Don't Be Fooled

It was one of those spring evenings that you dream about.  Cool breeze, low humidity and plenty of hours of day light after work.

Kell is insanely active dog. Always busy and looking for things to get into. Whether it is rounding up all the shoes not guarded by doors and baby gates, running down marks a 100 yards out in the field, following the horse on trail rides or hunting down my team mate that always seems to get lost (I always wonder what she thinks every time she finds Dan).

And this evening was scheduled for SAR training at a friend's farm. I wanted to try something different with her.  Teach her to use her nose every way she can, whether it be air scenting or tracking.  The hay field hadn't been mowed yet but there were paths knocked down that were only a third as high as the grass that was going to go to hay.

My plan was to have her find the article the subject left then see if she would track the subject along the mowed path or air scent through the unmowed grass.

She took the hard way.  Air scenting through the waist high grass.

That's were I was fooled.

It was only a 20 minute problem, with a fit dog on a cool spring evening.

She over heated.  To the point that she wouldn't give me her indication.  She had the classic "I'm too hot grimace", lips pulled back as far they could go, eyes squinting, thick tongue, the works.

It took almost 15 minutes under the cedar trees with judicious amounts of water poured on the pads of her feet and turning the dirt under chest into mud.

Kell needs to learn to pace herself.  But, I, as her handler, need to know how to keep her safe from herself while she learns that pace.

Lesson learned?  Tall grass is hard to work through and carry twice as much water as you think you need.  Even if it is only a 20 minute task, it could be the difference between life and death.

Where upon a SAR dog handler got bored

I’ve been a canine search and rescue dog handler for close to 20 years now (good God!! Has it really been that long?). Six dogs through state certification, without a wash out. So, I’ve either been very, very lucky or had good dogs. Or maybe a little bit of both, with great team mates to train with.

I finished off Tally in HRD, she's my 3rd HRD dog,  and thought, “Now what?” I was bored. Training became boring, throw some source out, feed the dogs when they find it. I felt like Fred, the Dunkin Donut baker, “time to make the doughnuts”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2AGc70Eq9k

Finn, my first real search dog, half of my heart, the dog that I did everything with and he always asked to do more,  had also started his final decline during this time.

A text would come through announcing a search. Live find, HRD whatever, I resented being called out. A sabbatical was becoming more and more promising.

This past April 1st, I posted on Facebook that I was retiring from SAR.  No one took me seriously, but most didn't know how close it was to being true.  I was tired.

Then this thing happened:

Glendair's Celtic Kestral, from my Tally

From the first she ran through life at mach speed.  Nothing and no one got in her way.  If there wasn't door to go through to get to the other side, she made her own.  Or even if there was a door, she liked to make her own.

That's 1/4 inch reinforced glass, with pieces of glass that landed 3 feet out in front of where it was supposed to be.  She didn't die, she didn't break her neck or fracture her skull.  Just two small lacerations for her trouble.  The local TV station was there that day, doing a story on us.  Thank god, they weren't recording...I'm not sure I would want to hear what I actually yelled, after the sonic boom of her head shattering the glass cleared from my ears.

The next week she considered jumping off of a 12 foot high concrete wall to a concrete slab below.

Climbing the pile at 16 weeks

I got health insurance on her the following week.

She helped me rediscover why I started this obsession in the first place.  The joy of getting into the forest, following her as she explores the scent on the air.   With her help, feeling the direction of the wind current (no puffer bottle needed, just the nose twitch that says the current has changed). Learning to understand what her body language was telling me. The concentration in her face as she tries to figure out where that scent went when she dips into the drainage and it floats over her head. Following her as she quarters through the scent cone and watching that cone get smaller and smaller the closer she gets to the subject.

The shear joy as her body starts to wiggle from nose to tail when she's in the strongest scent pool and knows she's about pounce on her subject.

Then trying to think of situations that might confuse her, so she learns how to problem solve.  And watching that brain work as she conquers each goal.  She keeps me on my toes, and figures things out before I even know what goal we are working for that day.

I hope you never get lost. But if you do, this is what you might see just before your human rescuers get to you.

I hope I get to see this for many years to come:

     Too Soon

     He was magnificent. Big, beautiful, bold, and ball crazy.  He answered the call through cold and wet and muck and mountain laurel and dark.  He was able to bring two people home in his career. And he was only 8 years old when it all came to a crashing end.

     He was not the most social of dogs, Chessie’s rarely are. They like their person and not much else. He liked to wreak havoc in his world.  Stirring up trouble everywhere he could, mainly because he was bored when he wasn’t searching. So when not searching, he appointed himself the job title of “pot stirrer”.  He had his job, and get out his way when he was working. Self-appointed job or out in the search field.

     He ended up with his handler (who was a pointy eared dog lover from way back) after basically being dropped on her door step as a puppy.  He was suffering from puppy strangles and looked like he was at deaths door. His face and muzzle swollen to two or three times its normal size.  Gobs of green pus rolling out of his eyes.  And skin lesions everywhere. A little prednisone, some antibiotics, and a tincture of time, viola, a Malinois in a floppy eared body.

     He was a thing of beauty when he was in his search harness. He cleared logs with wings on his feet; crashed through underbrush, ripping hide from his side with nary a sound; climbed mountains with springs in his legs; and danced across rubble like it was a ballroom. All the while not so patiently waiting for his handler to catch up with him. But that’s the case for most of our search dogs.

     His career was cut short by a horrible disease called Degenerative Myopathy. It is a disease that is as cruel as it is devastating. His mind still sharp, but his rear end quit working. He was supposed to be able to retire when it was time and enjoy a well-earned rest.  But, maybe, just maybe, that would have been shear torture for him, not being able to work.

    

     It was a beautiful sunny and cool morning. We followed an easy path, one that wouldn’t tie up his barely functioning rear legs in knots.  Put his harness on, with the bell. And he changed from an old tired dog that didn’t understand what was happening to his body into one that we remembered from before.  His nose in the air seeking that scent, ranging far and an extra spring in his step that we hadn’t seen in a long time.

     He found his last person, then left us in the arms of his handler, crunching on his favorite ball and talking smack.

     There will never be another one quite like him. 

Uzi, you son of a bitch, you will be missed.

It's just a dog

Except when he isn't. Just a dog. 

Trapper was an elkhound shepherd mix with a little West Virginia Mountain Walkin’ dog mixed in. Nothing special, no titles earned, no tricks learned, no search and rescue finds.  Just loved and adored by his family. 

The first year of his life was a horrible mixture of abuse (outright- being kicked while chained) and neglect (no food or water or shelter).  But, somehow, he kept a flame of self-respect and pride burning.

That flame was covertly and sometime not covertly fed by his neighbors.  During his first winter, the son would sneak over before the school bus came, and tuck him under his coat to warm him.  The father started checking on him to make sure he had food and water. And once stopped the owner during a “training session” that seemed nothing more than a kick the dog festival. The family dog, a Golden Retriever, would go and play with him.

Then the family moved away and left Trapper behind, tied to his box. It was probably the best day of Trapper’s life, being left like that.  The neighbors took Trapper in, not realizing what was ahead of them. He was a difficult dog to get to know and a difficult dog to accept.  He growled at everyone. He wouldn’t go in the beautiful dog house they got for him; he’d rather pee on it and sit on top of it. And he wouldn’t come in their house.  So rather than make him, they accommodated him. They put a strong roof over his pen to keep the snow out in the winter, rain out in the spring and the hot sun in the summer.  During the winter, the walls were stacks of bales of straw covered with ply wood.  In the summer, it was just plywood, used to keep the wind out.  It took three years to teach him to accept a dog house and they did it once piece at a time.  The floor first, a couple of walls at a time and finally the roof.

He couldn’t trust this wonderful family at first, he didn’t know how to, he was never taught that humans can be more than a source of pain.  But, I am sure he remembered a little of what they did for him.  Because with patience and kindness and a lot of time, they won him over.  They allowed him to be the dog he wanted to be, not a fenced, leash walked city dog.  But rather confident unconfined protector of his domain.  He would have been euthanized long before now for biting, or killing small pets, if someone tried to turn him into a city dog.

But his confidence shown through.  He was never argumentative, or acted like he had a chip on his shoulder.  You just couldn't make him do anything, unless he thought it was his idea first.  Even to the end of his life, he didn't trust humans to make any decisions for him.

And that’s why his owners called me. Cars were never going to be his idea of a good time, and he wasn't getting in one.

I only got to meet Trapper three times, all within the last 10 days of his life.  But, for some reason, he struck a chord so very deep in me that I mourn for him almost as much as one of my own.  I don’t know why he made such an impression on me but he did.  And I guess I just need to accept it.

He was hiding under a lilac bush the first time I came to his house.  His owner and I pulled the big branches out of the way, and I politely asked if he would come out and let me take a look at him.  He laid there for a moment, thinking that proposition, and me, over.  And decided he would allow me to take a look at him.  I think that was the moment I fell in love with him.  The utter dignity and strength, even as sick as he was, was evident. 

Unfortunately, there wasn't anything we could do for him.  That’s wrong.  There was a lot we could do for him, but he told me in no uncertain terms that it wasn't going to happen to him.

I saw him my third and last time last night, under the faint glow of a flash light in the field of his choosing and lying next to his devoted dad, asking as only he could, to be allowed to pass with the dignity he’s earned. 

And I helped him the only way that was left.

Good night, Trapper.  I feel lucky to have known you, even if it was only 10 short days.

A Nightmare

There are three things in my life that I am terrified of:  having my dogs hit by a car,  a house fire with my pets in the house, and poisoning of my dogs .  So far, none of my dogs have been hit by a car.  I’ve already lived through a house fire. Then this past spring, I lived through one of the worst experiences of my life with my dogs, antifreeze.

I got home late from a surprisingly dogless afternoon and let the crew out before dinner. After a few minutes of stretching their legs I called them back for dinner, which was inhaled in seconds.  And as Labs, they soon went into a food induced nap.

While I was sitting in my recliner, reclined and half asleep, a loud crash startled me out of my half slumber.  Thinking that it was just one of the dogs falling off the couch while they were asleep, which they've done before, I didn't think anything of it.  Until Deacon crashed loudly into the crate behind my chair. That had me leaping up to find out what the heck was going on.

Deacon was standing there swaying as if he’d hit his head and had his bell rung.  I tried to get him to walk it off, to see if he could regain his balance.  But he didn’t, it just kept getting worse. He stumbled around the living room getting more ataxic by the second. He was knuckling over, crossing his back legs and when he stood in place, he just swayed like a tree in a high wind.

 I could feel the bile burning the back of my throat, the nausea was so overwhelming.  This wasn’t a seizure, which was bad enough. No, he had to have been poisoned.  And the only thing that makes a dog stumble around like a sailor on a three day binge is antifreeze.

I called one of my team mates (she’s a licensed veterinary technician and she also worked at an emergency clinic) because, while I can keep my cool and work on anyone else’s dog in an emergency, I immediately turn into a quivering pile of Jello if my own dog is in trouble.  Unable to string two coherent thoughts together, let alone think of what I am supposed to do next, she, surprisingly, understood what I was trying to say.  Me, I wasn't real sure I was making any sense. All I could hear was my heart beating in my throat and then the overwhelming urge to puke. 

I finally got myself together enough to get Deacon into the truck and headed down the road to the Shenandoah Valley Emergency Veterinary Clinic.

Danielle met me there, I calmed immeasurably; something about shared terror.  We were the only ones in the waiting room so there was no waiting.  I told them to not even examine Deacon, just do the damn antifreeze test. Because I knew in my mind it was going to be positive, even though my heart refused to believe it was a possibility. 

Five minutes later, and I was right. They whisked him to the back to get him started on his three day treatment.  And I headed home to come down from that incredibly stressful evening.

I settled in to finish the rest of the “Big Bang Theory” dvd, when Darcy comes stumbling into the living room.  The first thought that went through my mind was, “You have GOT to be kidding!”.  And called Danielle on the way down to the clinic. It seems that I was winning the unlucky lottery, because Darcy also tested positive for antifreeze.  At first, I thought I was over reacting, taking her to get tested for antifreeze, that she all she really did was get her toenails stuck in the carpet and that was why she stumbled. Nope, that wasn’t the case, so she got to spend the rest of the weekend as Deacon’s roommate.

Two in a row; that was too much of a coincidence.  I asked the DVM that was taking care of my two if I could take home the rest of the antifreeze test strips test the remaining three dogs. Not really believing that they would test positive.

Danielle followed me home to help me draw blood on the dogs left at home.  By this time it was past midnight.  Neither one of us were very coherent.

Every. Single. One. Of them came up positive.

All I could do was sit there and stare at the test results in despair. How could this happen, WHO could be so cruel to do this to my dogs? While I was paralyzed with disbelief, Danielle jumped into action. She drove back to the EC and started grabbing things off the shelf, the most important: a bottle of Everclear grain alcohol, I'll explain why later.

She may have been half asleep but she knew what we needed to turn my dining room into an emergency clinic treatment room.

That began the 3 longest days of my life.  Basically, it was either Danielle or I up the entire time.  Monitoring the IV lines, switching bags back and forth, taking them out to pee, cleaning up after them when they couldn’t make it out, replacing IV lines when they pulled them, cleaning up the blood from the catheters when they pulled the administration sets out, cleaning up the vomit. Tally was the worst, even in her drunken haze, she still managed to rip not only the extension set from the catheter, but the entire catheter out of her vein.  Blood went everywhere. I couldn’t have done this without Danielle! 

There are three stages to ethylene glycol (antifreeze) toxicity.  The first stage is drunkeness. EG acts just like alcohol, so if the dog drinks enough to be poisoned by it, there is enough to make him drunk.  The dog then appears to recover before heading into stage 2.  At this point cardiac symptoms appear.  Third stage is when we vets usually end up seeing them.  This is when the kidneys have shut completely down and can't produce urine anymore.  And there is nothing that can be done at this stage.  Kidney failure is complete and irreversible. 

To treat EG intoxication, you need to understand a little of how it works in the body.  Because it isn't the antifreeze that is toxic, it's the metabolites that are deadly. In particular, the final metabolite called Calcium Oxalate.  That nasty by-product settles out in the kidney and destroys them.

EG is an alcohol, very similar to regular alcohol.  In fact it is so similar, that several Austrian wine producers added it to their wines to make it sweeter and heavier.  Austrian wine scandal  When first ingested, ethylene glycol will cause the animal to appear drunk (first stage).  It then latches on to the enzyme, alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), which metabolizes regular alcohol into fairly innocuous by products.   But when EG attaches itself to ADH all kinds of badness ensues, by-products produced include metaldehyde (a cousin of formaldehyde) and worse, Calcium Oxalate crystals.  The good news, though, is EG is basically harmless if it passes through the kidneys unmetabolized.  And in order for that to happen, it can't get attached to ADH.  That's the reason for the Everclear, 190 proof clear grain alcohol.  Regular alcohol has a higher affinity for ADH than antifreeze, that means that the dogs have to go on a three day drunk to keep that enzyme occupied and let the antifreeze pass through unchanged.

You can't make a dog drink enough alcohol to treat the antifreeze, so I had to make up an IV infusion, using a formula that gave me 20% alcohol in an IV bag.  For all 5 dogs, I ended up using almost an entire liter of Everclear.  It sounds simple, just get your dog drunk and let the antifreeze pass through.  The problem is I could over dose the dogs and then I'd have to deal with alcohol poisoning.  And having them drop into an alcohol induced coma that could kill them too.  There is a safer way of treating, with a drug called Antizol.  But just my luck, it was on indefinite  back order.

It was a harrowing three days, but we all made it.  The dogs with an incredible hangover and Danielle and I with severe sleep deprivation. It took several days for my house to lose the moonshine stench, and I swear I could smell the grain alcohol on their breath for days. Even their poop smelled like grain alcohol.   Two days after everyone woke up from their hangover, all their blood work was normal. 

It was kind of anti-climactic, but I am ok with that.

Darcy, Tally,Cora, Finn, Deacon

I never did find out where the antifreeze came from.

Humility, or why I shouldn't believe I'm a god- even if my dog does.

The general public loves dogs and especially our search dogs.  The pedestal gets higher and higher with each book and each newspaper article that writes about the daring feats SAR dogs do.  More than once I’ve overheard someone say at a search I’ve arrived at, “oh thank goodness, the dogs are here.”  I look around to see what super dog they are looking at and it’s just my goofy dog, with his head hanging out the window, tongue flapping in the wind, his drool sliming the window.

Our dogs are given superpowers by the general public, many times encouraged by news reports.  They  desperately want to believe the myth of Lassie and Rin Tin Tin.  Where week after week, TV shows and films that star the four legged actors, extol the deeds of these furry super heros that put the needs of their humans above their own, sometimes to their own detriment.  

News reports like to ascribe supernatural powers to their noses, their endurance, their undying devotion to us puny stupid humans.   That they can find lost children in snowstorms, drowning victims in hundreds of feet of water, track down the wandering dementia patient through wind and rain on a trail weeks old. Or they find the drop of blood, the finger nail, the scrap of tissue that breaks open a cold case.  And occasionally they can, which drives the cult of dog even further.

Our dogs are well trained and can do amazing things, but they aren't supernatural. Their nose is only as good as the trainer at the other end of the leash. And that's what Hollywood never showed, the super hero dogs with their very failable humans at the other end of the leash like every other normal working dog does. This past fall several things happened to me and my boy Deacon that reinforced to me that I am just human and he is just a dog.  Neither one of us have supernatural powers; that we are only as good as the training we do, and the trainers we use to help us.  First, we were in Florida when Hurricane Sandy hit the north east, at cadaver dog seminar.  The specific intent of this seminar was aged buried remains.  We aren't as good on buried as I thought we were.  We were only right on our blanks and about 30 yards off on the task areas with a source. Second lesson was at a search.  I explored an area that I shouldn't have done. There was a lot of pressure from several agencies, and I should have known better than to give into that pressure and the rush to my ego that came with it.

90% or more SAR dog handlers are hard working team members.  We, here in Virginia, take pride in the entire SAR community when a find is made, no matter who made it; ground pounders, dog teams, or civilian searchers.  We just want that lost loved one to come home, and take very seriously the slogan "so others may live".

Then there are the 10% that aren't team players.  They probably never were team players and don't recognize that a search is machine-like.  Maybe not well oiled at times, and other times not firing on all cylinders, but still needing all the parts to mesh together to get forward motion.  That 10% thinks because they are the front wheel, the car couldn't get anywhere with out them, and therefore they are indispensable.  What they don't realize is that there is always a spare tire available....

So they move on to a reality of their own creation.  The most blatant example of this is a dog handler from Michigan, Sandra Anderson and her dog Eagle:

She ended up being the darling of several law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.  She and Eagle were hired the government of Panama to search for the mass graves of victims of Manuel Noreiga. They were even sent to Bosnia to look for more mass graves.  With this fame, came the cult of personality. She surrounded herself with people that believed the religion she was preaching and never thought to question her. The inward spiral of the Ponzi scheme that she was trying to maintain became harder and harder to maintain and it was inevitable that she would fall.

Her downfall was swift and of her own doing.  She started planting evidence at crime scenes and falsifying statements.  She became careless in her planting of that evidence and got caught planting bones and a carpet sample at a possible crime scene.  This very detailed paper by Liz Burne: No Your Friend Cannot Do Magic  paints a very sordid picture of all of her crimes (it's long and has ALL the details).

Sande and Eagle are the most blatant example of what happens to a handler that believes what the press writes about them. They get sucked into the Lassie and Rin Tin Tin mythology and their dog becomes an extension of their ego.  But, it's also the lesser known people that function in their own reality, that perpetuate the myth in a lot LEs minds that dogs and their handlers are clueless and useless. Those are the ones we need to guard against.

In Virginia, we aren't perfect, but a partnership has been fostered and developed over time by strict adherence to State Standards that was developed, refined and rewritten over many years of trial and error.  The partnership between teams of all skills is maintained with quarterly meetings of the Virginia Search and Rescue Council. With all of this, comes a checks and balance kind of environment, where nobody gets to be "the one".  A dog handler on one team knows just about every other dog handler in the state and has probably trained with them at one time or another.  By training and working with other dog handlers from other teams, we lose the single mindedness that our dog is the greatest, because we see how great other dogs and dog teams are.

Something to remember:

Anderson apologized to the court and law enforcement officials before sentencing, stating, “I lost track of why I was offering my services.” *

And we are not the god our dogs think we are.


*David Runk, Michigan dog-handler sentenced to 21 months for planting evidence, Associated Press, Sept. 28, 2004

The One

So how do you choose? How do you chose your next canine partner? The one that will be sharing your adventures for the next 10 years?  Especially when there is an entire litter of extraordinarily cute, pick me pick me, pups in the whelping box in front of you.

Deacon's Litter

 Teagan's litter

Tally's litter

I didn't pick my first two search dogs,  they picked me.  Ben was found wandering the streets of Harrisonburg.  When he showed up in my life, I just made him my search dog.  Never realizing in my neophyte naiveté, that rarely ever works out.  My second dog, Finn was given to me by a team mate, and he has done everything I ever asked of him. From cold cases in Virginia to New Orleans after Katrina even to the jungles of South America.  Luck out number 2, for I dog I didn’t pick.

Then I decided that I can breed a better search dog.  I’ll have my pick of the litter and can take the greatest one.  But first I had to go find the right bitch.  Didn’t pick Cora out either; she was just the last one left.  She made it too, as an HRD dog with several finds.  So far I am three for three (can you find the theme here?)

It’s up to me then to carefully pick the sire of these super SAR dogs, to combine the best genes I can find in a package that I want to look at.  I tirelessly scrutinized the pedigree of countless dogs, nag friends for their opinions and when I still don’t like what I see, I bug them for more suggestions then finally settle on a sire. 

And agonize that I might have picked the wrong one and play the game of what if.

The sire of Deacon's litter, I loved on sight.  He was sweet, smart, gentle and a real go-getter.

Ch Ransom's Armbrook Indigo Hue, CD MH

Problem is, I kept a boy out of this litter, which really isn't conducive to keeping your line of dogs going! So on to the next litter.

For Teagan's litter I picked a show dog.  Liked him because even in the make-out suite at the kennel where Cora was bred to him, he still wanted to play ball.  Didn't hurt that he was yellow and gorgeous too.

Am BISS GrCh and BISS Can Ch Gateway's Nothin' But Trouble

Then last year my heart was broken, when Teagan, the pup I kept from this litter, suddenly passed away.  She was almost everything I wanted in a SAR dog, but her independent streak was bigger than she was.  

For Tally's litter, I reached way back in time to a dog that had been long dead, and the collection I used was 16 years old.  Ed had an old fashioned pedigree that had everything I wanted.  He was able to compete in the Field Trial arena, basically unheard of for a breed ring champion.

Ch Topform's Edward MH, QAA

Got the genetics down, wait for the puppies to be born and then the real fun starts.  I try to do everything right, early neurological stimulation the first 16 days of life.  Keep careful notes on each pup, expose the pups to as many different people, places and surfaces as possible.  There is something called the rule of seven developed by Pat Hastings, that I try to follow.  The pups get exposed to seven different surfaces, played with 7 objects, gone 7 different locations, exposed to 7 challenges, eaten from 7 different containers in 7 different locations, and met and played with 7 different people. 

I put an incredible amount of work into each of my litters.  They start with baby agility courses on my kitchen table.  I set up a tunnel for them to crawl through.  Little cones for them to cruise around.  I make them climb little “A” frames.  I think I am the only person that will wander through Bed Bath and Beyond, looking at the bath mats or the shelving units or rugs and think “that would be a cool thing for the pups to walk across”. Or under, or around, or through… I even bought them a child’s play slide for them to climb up and slide down.  When they were weaned, the pups graduated to big dog stuff.  I have modified weave pole I got them to cruise around and they learned to climb my wood pile.

And watch and worry over every single sniffle, loose stool and stumble.

At 7-8 weeks, it is time for the temperament test.  Here’s where you find out what your pups are made of. This is where my evaluator picks the smartest, most out going, bidable pup in the litter. There are many temperament tests that can be done, but the most popular is the Volhard Puppy Apptitude Test.  I’ve done it with all of my litters, the same evaluator each time.  So she knows what I like in my pups.  There are other tests that SAR dog handlers that have different ways of testing, most will see about ball drive and comfort levels when walking across unusual or unsteady surfaces.

My friend spends hours testing my litters for me.  She is usually exhausted by the end of it.  Especially this past litter since testing took place in July. She’s usually dripping with sweat and legs cramping from crawling around on the ground with the pups.  She does an amazing job for me.  We talk about each pup and I get a written report on all the pups both good and bad.

So alot of work goes into each litter and each pup.  

After all of that hard work, I promptly pick the pup that picked me. 

They usually pick me long before I ever think about picking them.

*************************************************************

Glendair's Devil's Preacher JH VDEM HRD, he takes after his daddy, Digs.  The sweetest, hard working dog I have.  Born in snow bank behind my wood shed.

Glendair's Teagan, if she could do it her way, she would.  And give me the paw while she's doing it.

Glendair's Tullamore Dew, high hopes for her, I'll see how she turns out.  But she was climbing storage bins to get to the cadaver source at 5 weeks old.