Story in a Mud Puddle

The shallow puddle was about 10 feet long. Our instructors found the opposum, black bear and elk tracks earlier in the week. Another class had been at the site on Friday. We found the cougar track early on Saturday...it was new.

Our Tracking Intensive class is winding down -only one more weekend session to go. The guest instructor was Sue Morse of Keeping Track in Vermont. Her specialty is predators, and we spent a day near Carnation learning about black bear (Ursus americanus). The cougar track was a bonus! I'll have more about the cats later.

It's amazing what you can learn by following a naturalist like Sue through the woods on a sunny day. Along with bear fact, she threw out nuggets of information about our local Aplodontia (Aplodontia rufa), elk (Cervus canadensis) and blacktail deer (Odocoileus hemionus) as well.

My Vision for the Dog Tracking Photos

This was Jackson, my last dog, and his tracks in the snow...It would be better if he was standing and outside, but you can see his body type, and his feet are visible...the track photo is not bad. The pink ruler stands out, and there are both front and back tracks in the picture. Can you tell which is which?

Jackson was a 40 pound mixed breed - my vet though Shar Pei and Jack Russell among other things...Don't ever do that on purpose! He was healthy, except that he was born with a shallow right hip socket, which caused muscle loss and pain in that hip. He limped badly when tired.

I think it will be fun to see how many dog and dog track photos we can collect in one place...we might even learn something. If your dog has any type of foot, leg, hip or shoulder injury or disease, please mention it, as we might see it in the tracks!

To be included in the experiment, send photos as a jpeg attachment in an e-mail to me at possum59@yahoo.com ...

I'll start putting them up as they come in.