leaps and bounds

I am always least-happy with my photos right after I take them, and then enjoy them more with time.  Except for this one.  Because I could never be critical of a photo that looks like Maya is trying to hold up her pants as she jumps.

I look like what?

We went for a hike today, with elk tracks, snow zoomies, interesting poopsicles, and training games along the way; Maya was in paradise.

 

I also asked her to pose on stumps for me, which she did with great enthusiasm even when it meant pressing her bottom firmly against a snow drift.  She is such a willing model.

But mostly, we just hiked and played and galloped around with shining eyes.  It was good.

the face I love

I love the face Maya makes when we are playing training games.  Or at least when we are playing them right!  An example from some months back, when we were playing '101 things to do with a box' (or in this case, 'a handful of things to do with two wire baskety things').

You can practically see her brain working away.  Her ears, sadly, didn't fit into the frame (there just isn't always room), but they are at their happiest setting.  As often as not, if I reach up and touch my face while we are doing this, I'll feel a similar sort of expression going on.

she's three!

I completely missed Maya's birthday this year.  I doubt she minds, since last year all I did was force her to wear an embarrassing hat while I waved cookies at her to produce a series of sorrowful expressions.  Like this:

It's a made-up date anyway, since we have no way of knowing Maya's true day of birth.  Even so, it's safe to say that Maya is approximately three years old now.  Happy birthday, big girl!

The other thing I did last week was to sign us up for Susan Garrett's online Recallers course.  We've been having a motivation/discipline problem with training lately (mine, not Maya's), so I am hoping the extra structure helps.  Besides, it sounds like fun!  Since it is going to involve a ton of cookies for Maya, I think that makes a pretty good birthday present.  Better than a stupid hat, at least. 

Only kidding, of course.  Nothing is better than a special birthday hat.

snowy Saturday

A terrible grinding noise woke me at five o'clock this morning. Eventually, I identified it as the sound of a snowplow.  Got up when the sun finally rose, put on lots of warm clothes, and went out to fill the bird feeder and capture some Maya snow zoomies.

No such luck.  Look at her erect ruff and serious face...there was something out behind our back fence, I guess, and my conscientious guard dog had no time for zoomies.  Just enough time to stick her head into the snow, and then give me a few sideways looks and long-suffering sighs that translate into, "If you're out here with me, I can't go bark at the back fence, so really, what's the point?"

Oh well, the birds appreciated my efforts.

rocks on the brain

There was a month, sometime in Maya's first year of living with us, when she became absolutely terrified of rocks.  Not all rocks, just round, light-colored rocks between the size of my fist and the size of a large cantaloupe, and only if they stood out from their surroundings in some way.  It was a very specific phobia, and I have absolutely no idea what precipitated it.  What I do know is that we'd be walking down the sidewalk (itself a pretty hair-raising adventure, at that point in time) and Maya would suddenly freeze, tuck her tail, and cower.  I'd look around, trying to spot some trigger, and then follow her wide eyes to a baseball-sized rock sitting in the road.

Dogs come up with the weirdest things.  Before we adopted Maya, we discussed a long list of potential behavior issues, ranging from things we thought we could handle (not house trained) to things we couldn't (aggressive to humans). Which was a great conversational exercise, but not exactly rooted in reality -- dogs don't come with "issues" resumes, and our perception of what did or did not constitute a manageable issue was fairly naive.

Imagine if dogs did come with complete records on all their little quirks.  I don't know if it would increase adoption rates, as people felt confident in what they were getting, or decrease them, as people shied away from all the weirdness.  I know some rescue groups are able to provide some of that information, but I still feel like dog ownership is full of surprises.

Does "loves broccoli, hates doves, once had a mysterious, yet highly specific, geological phobia" sound like a good fit for your home?  Not that I'm offering, of course.

compost queen

I wanted to get a photo of Maya sunbathing on top of the compost heap.  I think that in the late fall it must be one of the warmest seats in the yard.  Not to mention, it smells great and provides a good place to watch for the Barky Dog Next Door.

But as soon as I snapped one photo, I saw Maya's ear swivel around.  You can tell everything from Maya's ears, and as you can see above, one of them was acknowledging that I'd just stepped into the yard.  Seconds later, Maya followed where her ear had pointed (although please note that the other ear is still keeping tabs on the Barky Dog Next Door).

And then we were together again.  Too bad I did not have time to get the camera focused properly, but as far as Maya is concerned, together again is happy ending enough.

there's an argument here for fencing the tomato patch

Any morning I have time, I get our ratties out in the sun room.  I drink my coffee, they run around and have fun, and we all do a bit of cuddling.  This morning, we had visitors.

 

During these mornings, Maya eats her breakfast in bed.  That is, she is put in the bedroom with a couple of frozen Kongs or equivalent long-lasting snacks.  She is usually quiet, though once the food is gone there is sometimes an outbreak of whining, or a few long-suffering sighs.  This morning, she indulged in some frustration barking, so I think she must have smelled the deer.  They were, after all, right outside the house.

If it had been Maya hanging out with me in the sun room, I would never have seen the deer (or not for long, and at much greater distance).  Maya has a big impact on how I experience wildlife and wild spaces, and I occasionally feel frustrated by her critter-chasing ways.

On the other hand, if Maya had been in the sun room, I would have more tomato plants left.

Really, the tomato plants were frozen in an early frost, and the deer are welcome to anything they can salvage.  The fire pretty much destroyed a lot of the usual food sources, so it will be a lean winter for most grazing animals here...not that you'd think it to look at this big guy.

I don't mind losing a few squash plants to the gopher (watching them vanish, inch by jerky inch, downwards into the ground is entertainment enough to pay for the loss) or a few tomatoes to the deer, and I know that the raccoons that eat the raspberries also sometimes eat the cute garter snakes.  I generally don't do much to try to micromanage the visitors to my yard.  I suppose it seems a little unfair to create a resource-rich environment and then punish animals for doing what comes naturally.

Maya has no such compunctions.  She has killed three deer mice in the yard, and tries her hardest to do the same to the chipmunks, ground squirrel, and occasional cat.  I scan the yard before letting her out, and in the case of slow-moving animals (torpid snakes, the occasional baby bird) I will go out and shoo them gently into safe places.  I leash her on hikes when wildlife is in the area, but otherwise figure that there are limits to my ability to prevent Maya from having a larger impact on the natural world than I might prefer.

It is nice to go places without her sometimes though, and re-experience the pleasure of being quiet around wild animals.  Even if I am just going to my sun room, to sip coffee, let the rats warm my toes, and watch a couple of deer eat the garden.

colder weather

September was a month of seasonal change.  A warm wet end-of-summer became a wet fall, and then quite abruptly a very cold autumn.  And October brought snow!

 

The seasonal change corresponded to a massive bout of depression for me.  Lots of factors contributed -- the rapid change in light, a very long-lasting cold/flu, several external triggering events, overall life stress.  Whatever the cause, I was very blue.  Which is why there have been no posts here since mid-August.  Because who can possibly blog when the very nature of existence is so fundamentally meaningless?

This happens to me rarely, and seldom for quite so long or so deeply.  It is not unendurable, but it does slow things down.  Poor Maya.  For reasons quite incomprehensible to her, September was a much less interesting month than she's become accustomed to.  Less training, more miscommunication.  More quiet time, less adventure.  I don't push either of us to grow, and I think we both find that frustrating.

It's not like she suffers terribly -- quiet walks, evenings in the park with the frisbee, chunks of raw meat for breakfast, ear rubs, games of tug, runs with her boy, spooning in bed, practicing old tricks, chasing chipmunks in the yard...Maya leads a relatively full life.  It's just that I am always aware of the progress Maya needs to make, and so standing still can feel almost as frustrating as regressing (oh, but not quite!).

Now, the sun seems to have come out, literally as well as figuratively.  The snow may have melted, but for a brief period we had a glimpse of winter.  And oh, I hope it is a snowy one.  First, because we need the moisture.  Second, because snow makes it so much easier to thoroughly exhaust Maya.  But most of all, because snow is FUN.

shiny happy people

This statue sits outside our wonderful public library.  While I am normally alert to potential triggers for Maya, I failed to consider this one, and so we walked quite close.  Quite suddenly, Maya caught sight of what looked like a dangerous group of children at play and just about jumped out of her skin.

 

I played a round of BAT with the statue, but it only took a few repetitions before Maya realized it was not as freaky as she'd first assumed and then progressed to ignoring it completely.  Still, it gave me an idea. 

We live in a town of about 12,000 people, but there are a disproportionately large number of statues/fountains/etc. in the downtown area.  So I thought we might try to seek them out, firstly because it ties into a number of goals I am currently pursuing, and second because it gives me the chance to take a series of Maya photos.  I'll post them as we go!

evening dog

Looking at me looking at her.

 

optimism

Yesterday, I took Maya to a pizza restaurant, just to hang out.  We walked around the parking lot, practiced some basic skills, and watched people carrying pizza boxes.

It made me think.  "People carrying objects" was one of Maya's earliest and most obvious triggers.  A person with a box in their arms was a dangerous and terrifying threat, and Maya would bark and growl at them even from a considerable distance (up to several hundred feet).

Now, Maya is a much more sophisticated dog who knows exactly what's inside a pizza box.  She has also experienced people who give her delicious treats, and as she watched the delivery guys, she leaned toward them in a yearning fashion.  Eyes soft, mouth moist, tail quivering...she was not exactly begging, and not exactly expecting anything, but it was clear that she was entertaining a wistful sort of hope that someday, sometime, a complete stranger might give her a whole pizza of her own.

Turning Maya into an optimist may be one of my proudest achievements.

backyard wildlife

We are having a very wildlife-filled summer, mainly due to the drought and fire. I admit I have my preferences with animals -- I like the night snake in our raspberry patch, even when it slides ticklishly over my bare toes when I water, but I don't like worrying about Maya encountering a bear in our yard.  Not that we've had many bears come by, but enough to keep me on alert.

We've had a lot of deer and elk too.  They mostly stay outside our fence, preferring the empty lot behind us.  When they do come in, Maya takes her job of barking at them very seriously.  Her brave defense of our garden almost makes up for all the plants she playfully smashed immediately after I planted them (I guess I seemed to be having so much fun with them, she wanted to give it a try too).

Deer leaving our back lot to go check out the neighbor's yard.

At dusk, a hummingbird family always stops by.  First it was a pair, but now a littler bird accompanies them.  I don't know much about hummingbird families, or about how long the babies stay in their parents' territory, but the relationship seems clear.

Lots of other birds too -- finches, sparrows, jays, flickers, an acorn woodpecker, a family of robins, a pair of beautiful tanagers, ravens who like to tease Maya.

Besides the night snake, we have lots of western terrestrial garter snakes.  I am fond of snakes, though I have been putting a lot of effort into making sure Maya does not learn to reflexively chase them.  I don't want her to be as stupid about snakes as she already is about running mammals (such as mountain lions, bears, and squirrels). 

Our garter snakes are sweet and shy, and smile at me from their hiding spots in our rock wall.

back home

Since coming back home, Maya has done this:

 

And a lot of this:

When she is not sleeping (which is to say, any time I walk around the house) she follows me around with a big, goofy grin on her face.  I think she's at least as happy to be home as I am.

It's just as well she's so sleepy, since there is nothing to do here.  All hiking trails are closed, and there is enough smoke in the air that strenuous activity outside would be a bad idea.  At least all that smoke makes for beautiful sunsets.

The red color is mostly the effect of sunset on the smoke.  But as the sky gets darker, the ridge line glows orange and red with leaping flames.  This fire isn't done yet, even if it is pushed back.  In a way, I like being able to see it.  Because it had such a profound effect on my week, and will continue to change everything here for a long time, there is some satisfaction in meeting it face-to-face.

Even with fire on the horizon, it is good to be home.

stir crazy

I am going just a little bit nuts.  Which is normal.  I tend to handle crises with reasonable calm during the most acute parts, but the day after day of uncertainty, emotional roller-coasters, and general upheaval eventually get to me.  In particular, it drives me crazy to have nothing productive to do, no routine to fall back on, and no opportunities to just go out and hike.  Most of our favorite places are on fire, the rest are closed, and the air is filled with so much smoke that being outside is difficult, so I feel extraordinarily confined.  Well, that and the effects of the stress of the past few days -- thinking we might not have a home anymore, or a town anymore, and not quite knowing what to do while we waited to find out.

The good news is that we have a home and we will get to go back to it sometime.  Even better, there are no reports of casualties or injuries, in spite of the massive scope of this fire.  So I am just trying to let the frustration and anxiety wash through me, reminding myself that this is normal, and figuring out ways to work around it.

Links to photos of the fire, our town, and the beautiful places we live near.

Las Conchas Fire photos from The Big Picture

Las Conchas photos from the Albuquerque Journal

Oh, and we saw Maya today.  I didn't pack enough food for her extended stay in the kennel, so I picked up a fresh bag to drop off.  She look relaxed and happy, but I didn't linger where she could see me -- too distressing for her to have us visit and then leave again.  I miss her more than I can put into words.

Maya, evacuee dog

I like reading Sunday's post, in which I said we didn't expect to evacuate.  Less than 24 hours after I posted that, we evacuated. The fire (at the time I write this) is at least 60,000+ acres and right on the edges of town.  Official reports have it about 2-4 miles from our house, while real time satellite imagery suggests that spot fires may be starting much closer.  Real time satellite imagery is a terrible thing.

Maya is doing fine, safe and happy at a familiar boarding kennel here in Santa Fe.  We are fine too, though the experience is draining.  In order to keep busy, I spent the morning cleaning kennels and walking dogs down at the local shelter.  They have been taking in evacuee pets, which leads to a certain amount of disarray and short-handedness, so it was nice to feel useful.  We rounded out the afternoon with a movie and a shopping trip to buy food & water for evacuees in shelters and emergency crews.  Now to come up with a full day's worth of activities for tomorrow.

The fire in question is being called the Las Conchas fire, because it started across from the Las Conchas trail head and climbing area (hikers and climbers were evacuated safely).  According to several people I know, the high winds blew a tree down across power lines, and the tinder-dry conditions led to the start of the fire.  The high winds caused the fire to become a raging inferno, spreading tens of thousands of acres in mere hours.  It is likely that it will continue to grow over the next few days.

Websites with fire information:

http://nmfireinfo.wordpress.com

http://inciweb.org

Videos of the fire:

http://www.koat.com/video/28367979/detail.html

Time lapse video of the fire's initial growth (from Sunday)

It doesn't look like that now, of course.  There is nothing but a thick cloud of smoke over our home now, just a wall of brownish-gray to the northwest.  We can't even see the mountains. Tonight, the smoke has settled thickly over Santa Fe, and the air smells like fire again.

summer of fire, part two

Today is a bright, cloudless day, but this is the view from my front yard (over my house):

That's a new fire, about twelve miles away.  The plume of smoke is enormous, and the fire is reportedly moving quickly.  Since taking this photograph, the sun has been entirely blotted out by the brown cloud of smoke & debris...so much for air quality.  So much for peace of mind, which has been strained already this week by other nearby fires.

We are not under an evacuation order, nor anticipating one (yet), but we are definitely sorting through things and making sure we have everything in order.  Most likely, the fire will not make it this far (we hope), but it feels better to be prepared just in case. Of course, I constantly interrupt my organizing in order to compulsively check for updates.

I wish for safety, strength, and success for the firefighters who are fighting fires all across New Mexico.  And rain, lots and lots of rain.

does your dog love water?

Maya loves water, but is fundamentally clueless about it.  I like to blame this on environmental deprivation -- she is a desert dog, and rarely has the chance to experience water outside of a bucket or toilet bowl.  Besides, "my dog is a desert dog" sounds better than "my dog is sort of dumb about water."

The first time she met a large puddle, she tried to step on it.  A mistake, of course, and she fell into the six-inch-deep water with a wail of dismay.  It pretty much set the pattern though: when Maya finds water, she goofs around until she falls in.

Once in, she has a splendid time.

Not quite a water dog, but at least I know she's having fun.

two years

Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the day we brought Maya home. She's grown so much since then, physically and emotionally, in ways that defy description.

First day home.

Maya now.

Increasingly, I am convinced that I have the best dog in all the world.  Oh, she isn't completely perfect, and I suppose that Maya would be an awful fit in many homes.  She fits just right into ours though.

Maya is comfort when I am sad, companionship when I am happy.  A cheerful word from me can make her pointy face break into a wide, laughing grin, make her paws dance.  I love hiking, but I love hiking with Maya better.  She is fascinating and fun, challenging and rewarding, silly and sweet.

When I adopted Maya, I wasn't quite sure what dog ownership would bring.  I hoped to learn more about dogs, to try my hand at a little training, to have a companion who could accompany me on the kinds of adventures I love, and to build a friendship.  I had no idea that I would be forced to learn a huge amount about dogs because mine was such a disaster, or that I'd need to commit to full-time training for years to come, or that any of it would be so difficult.  But I am realizing that in a way, I found exactly what I was looking for.

I imagine that life will always hold challenges for Maya, and that certain things may never come easily to us.  Friendship, laughter, and love, however, are as easy as can be imagined.

chasing cats

Maya and Brian went for a run tonight.  This is a regular Tuesday night occurrence, and they went to one of our usual spots.  After about six miles, they were headed back to the car.  Evening was near, and when Brian heard some coyotes begin to sing over the hill he called Maya over and bent to fasten her leash.

Except just as he did that, a mountain lion bolted from cover about twenty feet away.  She was not a large lion, in fact quite young, and she was not attacking -- I imagine something startled her, perhaps the sight of a man and a dog in the meadow.  She bolted from a sparse grove of aspens and headed at top speed across the open meadow, heading for the thicker brush ahead.

And Maya took off.  I imagine she must have been in heaven.  There is chasing cats, and then there is chasing CATS.  Neither of which is an activity we normally permit.  So she sprinted off after the lion, and apparently, by the time they both vanished into the undergrowth, she was a mere couple of feet behind.  Our dog is fast.

My breezy tone reflects the fact that I did not have to undergo this ordeal.  I heard about it after both man and dog were safely home, not a scratch on either, and merely completely exhausted.  I was not the one who spend nearly forty-five minutes frantically searching through the woods, afraid that my dog had been disemboweled by a mountain lion.

Eventually, Brian headed back to the car, where he found Maya happily lying beside the back tire.  I guess that after her fabulous chase, she decided to head back and then just wondered what was taking Brian so long.  No sign of the lion, not so much as a whisker out of place on Maya.  Probably, the lion went up a tree, and Maya got worried about being separated from her running buddy.

In all the time we've lived in the west, we've seen three lions.  One in California, one in northern New Mexico, and now, one in our favorite hiking spot.  It isn't a complete surprise -- we see tracks and scat, and know that a variety of wildlife shares our mountains -- but it is surprising when you suddenly encounter one. 

Taking responsibility for Maya makes us feel sometimes like we need to control everything in her life.  It makes us feel like we ought to be able to prevent all accidents and unforeseen events, or that when they happen, they are the result of some oversight on our part.  Especially because we are working so hard to reduce her reactivity, and succeeding depends on an excessive amount of management and foresight.  So our immediate response is to review our leashing habits, and try to work out whether there's a good way to lion-proof a recall, and things like that.

Mostly, however, I am just be grateful for a happy ending. I'm glad both runners are back home, and I hope the young lion was not too badly traumatized.  Ideally it learned some kind of valuable lesson about staying away from dogs.  I am pretty certain that Maya learned nothing at all, other than a reaffirmation of her belief that chasing things is marvelous fun.

I do wonder what her version of the story would be.

Maya and her running boy.

stuff my dog can do

You know what Maya did today?  She took treats from a stranger.  I know some people probably do not think this is a big deal.  Your dogs take treats from strangers all the time, you may think, and indeed, it's getting them to stop that's the problem.  It may also lessen your excitement to hear that the "stranger" was in fact our regular trainer.

But I am still pretty excited.  Maya was communicative and polite, and was responding to cues from the trainer like "sit" and "touch" (and once, accidentally, to her hand signal for "stand on your hind legs and dance," which seriously confused our poor trainer and also Maya a little bit).  Maya was wagging, loose, and eager to interact in a friendly fashion, provided plenty of delicious treats were involved.  She had some nervous moments, and a few things pushed her a bit over the edge, but she was learning and having a great time.

It has been just under two years since we adopted Maya.  I cannot even count the things she has learned since then, and we still have so much ground to cover.  Every so often, someone tells me that they once had a dog "just like Maya," and that they had every approaching stranger hand the dog a cookie for several weeks, or maybe even months, until the dog was wagging its tail at everyone who passed.  And I feel kind of bad, because it's taken us two years just to get to a point where my dog can, under very special and controlled circumstances, take treats from just one stranger. I think that maybe, if I'd done a better job or known more, this might have gone faster.

But I don't feel that bad, because honestly, there are no words to describe how big a deal such a simple action is to Maya.  This is huge for her, and involved so much self-control and courage that she passed out in a heap as soon as she came home again.  Slowly but surely, her paradigms are shifting.  Her worldview may never be the same, and I may get to see my dog grow into the very best version of herself.

That's exciting.

summer of fire

It was a really dry winter here in New Mexico, which means that this summer is going to be all about fire.  The extremely high risk of fires leads to forest closures -- already, most of the National Forests south of us are closed to all use, and I worry that our local forests will follow suit.  It also leads to actual fires, such as the huge fire burning on the NM-AZ border.

(photo from the Seattle Times/AP)

In photos, the Wallow Fire looks almost apocalyptic.  Hundreds of thousands of acres burning, people evacuating, and currently zero containment.

Besides the horror that accompanies any disaster like this, we are also downwind of that smoke column.  All week, our county has been under an air quality alert warning us not to go outside unless necessary, to close our doors & windows (especially if we have children, elderly people, people with respiratory conditions, or pets), not to engage in any strenuous activity.  We've had a little ash, a lot of smoke, and incredibly poor visibility.  At times, I cannot make out the hills behind our house, and as I drive downhill from our town, I cannot see the bottom of the valley below.  I'd take photos, but they'd just show a yellow sky, and brownish smudges...it doesn't really capture the dustbowl effect.

It seems to bother me more than Maya.  She is quite keen on going outside, and very much in favor of strenuous activity. I wake up feeling that my nostrils are clogged with smoke, she wakes up and charges out the door.  I wish I had her ability to take things like this in stride.  As it is, we are restricting our time spent outdoors.  I think it's going to be a boring, indoors kind of weekend, but then, I kind of need one right now.

Maya, on the other hand, is going to wonder why we aren't hiking.  Her sense of smell is millions of times better than my own, but apparently much less delicate when it comes to acrid burning sensations.  Or maybe she just isn't bothered because to her, it's just some smoke.  While I worry about the people in the path of the fire, the firefighters risking their lives, and the many far-reaching consequences of such a fire, Maya just notices that it smells kind of bad, and then goes about her business.  Not such a bad way to be.