Because we don't have many flowers yet, I'm going to focus on the beauty of the desert for this Flower Friday.
I love the rock formations that tower on all sides of us while we're in the desert. The combination of the deep red ground and blue sky makes me smile the whole time that I'm there!
Even more than the rock formations, I love seeing our Labraduo sprint joyfully on the desert mesas. My favorite spot to photograph them is Shyla's Mesa. That's the mesa that they're sprinting over in the next photo.
The mesa that the Duo was running atop is in the next photo, to the right.
Each night, I set up my camera on a tripod to take photos of the night sky. While we were at this particular campsite, the moon started out half full and was almost completely full on our last night there. It was so bright that it lit up the landscape as if it was daytime. You can see the reddish color of the desert floor due to the moonlight.
For comparison, this is what the same sky looks like when there is no moon. Look how many more stars are visible - but also notice that the landscape is black!
On a night when the moon was almost full, I took a series of exposures over about an hour and a half so that we could see the stars appearing to rotate around the north star. Due to the bright moonlight, a limited number of stars was visible but that actually makes this type of photo better. It's as if the stars are making their own art as they spin around our night sky!
I find the desert to be absolutely gorgeous, both during the daylight hours and the dark hours. I always look forward to our next visit there!!!
I am so thankful to have had time in the desert with our pack. Last year, we didn't get much spring time in the desert due to Shyla's epilepsy. Her recent seizure has reminded me of how much better she is doing than a year ago.
Yes, Shyla, we'd all love to squeeze our eyes closed and forget about that bad phase.
She and I had tons of fun together on our recent desert trip. I especially love sunset with her because of the light and the amazing color of the boulders.
She's learned to be a great model, except for her tendency to squint into the setting sun. I have to click the shutter lots of times to get a picture of her beautiful eyes. But I understand that!
And then she shoots me a look like this one, and she melts my heart.
Although I still often wish that she could shed her fears and leave them totally behind us, I am incredibly grateful for the fact that she totally trusts me. She's funny and sweet. What else could I want?
Just about a year ago, Shyla started taking phenobarbital to try to control her seizures. It took a long time before I appreciated how well it worked because it turned Shyla into a zombie. It wasn't until about six months later that I thought that she was back to about 98% of her normal self.
I'm going to pepper this post with photos from the desert to keep it happier than a discussion of seizures.
Despite the very long acclimation time, phenobarbital worked wonderfully - she had no seizures for a year, until the other night. We had some warning because a blood tested showed that the phenobarbital level in her blood had fallen below the therapeutic range late last fall. Because we didn't want to subject her to the "zombie phase" again if we didn't need to, we decided to wait to see if she had any breakthrough seizures. Darn, now it's happened.
We are waiting to hear back from our regular vet and neurologist to see if this recent seizure means that we need to increase her dose of phenobarbital. I'd rather err on the safe side so we probably need to do so. I truly hope that the zombie phase isn't as long it was when she started phenobarbital. Does anyone have experience with this to share?
Since her seizure in the wee hours of Sunday, she has had no more seizures and seems to feel good. That's good news because she used have clusters of seizures - which were no fun for anyone.
Shyla has proven herself to be amazingly resilient over the years. From a rough start in life, she is plagued by myriad fears yet she's figured out how to navigate our world with happiness (most of the time).
I have little doubt that she'll continue her resilient ways no matter what happens.
Some of you may remember the trail camera experience of a lifetime two years ago when I had cams placed outside the entrance to a bear den. In December, I'd discovered that a single bear was occupying the den. That discovery was amusing because I absolutely did not expect to see a bear in the den.
It had last been occupied in 2010 by a sow and her two yearling cubs. That year, I'd stumbled upon the den for the first time to find an extremely scared sow looking at me as I peered into the black abyss of the cave.
Since 2010, it had not been occupied. Every year, I'd left a cam outside the den and then gone to check after I believed that all the bears in our area were settled into dens. And, every year, I'd seen no bears looking back at me. In December of 2015, I'd trudged to the den and cavalierly peered into the den. I yelped and jumped when two dark eyes were looking back at me. Then, the bear snorted at me... which sent me away in a big hurry.
After I calmed down, I went back with multiple trail cameras and placed them carefully outside the den. I stayed out of the bear's line of sight so she didn't snort at me again.
All was quiet at the den until January 30, when the bear began relentlessly pacing outside the den. We found out why when a trail camera caught the sound of cubs bawling inside the den in the wee hours of the morning of January 31, 2016.
Then, all was quiet again for a few months, aside from a visit by a fox who went halfway into the den in March. The mother bear's rest was over on April 10th when her two cubs began trying to escape the den.
Each time a cub made it outside the den, mom would capture the cub in her jaws to drag the cub back into the den.
The cub would dig its paws into the snow, trying to resist the sow's pull. All the while, the cub was screaming like a human baby having a tantrum.
After mom pulled the cub back into the den, the cub would bawl inside the den for the next 10 minutes or so. The mother bear's restful winter was most definitely over!
By late in the day on April 10th, both cubs had escaped the den and were
out in the snow. Mom gave up on trying to control them and instead
began watching them from the den entrance. They'd continue this pattern, with mom watching the active cubs from the den entrance, for the next 5 weeks until the family finally departed the den on May 18.
I have two videos for you. The first one is very brief but shows one example of mom going out to retrieve a cub on April 10th. It gives you a nice view of struggle between the big sow and the feisty cub. This is a clip that I just discovered that I overlooked two years ago. I hope that you enjoy it! You can watch it here or at Youtube.
The second video is a little bit longer and shows how the interactions between the mother and cubs changed over that pivotal day from 5AM until late in the afternoon of April 10, when mom gave up on keeping the cubs in the den. The video is below and also available at Youtube.
It's fun for me to revisit the winter of 2016 because I keep finding video clips that I didn't fully appreciate then. I was overwhelmed with video at that time, and now I have time to slow down to look for great clips. I think that the new video (the first one in this post) is a very fun example of the feistyness of the cubs and the patience of the sow.
This is a different kind of silhouette than I usually post. It was after the sun had gone down on Shyla's mesa but was still shining on the towering cliff to the east of our campsite.
The Duo had fun racing each other across the mesa, and I had fun capturing their silhouettes as they did it!
I love the golden hour in the desert, illuminating the reddish soil and golden rock walls. The Duo and I had such fun playing on Shyla's mesa each evening!
One of the things that I love most about the Utah desert is the breathtaking rock formations. The Runner and I often joke that if our hometowns had featured just one rock like the thousands that we see in Utah, a state park would have been declared to protect the rock.
The hardest part of conveying the beauty of these rocks is figuring out how to simplify the photo so that it doesn't look like one huge jumble of rocks. I tried hard to do this during our trip, and I'll show you examples over the coming days. This is the first example. This rock is bigger than an SUV, and you can see pillars of rock in the background. The pillars and this rock perched on a smaller one are both gorgeous.
The beauty of the Utah desert never ceases to amaze me.
I think that Shyla is surprised by the odd shapes of rocks that I find for her to clamber on.
The hard part for her is the boots that are indispensable for protecting her paws. The boots throw her off so much that she isn't as sure-footed as usual, and she forgets many of the things that I've trained her to do. "Take a bow" is an example. It took me about 10 minutes to get her into this position. Usually, she loves taking a bow and offers it without me asking.
Another of my favorite things about desert camping is how in touch I am with the moon phase and the stars. Until this trip, I didn't know that there's a long period in the winter when the Milky Way isn't visible in the Northern Hemisphere. It was just making its annual return to view during our trip. I took this photo just before sunrise, which is the only time when you can see it at this time of year.
Those are a few of my favorite parts of camping in the Utah desert. I can't wait to go back again!
While we were in the desert, very few flowers were blooming so we focused more on the big picture of astounding rocks sculpted by wind and rain.
Then, to our delight, the Runner found some red Indian Paintbrush up on top of some rocks that he climbed.
He found a low angle way to climb up to the top with me so that I could see them. My spine won't let me go straight up rock faces like he can do! I was so happy to see this sign of spring.
They were desert Indian Paintbrush, eking out a fragile existence by growing in the cracks among the rocks.
Those were the only fully blooming flowers that we saw while in the desert. Thank goodness that we went there for more than the flowers. Watching R romp in the desert made us smile as much as any flower.
Shyla is still a dog who prefers to be hidden. She doesn't like strangers to look at her. She hides and peeks when strangers are around. In this photo, she was waiting for me to call her. I loved seeing her eyes peek over the mesa.
When I called her, she sprinted toward me, revealing her full face.
And then coming into full view.
It means so much to us that wilderness is Shyla's happy zone. The West still has lots of remote places where Shyla and I feel most comfortable. She stands tall in those places.
She loves to survey the world while standing tall on her mesa. We've dubbed it "Shyla's Mesa".
Since we arrived home, Shyla and I have started a new program that uses play as a way to rehabilitate fearful dogs like Shyla. Although Shyla has come a very long way since she joined our family, I've come to realize how much of the world is still too scary for her. I plan our activities to try to avoid the scary things but it would be even better if there were fewer things that scared her so much. That's why I'm trying a new approach with her.
We're at the very beginning of the program, and it can take a long time to overcome deeply ingrained fears. However, I'm ready to give a new method a try. So far, Shyla loves all the play that we're doing so that's good!
I am so thankful that there are wild places where Shyla doesn't worry but plays happily instead!
We recently headed away from our high altitude mountain home to spend a few weeks in the Utah desert. We and the Duo enjoyed playing in the beauty of the desert.
We continue to revel every time that R is with us displaying his full exuberance. This dog has had at least nine lives, and his elbow has too. We're so happy to see him run next to his sister.
This was our earliest trip to the Utah desert ever. We learned that springtime does not visit the Utah desert until April! The weather wasn't truly warm until our last two days there. A few small flowers were emerging at the end of March, and the earliest migratory birds were arriving. It was fun to see the very earliest signs of desert spring slowly unfold.
Our last evening was warm enough to relax while watching the sunset above the unique desert rock formations.
Happy Springtime to everyone who doesn't live in the mountains. For us, spring won't truly arrive until late May. Last year, we had a big snowstorm in the second half of May!
Some of you may remember the big pine tree where mountain lions have marked repeatedly this winter.
You might remember this guy kicking off the marking season back in November.
Since then, the mountain lions have paraded to this spot. Each male has left his own mark in almost the same place as all the other lions.
Other carnivore species have visited as well. Here is a bobcat, small in stature but large in spirit.
As he departed the spot, he looked regally in the direction of the camera.
The next visitor was a coyote who brazenly urinated directly over the lions' scent.
The coyote was very wary, fleeing toward the cover of the forest a couple of times (as you'll see in the video). Here, he stood still to listen for danger. I bet that he smelled the recent markings left by lions who could easily kill him.
Finally, one of the kings of our forest visited just a couple of nights ago. He marked in almost the identical spot as the first lion back in November!
My trail cameras record video, which I put together into a single video of the visits of all of these animals. You can watch it here or over at Youtube.
I find the desert to be absolutely gorgeous, both during the daylight hours and the dark hours. I always look forward to our next visit there!!!
