Thankful Thursday

While I am feeling incredibly grateful to be home with the fire almost contained, I still am not feeling well. That's why today's post is so late. I am so tired of these migraines plaguing me. They leave me weak, cranky, and feeling awful. However, despite all that, I still am grateful for having our world intact.

Our hummingbirds are still here, buzzing around our house.

Our flycatcher family, who has a nest under our deck, is within a day or two of having the youngsters fledge - after a total of about 30 days of incubating the eggs and tending to the nestlings. The day that the babies fly is always a joyful summer day. I was so afraid that they'd be harmed by fire as we evacuated. And now I'm so thankful that they're okay. This is one of the parents, talking to the other parent, just above the nest.

I am grateful that my garden of Columbines survived. Columbines are my favorite flowers, and among the only ones that I can keep alive in a garden. I'm glad that they didn't burn.

Our wildflowers didn't burn either. This is an extremely rare lily, called a "Wood Lily", that I've seen listed as being "threatened" around here. I found it shining like a beacon in an aspen grove today.

Shyla is leaping for joy to be back in her home romping grounds. Today, on our home trails, she had a BIG accomplishment when she confidently met a new dog nose-to-nose. I almost fell off my bike with surprise at her boldness.

And, her brother keeps getting better. He had a vet checkup today, and our vet thinks he's progressing amazingly well. I am grateful beyond words for that gift! In this photo, he is resting after I put him through another round of rehab. His exercises get harder and harder, and he goes straight to sleep after them with his sister snuggled against him.

So, despite my migraine woes, I can still feel grateful beyond words that we have a house, our pups, and our beautiful little slice of paradise to come home to.

Almost Wordless Wednesday - Home Again

Shyla wants to tell you that we're home - completely exhausted but home. The fire is 80% contained which is great news for everyone but the people who already lost their homes. The firefighters performed a miracle from my point of view - they got the fire contained even with very high winds and hot temperatures.

We managed to have a little lighthearted fun high in the mountains during our evacuation.

Now, I must rest so the migraine demons don't possess me (they tend to get me after a stressful time has passed). Thank you all for your amazing support. I'm sorry for the down time since the last post but I was simply too tired to write a post.

A Bear Family Happy Update

I've had our wildlife on my mind. They are the innocent victims of negligent behavior by people that leads to their home being burned to cinders. In this case, two campers have been arrested and charged with felony arson. They illegally camped on private property and didn't extinguish their campfire.

On Saturday, the day before we were evacuated, I checked a trail camera that showed the mother bear and both of her cubs, looking healthy and spunky. The little black cub was the troublemaker again, as she stopped to mess with my trail camera before following her mom and the other cub into the forest.

Quite honestly, I'd been worried about them. Every sow that my trail cams took footage of had only one cub in view. I feared that one of the cubs from the den was no longer alive.

I let out a small whoop when I saw the footage of mom and both cubs!

Of course, that was just as the fire was starting, and I wasn't aware of it yet. Now, I fear for their safety. Apparently, bears tend to climb trees rather than flee in forest fires. Please send our wildlife some of your POTP - we humans can flee but not all wildlife can.

You can watch this video here or at Youtube.

I prepared this post on Monday while I was briefly at a coffee shop with internet. I'm not sure when I'll be posting again.

Watching a Fire Blow Up

After evacuating, we slept in the LabMobile last night, well away from the fire. Now we are in the little town near our house, sitting outdoors at a coffee shop on an incredibly windy afternoon. We shudder with each gust, fearing that it's the one that sends the fire up the canyon wall to our neck of the woods.

The wind is terrifying but the fire personnel seem optimistic about their containment lines possibly holding. So far, our neck of the woods is okay.

I want to tell you a little about yesterday. It was not a normal day, even from the start. All eyes were on the fire, waiting to see what it would do. Early in the day before the wind picked up, helicopters dominated the firefight as they tried to protect individual homes and specific resources from the flames. I watched from a ridge just behind our home.

Then things got much worse to my eye. The helicopters had to drop way down into a canyon, the one between us and the fire, to drop their buckets of water. I started to worry more.

Then, all of a sudden, the wind blew and the fire exploded. I felt like I could hear it, a low foreboding roar, as it ate up trees and logs and headed toward us.

The slurry bombers, one of which was a 747 airplane, came and went like clockwork. They dropped fire retardant and seeds for after the fire on a line where they want to try to stop the fire.

Then, as I watched, the fire exploded again.

When I saw the sight in the last photo, I sprinted home. Our landline was out, probably due to the fire, but we'd just gotten notification to evacuate immediately. We had a "dress rehearsal" for this 4 years ago. On that occasion, a fire blew up very close to us, and we were told to leave immediately. On that occasion, I freaked out - I seriously was useless to the packing effort as firefighting aircraft flew over our roof. By the time we were ready to leave, the fire was out.

This time, we were ready. We were out of the house quite quickly, following all the protocols (close all windows, leave all lights on, turn off the propane tank, leave signs on all doors that people and pets are evacuated).

And now we are transients. We have tons of offers of places to stay but we're staying in the LabMobile, camping not too far from home. We're happiest this way, with the freedom to get away from the terror that so many in our town are feeling. We're even exploring some new trails that are near our home.

On the day before we left, I checked a trail camera that showed footage of a certain bear family that many of you are interested in because we saw the cubs on their first days outside the den. I'm going to try to post that for tomorrow.

After that, I don't know when I'll be back online again. Hopefully soon. The rumors are that the fire lines are holding and we may be able to go home soon. Thank you all for the POTP and wonderful comments. This is scary but having so many people thinking of us makes a big difference to my state of mind.

Evacuating

We're evacuating so we may be out of touch for a while. For those of you who pray, please do so now.

Will update as soon as we can.

Fire on the Mountain

 The day started out normally enough. Shyla and I played in a meadow.

Then we ran into a friend on the trail. I commented that we'd reached a level of dryness in the forest that I was too nervous about wildfires to leave the dogs home alone when I went to town. After that comment, we both went on our ways, assuming that nothing bad would happen.

I stopped to photograph Columbines.

I stopped back at home to do R's exercises and then leave Shyla at home with the Runner while I went to check some trail cameras. As I checked one, I thought - wow, it smells very smoky. I looked to the west, and my heart rate spiked with fear.

Here's what I saw. I had looked in that direction just a short time before, and I hadn't seen a fire. It had blown up SO fast due to a brisk wind. The sheriff already knows that it was caused by a campfire. I've found so many campfires left burning over the years that it was inevitable that this would happen someday. For the sake of us locals and the forest, it's time to ban campfires for good.

I could see people down in the canyon below me fishing and sightseeing (you can see the canyon road in the photo above). I think that they had no idea that a huge plume of smoke was rising behind them. I tried to dial 911, and I had "no service". I hate those words.

I sprinted uphill, and I saw this. It was growing so fast. Still no cell reception.

Whoa.

I finally got cell service, and I dialed 911. They already knew about the fire so I hung up. I called the Runner who said I should get home asap. There was fear of an imminent evacuation of our area.

As I rode home, the world went dark and rosy-colored due to smoke. Ash fell on me. I feared that spot fires might break out due to ash being spread by the brisk wind.

As I got home, we lost our power. We don't have data packages for our cell phones so we were cut off from info. We and our neighbors talked on landlines, listened to scanners, and drove to each others' houses to talk. With more information, we'd figured out that the fire was about 4 miles away. Unfortunately, fire fighting resources had been shifted away from Colorado in the past month due to other big fires in the country. As of now, there are only 3 aircraft fighting the rapidly growing fire that has 0% containment.

This was the view from our sunset lookout point at 3:30 PM. The ski area is usually visible in the left of the photo but smoke totally obscured it. We'll walk up there again soon to see what it looks like.

What a day so far. I am packing, just in case. I'm feeling a little better about the odds of the fire getting to us because the winds have been pushing it the other way. However, I feel horrendous for my friends whose houses are in the path of the fire. It brings tears to my eyes.

As I look around me from our deck, I keep wondering if today will be the last day that our world looks like it does now. I hope not.

See Beautiful - Our Black Dog

We are joining this month's "See Beautiful" blog hop, with a look at how beautiful it is to see R returning to his happy-go-lucky life!

R is starting to be able to do more of things that we love - like sitting as tall as a king in a meadow of wildflowers!

And then running with his trademark crazy ears!

This morning, I supervised his off-leash time, and it was wonderful to see the fruits of all the labor we've done in his rehab!

He was so happy to run, and I was overjoyed that he could!

Then, in the evening, R and his sister watched the sunset with me. He can easily walk to our sunset viewpoint now, which makes me smile.

For this month, my "See Beautiful" theme is the wonder of watching R heal from his surgery 11 weeks ago and gradually be allowed to do more of what we all love so much.

R has a beautiful heart, and I'm so happy for him!

A wild afternoon in April at the bear den

I'm spending one afternoon per week going through the 150 GB of footage from the bear den this spring. April 24th was a day of constant play with careful supervision by mom. I already showed you some footage from earlier that day.

I liked this part of the footage because the video shows the sincere respect the cubs have when mom tells them to "behave themselves". From the video that is in this post, I know that mom was reprimanding the chocolate cub at this instant.

The chocolate cub, a male, leaned backwards away from her, obviously a tiny bit scared of her very understated wrath.

After the chocolate cub went off to play, the black cub (who I think is a female), snuggled up to mom's snout. The black cub was usually the wild one (and the "troublemaker" as one of you said) but not during the footage from around 3 PM on 4/24.

At this point, the bear family still had a few more snowstorms standing between them and leaving the den a month later. Also, it is critical that the cubs are agile climbers when they leave the den. As you'll see in future installments, the cubs started climbing tall trees in May, getting ready for the day that their mom led them off into the forest.

I hope that you enjoy the video. I sure am loving watching the clips and getting a secret glimpse into the lives of a bear family. I suspect that this past winter will be one that I remember for a very long time due to the bear family!

You can watch this video at Youtube if there's a problem with it here.

P.S. Do you have ideas for names for the male chocolate cub and probably female black cub?

Wordless Wednesday - The Summer Life of Shyla

After this...

Then this...

With a little of this...

Happy Wednesday!

R's CUE Surgery Recovery Week 11 - Positive Training Techniques in Rehab!

This post is part of the Positive Pet Training Blog Hop because R's rehab from CUE surgery would not be possible without positive training. I honestly can say that "corrections" would do NO good in helping him learn his exercises. The biggest correction he gets is that I say "oops" when a paw falls off his blue squishy disk. That reminds him to "fix it" by putting that paw back on the disk.

We are now in Week 11 after R's CUE surgery (canine unicompartmental surgery). We feel that R's gait is quite variable. One day, he'll look "perfect" - as if he has no pain - and then the next day, he'll limp obviously. We try not to have our outlook vary with his limp! We just keep at the rehabilitation, helping him get stronger.

We were buoyed by our vet's opinion that he's doing better than any of the other CUE surgery patients she's seen before. She says that he's stronger and in less pain than the other patients at the same time in the recovery.

We still have a long way to go before he'll be living his normal life, which usually involves at least 30 minutes of trail running and one longish hike per day with some off-leash time to play with his sister. However, we can see that he'll be able to do those things in the foreseeable future, which is a great feeling!

Today I'm sharing a video of some of his rehab. He's turned into a Circus Dog with all the crazy tricks he's had to learn to do his rehab. You can watch it here or at Youtube.

You might remember that part of why I'm doing this chronicle of R's recovery is that I could find nothing on the web about dog owners' experiences after CUE surgery. I hope that my chronicle will help another dog owner someday!

Happy Independence Day

I have the greatest appreciation for our country when I'm out in nature, enjoying the setting sun lighting up our Duo. I think that Shyla needed shades for that sunset!

R is back at work watching over his sister.

And surveying the mountain after the sun has set.

Last evening, he seemed convinced that some scary animal was in the forest near us. It could've been a moose. Shyla and I missed this one by about 2 minutes based on the trail cam info. He probably watched us go by.

It also could've been a bear. This is the same place as the moose was - quite close to home. I think this is Tiny, marking a tree to try to attract more sows. I'm betting that R smelled a bear based on his intense reaction.

Thanks to our country's preservation of wild land, these two huge mammals can flourish in our midst. I am so thankful for that!

Happy Independence Day to all of my blog friends!

Mostly Black and White Springtime Sunday

At this time of year, I find that the colors of the world are what catch my eye. The wild Columbines are in full bloom, which absolutely awes me. I didn't think that a black and white Columbine would do it justice so I desaturated all the colors except for the purple and the yellow. I thought that the effect was kind of cool!

In the spirit of true black and white, my trail camera captured an image of a mother bear and her cub very early in the morning. I loved how adoringly the cub was looking up at his mother.

Last but not least, our Black Dog, R, is acting more and more like himself. That means that he's acting like a crazy and impish dog - a cracker dog! In this photo, it looks like he's thinking up his next trick to play on us!

Happy Black and White Sunday!

Shyla's Fear and Confidence

Many people now don't recognize the fear that lies under the surface for Shyla. The reason is that she's very happy and relaxed most of the time.

When she and I are out in nature together, Shyla becomes the dog she was meant to be. What I mean is that she is relaxed, confident, and so happy!

She still surprises me both in good and bad ways. On the good side, today we saw two mountain bikers on our ride (a rarity). They were big guys with dark beards. It was a ribbon-like narrow section of trail, and they kindly moved to the side to let us pass. That left us about 12" to squeeze past them. I started to say that Shyla wouldn't be able to pass due to fear of coming so close to them - and, before the words were out of my mouth, she walked over to politely greet one of the riders! I love when she surprises me like that!

Yesterday, she surprised me in the opposite way. I hid some scent for her to find on the 2nd floor of our house, which is generally a "no dog" area after a previous canine generation chose to make it their secret potty place. Shyla has gone up there with me at least three times in her life. Yesterday, she was terrified of the steps. She eventually made it to the 2nd floor but not without a lot of work to help her cope with fear. After that stress, I decided to cancel the nosework. I don't want her to associate fear with nosework.

Most of the time, however, Shyla is happy. I've come to accept and love her for who she is, and I've greatly slowed my efforts to acclimate her to the parts of the world that she doesn't like (i.e., bustling places like cities). We can live our everyday life very comfortably without going those places so why stress over them?

One way that all Shyla's fear and stress issues is showing up is in her very gray face (for a 4 year old dog).  This is such a happy photo so why do I have to obsess over her gray face? The reason is that it reminds of how finite a dog's life is. I'm working on seeing the joy emanating from Shyla in a photo like this rather than the gray.

I hope that you're having a wonderful weekend, whether you're in your summer or winter season!

P.S. If you missed yesterday's post and you like seeing bear cubs play, check it out!

Fun and Games by the Bear Cubs in April!

Remember the bear den, where a sow spent the winter and gave birth to two cubs? I finally found some time to peruse more of the footage. After the huge snowstorm around April 17 that kept them inside the den for four days, the cubs were ready to play!

However, mom wasn't ready to stop supervising.

Learn to climb is one of the most important things that cubs must learn before they can leave the den. This little guy was trying to make it up onto the fallen tree that his mom was standing on but he was having trouble. He looks like a little monkey!

The video is full of fun footage of the two cubs playing and of mom occasionally grabbing them by the scruff of the neck to pull them back into the den. The footage is all from 4/24. I think that the sow was nervous because it was exceptionally windy, which limited her ability to hear predators approaching.

Enjoy the video, either here or at Youtube!

Have a happy and safe weekend.