The Value of a Mountain Lion Photo

My Sunday ended up going a little crazy. It all started with one of my kind readers alerting me that someone had posted one of my mountain lion photos and claimed it as their own. They'd also changed the date and time to make it appear to be very recent. They also implied that it had been taken about 150 miles south of where I live, in their town.

From what I've learned from other readers, the bad FB page had been trying to whip people into a fearful frenzy about the idea that mountain lions are near or in their Colorado town. For me with my values about wildlife, their motivation made their theft even worse.

Since this post is wordy, I am going to share a series of mountain lion photos that I captured recently throughout it. I found them on a memory card that I checked yesterday during my cold trail camera outing. The first one is my first ever flying mountain lion! He was leaping into the frame.

Back to the story of the stolen photo - my friends and I inundated them with comments on the photo saying that it was stolen and had originally been published on this blog in 2011 (it's the second photo in the post). The response of the page owner was to ban all of us, and then to write some despicable lies about how he could do whatever he wanted with copyrighted material on social media. I'd reported the copyright infringement to Facebook, and I was hoping that they'd solve the problem.

Here he is standing still a few seconds after his leap

At that point in the saga, ironically, I absolutely had to close my computer and go do pre-planned work on my trail cameras. It's the time of year when I move them around because most animals abandon using sites where there's deep snow. I spent the rest of my day in freezing cold places replacing batteries in cams and moving some of them to sunny spots. All of this was done by pedaling between cams on my fat bike. There was fresh snow so even the pedaling was very hard work.

A closer view of the lion from 11/13/16

It made me realize exactly how much someone is stealing when they take one of my trail camera photos. You might think, "Oh well, it's just a cam sitting outside taking photos of whatever goes in front of it.". In reality, it's a lot of work. I spend lots of time tracking animals so that I know what routes they use in each season. Then, I spend time moving cams from one place to another depending on the season because animals use different routes depending on snow. There's the constant battery replacement issue, and the need to check the cams reasonably frequently to avoid theft.

Look at those muscles!

All in all, one great photo probably required a huge number of hours of work for me to get. Back when I captured the mountain lion photo in question, it was one of my first ever photos of a mountain lion. I was over the moon to get it. That old camera has captured only one more mountain lion photo over the years. Last year, it caught a mountain lion right outside our bedroom window!


By yesterday evening, Facebook had yanked the stolen photo from the rogue FB page due to copyright infringement. Thank goodness. Now I can go back out into the cold to work on my trail cameras rather than furiously typing!

Black and White Sunday - R's News

We learned yesterday that our Black Dog is going to need another surgery. It will be relatively minor to remove possible melanoma growths from his paw. Unfortunately, they are on a part of the paw that doesn't have any extra skin so the surgeon will have to use skin grafts from elsewhere on R's body to fill in the gaps after he removes enough tissue to get clean margins.

In the big picture, it's not a big deal because we likely caught it plenty early. However, we can't help but feel really sad that R will have more recovery time in his near future (surgery will probably be in January). He'll be in a splint for a while to let the skin grafts heal.

That news really isn't what we wanted for him. I feel more upset than I should.

Life is so full of twists and turns. We all do the best we can, no matter what the circumstances. We hope that we navigate this one easily so R can get back to the fun of life very soon thereafter!

Red Rock Towers in the Desert

During our recent Utah desert trip, we stayed in two main campsites. Halfway through the week, we had a "transfer day" when we bought a few supplies and visited a special place on our way to our second campsite.

I showed one photo of that special place yesterday. I love visiting there around sunset in the winter. The light is sublime.

Unfortunately, we had spent longer than expected in town buying a few supplies so we arrived literally five minutes before the sun dropped below the western horizon. And, it's not easy to get all of us out of the LabMobile quickly, especially when R's big yellow peanut and wobbly disk are blocking all exits! We are a little like the Beverly Hillbillies when we travel with R's rehab equipment!

The Runner got Shyla out for me remarkably fast, and I managed to get a couple of quick photos of her in that wonderful warm sunset light with the red rock behind her.

Shyla has been through a lot in the past year, with the onset of epilepsy seeming to parallel her graying muzzle. I love getting these photos of her every year because I can see the course of her life in her face and posture. Look at how confidently she stood in this unfamiliar place with strangers around. Yipee for Shyla!

After the sun drifted below the horizon, I looked to the towers behind Shyla, watching the warm red light gradually disappear from them too. This photo was from just before the towers went dark. I could hear the voices of climbers on top of the towers whooping. I guess that they descended in the dark.

Then I looked toward the western horizon. I love the iconic desert shapes on the horizon with the sunset clouds above them.

After lingering for a while watching the sky change colors, we headed to our next campsite - K's Rock. We were going to be there for Shyla's 5th birthday. Time is flying!

Friday Funny from the Desert

I was playing with Shyla around sunset at our campsite. I tossed her a treat which you can see in the air in the next photo.

She aggressively snarfed it, making one of the funniest faces I've ever seen her make.

Happy Friday!

Positive Training - Our Black Dog's CUE Rehab

R's CUE surgery for his congenital elbow dysplasia was 7 months ago! He's made incredible progress in that time. He can run further and faster now than he's been able to do for years.

In fact, R and the Runner did a big run while we were in Utah. They ran up about 2000' over 4.8 miles of very rocky terrain to an incredible lookout point. Then, they walked back down, for a total of about 9.6 miles. The Runner decided to walk rather than run down because downhill running abuses joints more than almost anything else. R looked great with no limping after that outing, his longest since a year before his surgery.

We have continued R's rehab program because keeping his stabilizing muscles as strong as possible will help keep the implants inside his elbow healthy for longer. R is now 9 years old - an age when many Labs have stopped running and romping - but he's looking better and is running further than he has in years.

I included this update on his rehab as part of the Positive Dog Training Blog Hop because I could never have taught him to do all these exercises without the skills that I've gained as a positive trainer. Positive training has been a gift to us throughout his rehab. I've been thankful that I know about it a zillion times when teaching him new exercises. Quite simply, it would not be possible to teach these complicated exercises without a clicker, treats, and positive training skills. The key is to break each of these exercises into tiny parts for teaching them - and then putting the parts together for the final exercise. You are seeing only the final exercise in the video.

The toughest thing that I'm teaching him now is to walk sideways with all four paws up on his big yellow peanut (last thing on the video). I have been teaching it one step at a time. I roll the peanut a little to the side, and I say "step", which means to take a lateral step with front and hind limbs to stay on top of the peanut. If he takes the step, he gets a treat. He's making great progress.

You'll see in the short video that I still reward him with treats regularly during the exercises. The main reason is that the rewards keep him motivated. R is really tired by the end of a session, and I have to push him to do one more rep or one more exercise. I "push him" by rewarding him lavishly.

You can watch the short video either here or at Youtube.

Thanks for watching!

Wordless Wednesday - Golden Hour in the Desert

A Wild Visit by a Puppy

A certain little puppy named Sadie came to visit again. Her ears are a comical work in progress!

Almost immediately, pandemonium broke out in our house - the good and funny kind of pandemonium!

R and Sadie picked up exactly where they left off last time with lots of teeth baring! If you didn't know that dogs play this way, you'd be scared.

One minute, they'd be lying together like best friends...

And the next minute, teeth were bared again!

R seemed to know that he needed to keep Sadie feeling like she was "winning" their wrestling matches so he'd "self-handicap" by lying on his back and letter her attack him.

Shyla was more comfortable and tried to get Sadie to play a few times.

That ring toy has been Shyla's favorite since she was a pup. She let Sadie have it at one point.

Their play was brief but I bet that Shyla will eventually understand puppy behavior well enough to really play with Sadie. She made a good start the other day.

However, soon, Sadie was back with her best buddy, R. If you saw teeth like R's in this photo, would you stick your head closer to them?

That's what Sadie did.

After all the play, Sadie decided to fall asleep in my lap. Ah, I love puppies!

Sadie lives very close to us so I'm hoping that she and R can be friends for a long time. In the meantime, I hope that Sadie can come back to visit again sometime soon.

The Alien Red Rock World

Out in the red rock desert of Utah, the land is so different from home that it feels like we're on a different planet.

Our first campsite was below a vast slickrock plateau that led downhill to several canyons. I took this photo when Shyla and I were at our furthest point from camp during a ride that wove in and out of canyons and then across this field of rock. Our camp was to the right of the furthest right rock formation in the photo. It was about a 10 minute downhill ride from there.

The two "pot holes" to Shyla's right were about to be filled by an afternoon rain storm. Those potholes are filled with life, just waiting for water to blossom. We got to see an example of that when we ran across a red spotted toad on the rocks near our camp. Shyla accidentally dislodged him with her paw, and he landed, unharmed, in a bed of cottonwood leaves. It was nighttime so I illuminated him with my head lamp to get a photo.

I've read that the tadpoles that morph into these toads have a tremendous race against time. Desert potholes stay filled with water for only a short time after rain due to rapid evaporation. The tadpoles need to become toads before their temporary homes go dry.

The view from our campsite is another example of how alien the red rock world looks compared to our mountain home. This photo was shortly after the sun rose behind my camera. You can see the shadow of the mesa to our left on the rock formation on the other side of the canyon.

Like clockwork, at noon every day, our campsite would be shaded as the sun went behind the corner of rock to the left in the photo. After that brief shady period, our campsite had about another 3 hours of sun before it fell into shade for the night.

At night, these landforms looked almost spooky. I loved watching the stars over them. A minor meteor shower (Leonid) was sending shooting stars through our atmosphere, and I was lucky enough to capture one during a 14 minute time lapse series of photos of the stars.

I always feel like it's my lucky night when my camera shutter happens to be open when a shooting star flies overhead!

The Labraduo in the Snow on Sunday

I'm taking a break from desert stories to share a fun snowy day that I had with the Labraduo recently. I'm sure that you're getting tired of hearing it - but I rejoice every time I see R gallop, especially next to his sister!

 They were running so hard that they kicked snow up behind them.

I was snowbiking with them but we took so many play breaks that I barely pedaled at all! We stopped in a meadow just before we made it up to Hug Hill. I love the backdrop of snowy mountains from that meadow.

Then, we stopped at Hug Hill for a little more playing. This was the first day since years ago that R wanted to gallop on the rocky peak. It's very rough footing, with lots of rocks, and he'd moved very cautiously on that peak for the past few years. This day, his elbow must have felt great!

I am continuing his very advanced exercises to help keep his body strong enough to protect his bionic elbow. I can't wait to show you his circus dog exercise routine in a video that I'm in the midst of making. I love doing his exercises with him - it is FUN!

Lots of people ask if he's a puppy when they meet him. Their jaws drop when we say that he's 9 years old! I love seeing how strong and active he still is. We hope that he has a few more years of running ahead of him.

Mountain Lions on the Prowl Again

Cougars have been moving silently through our forests over the past few weeks. It's interesting timing because I'm finding myself out in the forest in the dark more often than ever. I wear a headlamp and scan for glowing eyes all the time. Yet, I'm not really scared - I'm just taking ordinary precautions. I'm glad that something bigger and fiercer than me is out in the forest. It changes the prevalent feeling that humans rule the world because I certainly don't even rule the forest around my house. And, I like it that way.

I am not certain if our feline activity is from one or two mountain lions. At least one of them looks young to me. He still has faint bars on the inside of his front legs, suggesting that he's a young adult. I'm not certain if he's still loosely traveling with his mother or not.

In the video below, you'll see a transition in scene about 38 seconds into the video. There was a mountain lion captured by one camera at 4:51 PM, and then another lion captured by a cam at least a half mile away 5 minutes later. That was a very fast walk for a mountain lion. They usually saunter along, at a fairly slow pace (2 mph or so), as you can see from watching them walk. That timing was what made me feel more strongly that it might be two mountain lions rather than one.

In any case, it is very exciting to have mountain lions so active in our neck of the woods again. After almost a year's hiatus, the forests are alive with our biggest predator once again!

The video is very short (a minute or so) but it lets us see an unprecedented (for me) amount of video of these animals moving naturally around their territory.

I am wondering if the mountain lion(s) in the video might be this mother lion with her kitten. Last winter, almost all the lions in our area had their GPS collars removed, which would explain why she had a collar last summer but not now. I know from the GPS study that this female tended to make big moves from one side of a canyon to another once or twice per year, living on one side of the canyon without crossing it for up to a year. If one of her kittens is still with her after spending a year on the other side of the canyon, he'd be almost a full adult, which would fit with what we're seeing in the video.

I know it may be a pipedream but I am hoping that this mother mountain lion has returned to our neck of the woods to finish raising her kitten and perhaps to give birth to a new litter! Do you see the spotted kitten just in front of her?

As I said in a recent post, our country is unique in the vast open spaces that we've preserved and in our acceptance of some predators living among us. Now, it's time for those of us who value the wildness of our amazing country to step up and help preserve our environment. Let's keep some of our country open and wild so that large predators can continue to flourish.

Desert Stars!

One of the hardest parts of "winter" camping in the desert is the short daylight time. Sometimes, I feel as if life is rushing by as we try to squeeze as much as we can into the daylight hours.

Looking down a canyon as I whooshed along on my bike

We run as fast as we can but it doesn't slow down the Earth's rotation!

As you can see from my photos, at least some clouds hung in the sky most days.

I love the juxtaposition of the desert rocks and the snowy mountains

But, finally, my luck for star gazing changed! I had no luck all summer long, with either a full moon or storms limiting star visibility.

On this trip, the clouds cleared out, and I had several nights in a row to gaze at the stars and take their photos. The moon was almost invisible so we could see the Milky Way!

I feel so lucky that we can visit places dark enough to let the Milky Way shine through. The nearest town was off in the distance on the right of the horizon, and it obviously didn't cause too much light pollution.

Happy Friday.

From snow to slickrock!

One of the reasons why I love going to the desert in November is that we can escape what is usually the first snow of the year. That is usually a slushy and not-so-fun snow. In fact, it snowed the day before we departed this year!

So, after driving west for hours, we traded the snow for Utah's slickrock, which meant that the much-hated dog boots had to come out. Actually, R doesn't mind his boots. Shyla is the one who is scared of them. However, they are necessary - slickrock tears apart a dog's paw pads if they're not used to it.

Shyla literally shakes in her boots as I put them on her. Thankfully, she usually perks up after we start moving.

We've experimented with lots of kinds of boots. Most recently, Shyla tried UltraPaws boots which our friends Lily and Edward gave to us. Shyla liked them much more than other boots but the soles wore out very quickly on slick rock. I'm going to see if UltraPaws makes a tougher version that will endure our mountain bike rides in the Utah desert.

I always savor each day of riding in the desert, knowing that snow usually awaits us when we return home. That's my new bike in the photo - it was fabulous in the desert!

Here's to frolicking in the desert. I love it! Kick up your heels, Shyla!