Our old family dog, Shadow, had been listless and seemed not well. A Wyoming native, this dog had been with us for 14 years. In dog years, she was pushing 90.

She had earlier been diagnosed with cancer and after surgery, well, the vet said there wasn`t much we could do about it. Her days were numbered. The dog seemed to know it, too, as she would mope and lay around a lot.

She hardly ate for months. Yet she was getting fatter. This worried me. Could she be retaining fluid because of illness and old age?

One day at mid-morning, I was working in my home office when I noticed her strolling away from our back yard in Lander. She looked both ways a little warily and truly had a suspicious look on her face.

This piqued my curiosity as I watched out the window.

She walked across the bridge over the creek and headed into some small nearby woods. Where was this dog going? She knew she wasn`t to leave our property without me being with her.

Very stealthily and often looking around and looking back to the house, she sneaked through the little wooded area and disappeared into an area next door where a neighbor was running some cows and calves. I got up and quietly went outdoors.

There was a well-worn trail through the little wooded area to the area with the calves. This dog has obviously made this pilgrimage often. I stood behind a tree and watched. Pretty soon my dog reappeared. She was returning home.

She had something huge in her mouth.

My first suspicion was that she had a cow pie. One of the banes of old dogs is they love to roll around in manure. That is a habit you do not want your housedog to get into.

I moved out from behind the tree. I confronted Shadow there on the well-worn trail. Now some ignorant folks claim animals don`t have feelings. Well, this dog suddenly had a combination of two feelings: fear and guilt. She wasn`t supposed to leave the yard and what the heck was she carting around in her mouth?

She didn`t wag her tail. She had the look of a cornered animal. That big brown thing in her mouth dropped to the ground. We both sort of looked at each other from about 40 feet apart.

I said her name, "Shadow," and she ambled over. She had her tail between her legs and a guilty look on her face. Lots of questions were going through my mind. Is she really sick? Has she started eating cow pies? Is there is a medicinal advantage there? No wonder she didn`t have an appetite! No wonder she had been listless.

I patted my dog and scratched her behind the ears. She perked up considerably. I swear she indicated she just wanted to go to the house with me but I had different ideas. What had she been carrying in her mouth?

When I walked back to where she had dropped the mysterious item, she hung back. When we got there, she made no move whatsoever to this cow pie or whatever it was.

I kicked it with my boot and it became obvious what it was. It was an old cinnamon roll. It was a big old dry one, too, with lots of frosting still on it.

My neighbor had made a deal to daily collect some old donuts and baked goods and had fed them to his calves over the past few months. And by the looks of the worn path from our house to that barn, he had inadvertently been feeding them to my dog, too.

No wonder she wasn`t eating her dog food.

Our dog unfortunately had always had a severe sweet tooth and now she was truly getting her fill. We had taken her to the vet and surprisingly found she had gained eight pounds with no apparent explanation - up to now, anyway.

Later, I saw her lying on the cushion of a yard chair soaking up the sun, appearing quite listless and lethargic. It could be assumed she was just an old dog worn down by the years.

She was bedded down there trying to digest several loaves of bread-type material as she was dreaming of stalking more mighty Bismarcks, long johns, donuts, bagels and cinnamon rolls.

“Seems I am enduring the horrible life that living in a blue state can portend I`ve noticed that whenever you do an “I love Whyoming” column, you take a cheap shot at other parts of the country, mostly my home state. Why is Whyoming the least populated state? Maybe nobody wants to live there.”– Jim Sniffin, my grumpy little brother, of Cedar Falls, Iowa (which is a wonderful place in which to live, I’ve been told).

         My relatives and friends from other states are sick of me continuing to call Wyoming God’s Country. Some of them even call our state “Whyoming” and cannot see why I think it is so special.

Some of the following stories might point out why that description seems to make so much sense to me.

         • In a state like ours, we truly appreciate real people. No posers, but people who are genuine.

         It was fun to see governors like Stan Hathaway, Ed Herschler, Mike Sullivan, Jim Geringer, Dave Freudenthal and Matt Mead go hunting and fishing and know that this was not a photo op, but rather something they really enjoyed doing. These men loved their state and loved participating in our famous outdoor activities.

         Most folks get a kick out of shaking current Gov. Mead’s hand. When you do, you are grasping a chapped, grizzled roper’s hand. Sort of like shaking the hand of an old rancher. Sure feels genuine. Yes, these are roper’s hands. More than a few calluses have graced that palm.

But I digress. What is so special about Wyoming?

         • To live in Wyoming and not enjoy our abundant outdoor resources would not make sense. When outsiders wonder why we love this place so much, it usually is because these are folks who sort of prefer indoor activities or controlled outdoor activities like golfing and boating (I do both, by the way) rather than sports a little more challenging like hunting, fishing, climbing. backcountry hiking, kayaking, cross country skiing, outdoor photography in the backcountry, real camping, desert adventuring or all those dozens of other activities that preoccupy the thoughts of folks out here.

         Let’s face the truth: Wyoming is an outdoor state. It really is not a good locale for the couch potato. If you are going to live a sedentary lifestyle, why would you want to live that here in a place like this?

         • Another state leader who loves this outdoor life is the Catholic Bishop for Wyoming, Paul Etienne, who heads up the Cheyenne Diocese.

         He recently went elk hunting with Matt Potter, his director of development, and here is his story:

 “Yes, I love to hunt.  We spent a few days on an elk hunt on Carter Mountain in October.  My brother filled a cow tag on that hunt.  Matt and I visited a ranch in the Wheatland area a few weeks ago but only saw five bulls.  Matt had a cow elk tag.  

“We also spent a recent weekend in the Iron Mountain range on a special herd reduction hunt.  Sadly, not even the Game and Fish game wardens could locate the herd.  Out of forty hunting groups, only one elk was taken that day.  So, my elk season has pretty much come to another unsuccessful conclusion this year.

         “I also turkey hunt each spring, with much more success!  Also bagged a small mule deer buck my first fall up in the Sunlight Basin area.”

         My favorite story about the bishop concerns a post he put on his blog last August about fishing the North Platte near Saratoga.

         He was getting frustrated about not catching anything. Here is what he had to say about what happened next:

 “Before I finally tied into a spectacular 26-inch brown trout, I told the guide that if things did not pick up I was going to start cheating.”  

He asked: "How do you cheat when you are fishing?"  

I told him, "I`m going to start praying."  

Sure enough, after a little more quiet drifting he told the guide: "That`s it.  I`m going to start praying."  

About one minute later, the fun began when the bishop caught that beautiful, 26-inch brown. He later caught a 19-inch beauty, too.

And so with apologies in advance to my little brother and other folks who live in other states, for always talking about Wyoming’s good attributes, I will let these stories speak for me.

Yep. We do live in God’s Country.

         Okay, you can’t spend all your time outside during a Wyoming winter. Having to spend some of your time inside gives me an excuse to write about my favorite Wyoming-themed movies.

         Of course, this week I was going to write about how the Broncos were on their way to a Super Bowl win. Oh well.

         Here is my list of favorite movies that in some way feature Wyoming:

         Western movies dominate these selections. In Hollywood jargon, cowboy movies were often called “oaters.” Most of these on this list are much better than run-of-the-mill cowboy flicks.

         The two best of this genre are probably Unforgiven and Shane, filmed decades apart but both portraying Wyoming as the often-tough place that it can be. Clint Eastwood directed and starred in Unforgiven, which was named Best Picture of the Year in 1992. Shane was made back in the 1953 in Jackson Hole with Alan Ladd playing the good guy. The American Film Institute ranks the two movies 4th and 3rd on the all-time list of greatest westerns.

         It would interesting to watch these two movies, back-to-back. The style of acting, directing and photography changed dramatically over that 40-year period. The over-acting in Shane is distracting. And typically the plot is much simpler. But I love that end of Shane. “Come back, Shane. Come back, Shane.”

         My personal favorite movie that features the Cowboy State as locale is Once Upon A Time In The West. It features Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda. A lengthy visual treat. Its musical score is, by far, the best of any movie ever made about Wyoming.   It is also the best spaghetti western of all time, filmed in fictional Sweetwater, Wyoming.

         Django Unchained by director Quentin Tarantino is in the theaters as I write this and reportedly is fantastic. Its very chilly winter scenes were filmed in Jackson Hole. This movie has been nominated as best movie of the year.

Speaking of last year, moviegoers saw some amazing Wyoming footage in the movie 2012, which featured some of the best special effects ever. If you ever worried about Yellowstone blowing up, well, there it is – right there on the big screen.

         Brokeback Mountain was a huge hit in 2005. Although filmed in Canada instead of Wyoming, it portrays our state in a beautiful way. Wyoming’s Annie Proulx wrote it. It featured the second best musical score for movies on this list.

         One of our favorite movies of this genre is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which stars Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Wyoming places are mentioned throughout.

         The most famous science fiction movie filmed here was Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a huge success by director Stephen Spielberg. Much of the action features Devils Tower. Rated one of the best sci-fi movies of all time.

Starship Troopers was a huge hit and featured scenes from Hell’s Half Acre near Casper.

         If you like Coen Brothers movies, then watch Red Rock West, a very entertaining movie with lots of odd twists. It was actually made by the Dahl brothers and uses Wyoming as a locale. Another terrific movie is An Unfinished Life written by a Cody author Mark Spragg.

         Flicka and The Horse Whisperer have strong Wyoming connections and are high-quality oaters for horse-lovers and more.

         A funny movie called Did You Hear About The Morgans takes place in Wyoming when a mobster couple is hiding out in the Cowboy State.

         If you want a real treat, rent Heartland. Be sure to get the 1979 version starring Rip Torn and Conchata Ferrell. Based on a book written about homesteading in southwest Wyoming two centuries ago, it is amazing. And yes, this is the same Conchata who plays the loud-mouthed housekeeper in the TV series Two and a Half Men. A gritty movie that is long on amazing scenes and short of dialogue.

         A fantastic and sobering movie is Taking Chance, which is about Marines returning the body of Chance Phelps, a young Dubois man killed in Iraq.

         Broken Trail starring Robert Duvall takes place at the Lander Cutoff just south of the Wind River Mountain Range. Monte Walsh starring Tom Selleck is set in fictional Antelope, Wyoming. A classic is Tom Horn with Steve McQueen.

         Other movies nominated by friends included Spencer’s Mountain, Cat Ballou, Jubal, Cheyenne Autumn, The Man From Laramie, The Mountain Men, Hallelujah Trail, A Day on Teton Marsh, Heavens Gate and The Johnson County War.

         These are my favorite Wyoming-themed movies. What are yours?

       The ritual of reading the local newspaper is alive and well here in Wyoming.   Whether it is daily, twice-weekly or weekly, folks are reading their local paper as soon as it is delivered.

Newspaper readership is growing. And yet, for some reason, the conventional wisdom is that newspapers, if not dead already, are certainly dying.

       In home after home, it is not just grandma and grandpa reading the local bugle, but rather grade school kids, high school kids and busy moms and dads. And college students far from home.

       Perhaps to go along with my almost constant hyperbole about Wyoming, I can honestly report our newspapers are among the best in the country. This is because of a proud culture of excellence, established a long time ago that continues today.

       All of our Cowboy State papers are “community newspapers,” which practice something called refrigerator journalism. This is an almost silly but very accurate term that describes how families will cut out news stories from the local paper and attach them to their refrigerators with magnets.

This focus on local news has paid off for our editors and publishers. Our newspapers are doing well.

Maybe it is because big-city papers like those in Denver, Seattle or New Orleans have closed or cut back that the myth persists that newspapers are in trouble. Not true.

We live in an era of Facebook, smart phones and iPads and it is easy to buy into the theory that digital reporting is news and printed reporting is history. Not true.

       “I just won’t believe it until I read it in the newspaper,” is a comment that I have heard hundreds of times. Again, with the quality editors serving our newspapers, you can assume what you read will be accurate. 

       By touting newspapers, we are not taking anything away from the new media that uses the Internet to get news spread around. There is a future in new media. But the old media is not dead. Not by a long shot.

       If you count my delivering newspapers when I was nine years old, then I am celebrating my 57^th year working in the newspaper business.

       It could be argued that tossing a paper on someone’s porch is about as close to actually working for a newspaper as sitting here in my home office tapping out this column on my computer is as close to a real newsroom.   

       But in-between those two extremes, I worked as a high school reporter for the local paper, as sports editor, news editor and then editor of a local paper and then as an owner and publisher of newspapers in places as varied as Lander to Spearfish, SD to Kihei, Maui.

       Small cities and towns are remarkably the same across such a vast spectrum.

       First of all, it is all about names and faces. People want to read about their neighbors. An old mentor of mine once asked me in 1971 about why Lander was such an odd town. “Nobody ever gets sick in Lander? Nobody ever breaks his or her leg?”   

       This old editor then taught me that if what the folks were talking about at the coffee shop or beauty salon was not in my paper, then I was failing. He was not talking about gossip but regular “news” that people tell each other.

       Wyoming newspapers do a great job of getting that news reported.

It always seemed to me that my local newspaper needed to champion our town on the large scale. But our job was also to knit together its residents on a smaller scale, by reporting deaths, serious illness and even broken legs.

       The best-read parts of the newspaper are often letters to the editor, obituaries and courthouse news. Editors who prominently display these news categories usually have well-read newspapers.

       Retired Buffalo publisher Jim Hicks says people need to read their papers to keep up with local government so “you have a seat at the table.”

       He concludes: “Otherwise, you may well end up being on the menu.”

   Recently, there was a quote from billionaire Warren Buffett who is investing millions in hometown newspapers.

   “We will favor towns and cities with a strong sense of community,” Buffet said. "If a citizenry cares little about its community, it will eventually care little about its newspaper. In a very general way, strong interest in community affairs varies inversely with population size. Therefore, we will focus on small and mid-sized newspapers in long-established communities."

         Based on the past 10 years, folks in Wyoming should be feeling pretty perky about the future.

         Our two biggest industries, energy development and tourism, both boomed to all-time record levels in the last decade. Gains in these sectors should continue to be the economic generators of our state.

         It is easy to predict that these sectors will continue to be the leading job creators in Wyoming, although there are always danger areas ahead.

         A third area that is really the biggest bright spot of the past 10 years is Wyoming’s emergence as a national leader in some unusual and unexpected industrial and technological areas. This includes data storage, becoming a transportation hub for huge retail companies and as a scientific leader with the installation of the NCAR super computer in Cheyenne.

         For decades, Wyoming people have wanted to see some kind of manufacturing job base being developed in our state but success stories have been few.

         But these newest of all technologies, that did not even exist a few years ago, are finding a home in Wyoming. 

         The new computer storage sites such as by Microsoft is a real bright spot in Wyoming’s economic growth.

         The location in Cheyenne at the crossroads of two interstate highways and a railroad has resulted in major distribution centers like Lowe’s and Wal Mart.

         And NCAR, the national weather super computer, bodes well in making Wyoming and UW a national leader in computer projecting.

         These areas have been true bright spots that occurred outside of the more predictable energy and tourism sectors.

         As we sit here and try to predict our state’s future, perhaps it might be worth taking a look back?

Back in 1987, a large group of concerned and committed citizens convened at Casper and Cheyenne meetings to talk about the economic future of Wyoming.

         Appropriately called “The Futures Project,” it consisted of attempts to both guess what the future of our great state would be and also to write a roadmap that could help us go to where we decided we wanted to go.

         I was cleaning out an old warehouse recently and came across that report.

         Although the report brought back some fond memories of a simpler time, most of all, I was impressed to see, once again, this ambitious attempt to look into a crystal ball.

Now, here as I write this in December 2012, a quarter century later, I am standing here in that very future that we all were talking about way back then.

If I were to look ahead 25 years to 2037, what kind of world could Wyoming citizens be participating in? Here are three wild and crazy possible predictions:

• Unless there is a solution in burning coal in a clean manner, I worry that Wyoming will see its now 250-year supply of coal stuck in the ground.

• I am a carnivore and nothing tastes better than a good steak, especially on Wyoming-grazed beef. But it takes 30 pounds of grain to create one pound of steak.  It is a safe bet to assume our world population will be eating a lot more beans and a lot less meat a quarter century in the future.

• Wyoming, today, is truly the hunting paradise for the lower 48 states. Hopefully we can maintain our state’s rights and keep hunting as a major activity here in the Cowboy State. But hunting, as a sport, is in national decline. Numbers of hunters are dropping everywhere.   Maybe Wyoming can remain a holdout as the country’s hunting Mecca in 2037. 

It could be assumed that both Colorado and Montana might be non-hunting states a quarter century into the future, based on the make-up of their local populations.

Trying to predict 25 years in the future is difficult.

Back in 1987, the biggest concerns were commercial airline development, an improved telecommunication network across the state (no mention of internet), a “cohesive” state minerals policy, economic incentives to promote tourism, and cooperation between the community colleges and UW.

That Futures Report ended up being pretty vague. It really did not foresee the enormous development of coal and natural gas. Just about everything else that caused worries back then has seemingly been solved by now

So looking forward two and a half decades can be perilous for a prognosticator, but here it is, for what it is worth.