Wildlife Sunday

Yesterday, a few of you asked why there are so many elk hooves in our forest. The reason is that mountain lion prey on elk (and deer). They eat all the meat and organs, and they leave behind fur, bones, and hooves.

This is from a trail camera near where Shyla finds elk hooves. This lion just had a huge meal.

This photo is from the same camera. This is a hulking bull elk but mountain lions can kill elk that are this large by sneaking up on them and pouncing.

You might remember the huge antler that Shyla found in June. It might have been from this bull elk. He sheds his antlers every year and grows a new and bigger set.

The other day, I showed a photo of a bobcat kitten from a trail camera. That camera recently had a prolonged visit by a bobcat kitten and his mother. The kitten peeked at the camera from behind a boulder that I've seen cat scrapes next to in the past. This is the same spot where a mountain lion kitten paused recently.

The kitten hugged the boulder!

 And rubbed his face on it.

 Then, mom showed up, and the kitten bounded away in the background of the photo.

 Mom didn't stay for too long but she paused at the boulder.

Then she bounded off with a kitten. I'm not sure if it was a second kitten or the same one as we saw earlier. The reason why I'm confused is that I thought that the first kitten had already disappeared to the left of the camera's view a little bit earlier. Most bobcat mothers give birth multiple kittens in a litter, although, around here, they usually have only one remaining by this time of year.

Good luck mother bobcat and kitten(s)! I hope we see you again before winter snows slow us all down!

Elk Hooves

Shyla keeps finding elk feet in the forest.

 But she's no longer sneaking off to enjoy them. She stays nearby, letting me see what she's doing.

 If I call her, she'll bring the elk hoof to me.

One of my goals is not to be the party-ender but to let her safely enjoy her treasures so she sees me as an ally rather than a foe to be hidden from. I think it's working!

But I really can't stand to let her gnaw on old bones/hooves for long. I give her a brief moment before getting her to move on to a new game.

It's been a good autumn, and it's still lingering.

I'm happy about that!

See Beautiful

Even rainy and cold autumn days can be beautiful. I love seeing my girl play with the golden backdrop.

The leaves have been glorious for the past month.

They looked extra special while our world was in the clouds this morning.

And our mountains were becoming snow-covered...

Before long, the rain will end here and snow will fall instead.

That will be a big surprise for this bobcat kitten who looks so playful and cute. (More photos of him and his mother coming later).

Happy See Beautiful Friday!

Shyla in the forest

Shyla is continuing to make huge strides with our new training. To be honest, it's not really all that "new" - it's primarily that my trainer reminded me that Shyla is so sensitive that she needs me to focus on reinforcing good behavior rather than reprimanding her for "bad" behavior. Otherwise, her fearfulness dominates her personality, making her more prone to misbehave.

So, I continue to act like it is tons of fun when she finds random wildlife body parts in the forest. I don't mind the hooves and foot bones as much as other parts. Shyla seems to find an incredible number of hooves next to the trails.

At the start of each ride, to prime Shyla's state of mind, we've been doing fun tricks. Shyla loves to add a tongue flick to "waving", which always makes me laugh. But, I do remind myself that tongue flicks are a sign of low-level stress. She usually stops tongue flicking after a few well-rewarded waves.

Another "trick" that Shyla loves is picking up things that I drop. This morning, she "found" my neck warmer that I'd dropped on the trail (yes, it was cold enough for me to wear full winter gear!).

This is a skill that I've been grateful for quite a few times this summer. I've had a few severe exacerbations of my spine pain, during which it is agonizing to pick up items from the ground. At those times, I am so glad that Shyla adores picking up things that I drop. When Shyla hears something hit the floor or ground, she comes running, hoping to have the chance to pick it up for me. What a wonderful girl!

In general, with the change in my approach to training, Shyla is behaving about a zillion times better when she's off-leash than she did a few weeks ago. It shows me how much my "attitude" affects her behavior. Reinforcing good behavior is much more fun than reprimanding bad behavior for me too so it's a win-win situation.

I know how much wildlife is around, so her re-found love of staying close to me in the forest is a huge relief. To emphasize the wildlife being all around us, my wildlife camera captured photos of a coyote right next to a mountain biking trail that we use regularly. In terms of my dogs' safety, coyotes scare me more than any other animal. I am thrilled that coyotes are flourishing but I am very cautious about my dogs encountering them.

Isn't that a handsome coyote? I think so but I hope that my dogs never tangle with him and his pack-mates.

Wordless Wednesday - Funny Faces

The many looks of Shyla

I've had lots of time to contemplate the many faces of Shyla. Today, we took a break from our mountain bike ride to relax in the sun, and I took a series of photos of her as she lay on a boulder, and her face showed a bunch of different expressions.

A relaxed look with her face turned to the sun...

A relaxed glance at me...

Then, we both heard a loud sound from pretty far away, and she looked slightly worried. Her ears were back, and something about her eyes conveyed worry to me.

The sound became repeated gunshots from a commonly used "recreational shooting" spot, next to a trail, about a mile below us. She is peering in the direction of the shots.

The shooter finally took a break, at least for long enough to reload, and my girl could stop worrying about the loud noises. Now, she looked relaxed but ready to start running again.

I find it fun to try to figure out what Shyla's face is saying. Looking at her photos after the fact helps a lot. But I think that I'm constantly processing her expressions when we're in the moment.

Near end of our ride, Shyla looked very happy and relaxed after she'd been running continuously for a while. The autumn sunshine was divinely warm.

I was happy too! We had a super fun mountain bike ride on this precious Indian Summer day.

Training: My Teenage Dog

Shyla, who started out as a very fearful dog when I met her 2 years ago, has gained tremendous confidence in our "home environment" so that she seems happy and comfortable most of the time.

Way back when our trainer began helping me and Shyla to cope with her fears, the trainer warned me that, when Shyla's confidence blossomed, she might also go through a less-reliable phase, kind of like a teenager.

The good news is that, except in bustling towns, Shyla has become much more confident. The bad news is that my trainer was right, and Shyla has become more difficult to control on the trails than she was when I first met her.

In particular, there is one trail where I really want her to be reliable because there's lots of wildlife activity. And - just my luck - that's the primary place where Shyla's teenage behavior is incredibly obvious.

This trail has the remains of many dead animals cached in the woods within scenting distance. Some are fresh kills by predators and others are very old. Shyla is fascinated by all of them.

When she was still a wary and worried dog out on the trails, Shyla listened to me, pretty much no matter what. If I said "come", she ran to me. If I said "sit", she sat whereever she was. If I said "leave it", she turned away from the scent or object that she was focused on.

In about June, that began to change. At first, she blew me off in small ways that were no big deal. For example, I'd say "look", which means to look me in the eyes, and she'd do this.

Her expression looks pretty for a photo but it's not "look". I'd repeat myself, and she'd pull her eyes away from whatever interested her and look at me.

Now, that's a "look'!

Over the course of the summer, Shyla started ignoring more important commands and sometimes straying on that "wildlife trail" that I talked about at the beginning. That really scared me, and my reaction was to get cranky with her. I tried using "no" when she was moving away from me after I called her. That was a royal failure -  all that did was make her look scared when she came back to me.

I realized that I was making my fearful dog afraid of *me*! That's the last thing I wanted.

So, I finally called our trainer and said that we had a problem. I told her the story that I just told you, with special emphasis on Shyla's bad behavior on the wildlife trail. Her advice was that I had to make myself much more interesting than anything else in the world when we're on that trail. The trainer suggested making the length of that trail our primary training area, doing tons of recalls, tricks, and games.

On Day 1, we played one of Shyla's favorite games on that trail - Waving at me!

It makes her so happy to do that trick. And I acted as if she'd just won the Nobel Prize for Dogs each time she did it.

We didn't just do tricks but we did lots of recalls, with me sprinting away from Shyla as she chased me in a recall.

By adding this fun training to our lives, you would NOT believe how rapidly Shyla's behavior improved. Within a day, she was turning away from those enticing dead animal body parts to return to me. I was carrying extra-special treats and a favorite toy as rewards. I lavished her with praise every time she had a success. We are only a week into this new program but I can already tell that it's working.

I know this post is getting long but there was one other thing that I started doing a week ago. If Shyla would bring me whatever treasure she'd found next to the trail, I gave her a jackpot of treats. Then, I returned the "treasure" to her to play with (or gnaw on) for a little while. So, I was rewarding her for bringing me the icky treasure by letting her have it back for a little while. It's counterintuitive but it's an established animal training technique (called the Premack Principle).

On Day 1, she was too afraid to take the icky treasure back from me. By Day 3, she was more than happy to! In this case, it was an elk lower leg and hoof.

The most important aspect of this program is that it is strengthening the bond between Shyla and me. In contrast, back when I was yelling "no" and acting angry when Shyla blew me off, it was weakening our bond.

The wonderful effect on the human-dog bond is the biggest reason why I love positive training. As a fallible human, it's easy to fall into the bad habit of yelling "no" at naughty behavior rather than thinking creatively about how to use positive techniques to shape good behavior. I'm so glad that my trainer reminded me of how to do that!

Sunset Sunday

We've had some gorgeous sunsets lately. Yesterday evening, we hiked up to Hug Hill to view the clouds catching on fire. This is the classic view of the Divide from Hug Hill. There's just one tree between us and the mountains.

This is looking a little more to the north.

And finally, just as the brightness started to fade, I looked even more to the north, where the fiery sky was most intense. Whenever I see sunsets like these, I am reminded of the John Denver lyric "I've seen it raining fire from the sky...".

One night earlier this week, the colors were less fiery but still gorgeous. The jagged edge of Continental Divide is on the horizon.

One of the only things I like about the rapidly diminishing daylight is that sunrise and sunset happen at more convenient times so we see them more often! I hope that you're having a peaceful Sunday.

Sibling Bond

This particular Labraduo has a closer bond than almost any of our other pairs. This photo gives you some idea of that bond.

Even though R is definitely the "big brother" and leader of the Duo, he let Shyla rest her chin on him while they stood atop Hug Hill. So sweet.

I feel as if my luck is turning, after a series of small bad things that have happened over the past month. One good luck thing was that this photo got "Explored" at Flickr, which means that it was highlighted and a lot of people visited to view it. It was dumb luck that I captured the photo - I just happened to have my camera out when the Duo decided to do something cute!

Good News!

I thoroughly enjoyed my days of mountain biking with both halves of the Labraduo! R made me laugh about a million times per ride.

He loves to sing, especially when a camera is pointed at him.

My laughing seems to make him sing even more!

He goes between barks, howls, and sounds that defy description.

I know that he's putting on a show for me because I catch him throwing quick glances my way, as if he's gauging my reaction. Look at that sneaky peek at me.

It's fairly rare that Shyla is this goofy. When it happens, it's usually when it's just her and me, with no one else to observe, including R. So, she remained demure throughout R's concert.

R did have something to sing about. It appears that I have succeeded in getting my photos taken down from the site that was so brazenly stealing them and then earning money whenever someone visited the page. My friend from the Thundering Herd kindly and patiently taught me the steps for dealing with this type of problem. The biggest one was to follow the directions at this site to send a DMCA takedown notice. I honestly hope that none of you ever have to do this - but it seems to be becoming a reality of the web.

I hope that I won't be reporting tomorrow that the site was only temporarily dismantled.

But, for now, I'm optimistic. R is shouting the good news from the aspen groves!

Happy Friday!