Joy

We are still reeling with our delight over the painting that we received from you all. It has truly brightened our lives at a time when we needed to be lifted up.

I discovered that the super-talented and kind artist (Kathleen Coy) made a video about the creation of the painting of K. It includes some poignant photos of my girl and is really fun to watch. It is posted on her blog.

We are continuing to live life to the fullest. It's a bittersweet spring, as I see the world slowly waking up but I don't know how long K will be with us. If only we humans could turn off our tendency to look into the future.

When I'm with K is when I'm feeling my best. She shows me how to live joyfully, without thinking about what may be going on inside her. Her joy makes me forget about the evil C.

K prances through the meadows like an angel.

K still has a joyful and energetic demeanor when we're out in nature. At odd times during the course of a day when she's hanging around inside, I notice her eyes looking tired and old, as if the cancer is taking its toll. But, she rises to every occasion to romp in the forest. I especially love seeing her run with her brother, R, in the sunset light.

She even still competes with him, matching him stride-for-stride. K is still the Queen in our house and isn't conceding that throne.

Thanks to all of our friends. I am still stunned and humbled by your incredible gift. You have buoyed our spirits, and we will treasure the portrait of K forever.

The lesson of the elk leg

K and I are continuing our tradition of morning mountain bike rides. I find myself amazed at how much she still can and wants to do! If I hadn't seen her xrays, I wouldn't know that she's sick.

This morning, we rode through shafts of sunlight in a pine forest, heading up to Hug Hill. K pranced out of the dark forest and into the light.

I've run into a pitfall that I bet is common for dogs with terminal illnesses. Since I found out about K's cancer, I've been giving her a lot of latitude with training. I let bad behavior slide... rather than addressing it. For example, before she was sick, I'd do a training session immediately if I felt that her responses to me were sluggish while we were out in the forest. We'd do some recalls, leave-its, stays, and other training exercises right on the spot. I do positive training, rewarding good behavior with lots of treats, so K thinks that training is fun.

Since she became sick, I've been lackadaisical, letting her do what she pleases, as long as it's not dangerous to her.

Well, K has started taking advantage of my attitude. One example which is potentially dangerous is that she found an elk leg during a bike ride a few days ago and refused to leave it. She hid in the woods gnawing on it while I became increasingly panicked about where she was. Finally, she emerged from the woods looking guilty. I backtracked her paw prints in the remaining snow patches, and I found the elk leg.

Today, she peeled away from me at exactly the same spot as the day that she found the elk leg. Fortunately, I knew exactly where the elk leg was, and I marched down the slope to find K licking it. This time, I hung the elk leg in a tree so that K won't be able to reach it if she decides to visit it again.

In the meantime, the coyotes are going to be puzzled by the leg in the tree - they are usually the ones who clean up the final bones from a carcass in the woods! This guy visited our clearing this morning.

My advice is, don't slack off on training, no matter what, especially if you have an off-leash lifestyle like we do! After our elk leg incident today, we did some training. A recall...

Then, after training, we continued up to Hug Hill. K was joyous atop the hill. She leaped right out of my camera frame in a dance of happiness!

Then, she gazed at our mountains with a serene demeanor. She and I agree that Heaven looks like our mountains, especially in the summer when they are covered in wildflowers.

As an aside, I recently saw my blog on an iPad for the first time, and I discovered that the photos get cut off because they're too big for the screen. Can you leave a comment if this affects you? I'll reduce the photo size if a lot of people are reading this blog from iPads or iPhones. Thanks!

Almost Wordless Wednesday

Flowers that emerged from under the snow.

The Duo in the meadow near sunset.

They spotted their dog-friend on the edge of the meadow and sprinted over to PLAY.

After playing with their friend, we went to see the sunset.

Winter and summer plus canine mischief

It's that crazy time of year where it can vary in weather from one day to the next or from one slope to another. It was still winter this morning near our house, and K sprinted in the snow.

She's been taking her "metronomic chemotherapy" for almost a week now. It's a daily chemotherapy medication designed to prevent the growth of blood vessels to tumors like her lung mets. I wonder everyday if it's having any effect. Our next checkup will be in three weeks for a lung xray - and that's when we'll know if it's helping. One good sign is that K certainly still loves to run when we're in the woods!

Our world also varies from north-facing slopes (like in the first photo) to south-facing slopes. Today, after riding through 6" of snow on shaded north-facing slopes, I found a Ball Cactus blooming on a perfectly dry south-facing slope. For such tough plants, they have the most spectacularly vivid blossoms.

Then, after admiring the cactus, K and I wended our way back to a snowier area, back to winter. Pretty amazing.

After I'd dropped K off to rest at home, I ran into an acquaintance who I haven't seen in a while. He asked about the dogs, and I told him about K. Tears sprang to his eyes. He lost his last Lab to osteosarcoma before I knew him. What an evil and awful disease. His Lab was a year younger than K when he died.

We commiserated, and I managed to hold it together to ride home. Such sadness. Yet, my friend agreed with me that the love that we have with our dogs more than offsets the inevitable end-of-life grief.

I checked two trail cameras at the end of my ride. Remember that I had incredibly good photos at the cameras that I checked yesterday. I got so much footage of a mountain lion that I'm going to have to take an afternoon to collate it all. Here's one more photo - I'm not sure what the lion was doing with that front paw up in the air.

Well, by comparison, today's photos were funny. The mischievous canines of the world decided that Tax Day was "Poop in front of KB's cameras Day".

First the coyote. This is the male in the breeding pair, as you can tell by the scar under his left eye. He peed first.

 Then, he looked straight at the camera and deposited a pile. The joke is on me!

Finally, to top it off, a dog who wanders our neighborhood (and who I take care of sometimes) came onto our land and pooped within a foot of another camera, leaving this gorgeous photo (this was the least gross of his photos)!

Yup, I think those canines had it in for me yesterday.

Snow, mountain lion, and courage

Yesterday evening, a snow storm hit. K and I were out walking during the deluge of snow.

At almost the same time, a good distance away, a mountain lion walked among my trail cameras.

He was curious about the cams and looked at them closely.

He passed at least three of my cameras, one of which was shooting video. I'll compile the fascinating footage for a future post. I am so happy to have these big cats back in our forest after their winter hiatus.

This morning, K and I headed out for our ride, with me on my snow bike for the first time in more than a week. I had switched over to my summer bike last week.

K romped through the 6" of wet snow with incredible enthusiasm. This girl never ceases to amaze me. The "median survival time" after osteosarcoma goes to the lungs is not long, yet she is still running around joyfully.

She trotted over Hug Hill, with the mountains obscured behind the storm clouds.

As we descended from the peak, K ran parallel to me in the pine forest. As I watched her, she leaped up onto a big fallen tree about 3' off the ground. She touched it briefly with her paws and then gracefully leaped off onto the other side. Wow! She is still living with verve! Our girl is seizing each day!

On our descent, we stopped in a spot where I photographed K yesterday. Here she was yesterday, looking coppery in the green clearing. Both of us were a little hot in the sun yesterday.

Here she is in almost the same place today. It looked completely different, and I was getting cold as I photographed her.

Here's to the amazing courage of a mountain lion in a spring storm and of our K in the fight of her life.

A springtime sunset hike

We recently had a sunset hike that made us appreciate where we live so very much!
First, the Duo romped stood and took in the sights together in the sunset light.

Then, they launched off their boulder to come see me.

Just about then, we saw a raptor swoop over the meadow and land atop a Ponderosa Pine. We leashed the dogs and started walking inconspicuously toward the bird hoping to identify him/her.

When we were just getting close enough to get a good look, the bird soared away from us. We never saw the top of his tail but my best guess was that he was a red-tailed hawk.

The raptor soared over top of a fence on the edge of the meadow, and we spotted a mountain bluebird perched there, his blue plumage standing out in the golden light.

Believe it or not, as we gazed at the bluebird, the elk herd started stirring about 50 yards behind the bluebird. It felt as if we lived in the most vibrant and beautiful world as the wild animals moved all around us.

During all our wildlife watching, the light had dimmed but there was still a bit more time for the Duo to romp. K blurred a little as I panned my camera with her.

A few minutes later, the meadow had lost its sunlight, and the speed of R was too much for my camera. The tops of the brown grass looked like streaks on his black fur as I panned with his sprint.

The hike ended with a spectacular sunset as storm clouds sat over the Divide and were lit on fire by the sun.

As dusk began to fall, we hurried home.

What a miraculously beautiful place to call our home! I feel so lucky K is still with our pack enjoying the blossoming of spring.

K romps and first bear!

I've been worried about K all week. First, we had our bad news on Monday. Then, K started acting very fearful, about all the "usual" things that have scared her over her lifetime. Usually, an escalation in fearfulness means that K isn't feeling well. So, I was worried, worried, worried. I'm sure that my worry didn't help her fearfulness but I couldn't help it.

I am very relieved to say that the fearfulness is fading. K romped with joy this morning. This photo says it all.

I'm feeling overjoyed that K is happy! I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

On another front, I went to check an obscurely-placed trail camera today, and I got a huge surprise! A medium-sized male black bear marked a "whammy" tree about 10 days ago. "Whammy" trees are pine saplings that bears rub their fur on in order to leave a scent marking.

This guy started by standing on his hind legs while facing the tree. Perhaps he was smelling the tree to see who else has marked it or perhaps he's a youngster still learning how to mark a tree. The white streaks are snow that was falling.

Then, the bear departed the picture frame for a half minute. When he returned, he sniffed the ground near the base of the whammy tree.

Then, as snow torpedoed out of the sky, he did a proper marking of the tree. At first, he almost fell over backwards into the tree. You can barely see his head in this photo.

Then, he balanced himself a little better as he rubbed his back all over the sapling.

I know that those photos are not great. They were taken with my oldest and worst trail camera (I'll be putting a better camera in that spot). Just so you know what a bear marking a tree looks like, here's one from daylight last year.

So, bear photography season has officially begun. This is the earliest that it has ever started! I love my trail cameras and our bears!