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.