me see what is going on in the forest, with a view that an actual human can never see because they scare the animals when they're around.

I've fallen behind in telling you about the very large numbers of mountain lions I've captured photos of recently. This was one of three occasions where I captured two lions together. I never saw the whole body of the second one so I'm not sure if they're a mother-kitten pair or a mating pair.

I'm guessing that they were a mating pair, because male mountain lions scrape the ground frequently, like in the next photo. This adult lion is in the process of kicking back with each hind foot, to leave a territorial "scrape". There's no reason for a male lion to be with another lion, except for mating.

For the following month, a mother deer and her fawns hung out in this spot. Aren't they incredibly cute?

And then, the top predator was back again. He sniffed the ground.

And then he carefully sniffed the low hanging tree branches. I'm betting that the deer had rubbed against them during their visits.

On the same night, I believe that the same mountain lion visited another "marking spot" that our lions are drawn to. I love this view... he looks so long and lithe.

Alas, today, I went out to check a favorite trail camera, and my faith in humankind was shaken again. The camera was gone - stolen. Some lowlife person must have seen it earlier in the summer, and then returned with tools for cutting the lock. So, it was "premeditated" theft.

It's amazing how I continue to be surprised by the downright mean behavior of some of our fellow humans. I should have learned by now that some people have no ethics. Instead, when I saw the camera's spot empty, I just stood there, feet stuck to the ground, as I attempted to digest the "news" that my camera had been stolen. I was shocked.

Just like last time this happened, I will not let the bad people win. Unlike when the first theft occurred, I now have a system in place that might help me get the camera back. The first time this happened to me, I had naively assumed that no one would ever steal a trail camera. Ha! I have some hope this time because I was prepared for it to happen again.

We will try to bounce back and forge forward, just like Sweet Shyla.

Two Years!

Two years ago, we met Shyla - a sweet and very timid little chocolate lab.

It's been a long journey, as Shyla and I have learned to cope with her fears. They are not banished but are much better. We've learned, together, how to live a life that makes Shyla very happy, as you can see from the photo above.

Shyla adores the mountains and running like the wind. As her name says, she is a "daughter of the mountains". She brims with confidence when we are outside in nature.

Shyla loves her brother, R, and he loves her. They have a strong bond - perhaps the strongest we've seen among any pair of our dogs.

Over these past two years, Shyla and I have come to share a deep love of the high mountains.

 And a love of seizing the day - together.

Shyla has changed our family, showering us with the love and sweetness that overflows from her soul.

Thank you, Shyla, for helping to heal our hearts. We love you.