Karma's first "title"

Karma competed in her third agility competition last weekend. She ran four events. I use the term "ran" loosely. She did run her Tunnelers event well, and "qualified". This is her third "Q" in Tunnelers and that means she has earned her first title. The agility career of a dog is marked by accumulating these titles.

During the other three events, she spent a fair amount of time sniffing the ground or loping casually along. It's puzzling to me why running the tunnels seems to her like something that should be done with great focus and drive, but she doesn't always have the same attitude with other events. She was not alone in having the sniffies; only about 1/3 of the dogs in our "novice" level qualified in most events.

It was a long day for Karma. This was the first time we stayed at a competition for a whole day. Check-in was at 7:00 am and we ran the final event at about 5:30. Between events, she must sit in her kennel which she does not like very much. I don't think she slept a wink all day. The environment, with dogs and people walking past, is just too stimulating. By mid-afternoon, she was exhausted. The mental and emotional demands are a big part of the sport and they may be the hardest thing for Karma.

Target, the hero dog, is mistakenly euthanized; other dogs euthanized on purpose

According to the American Humane Society, 56% of dogs that enter an animal shelter are euthanized.

Target was a stray dog in Afghanistan who thwarted a terrorist attack by ferociously barking at a would-be suicide bomber, preventing the bomber from entering a building before detonating his bomb, thereby saving lives.  An American service member bonded with Target and brought her home to be his pet.  She got loose from his house and ended up in an animal shelter in Pinal County in Arizona.  Due to an error, Target was euthanized.  (NYTimes story about Target is here.)

It's horrifying, of course, to imagine a beloved pet being euthanized accidentally.  But I'm sorry, too, for the dog who was supposed to have been euthanized, the one whose death would not have made headlines.

During giving season, think about helping the ASPCA or your local shelters or rescue organizations so that they can save lives.  If allowed to live long enough to be found and adopted, more dogs can have happier endings.

Squirrel revenge

As K was walking through our back yard yesterday, an object fell out of a tree.  He looked into the tree and saw that a squirrel had dropped it.  K examined the object and identified it as one of Karma's bones.  That's right.  A squirrel stole Karma's bone and dragged it into the tree.

Since squirrels are vegetarians, I can only figure that the squirrel stole the bone to get back at Karma for killing its friends/relatives in the backyard.  She has caught and killed three squirrels in the back yard, and another two at the dog park, that I know of.

Agility training: Tracy Sklenar

I’ve now had two episodes of having my mind blown about dog training. The first was the first time I saw free-shaping demonstrated. (We’ve talked about free-shaping here several times.) The second was last weekend. I audited one day of a weekend course given by Tracy Sklenar on handling skills for agility. Tracy is a nationally-known expert who has competed with her own dogs at world championship levels.

Before I describe what I learned, though, you need a little background. Before I started agility training, the only agility competition I’d seen was the very high level competition that gets television coverage. I was amazed at two things: that a dog can be trained to weave in and out of poles and that a dog can be trained to run across a teeter totter. While these are the most challenging obstacles to master, teaching a dog these maneuvers is a piece of cake compared to what the core of the training is about. The real challenge is “handling” which is communicating to your dog where they’re supposed to go as they run the course and for this communication to be timed right and clear made clear so that the dog can run the course as fast as possible without making mistakes.

What I’ve been taught to do and what I’ve been doing to date has been pointing at obstacles and calling its name as I run the course (“Jump!” “Tunnel!” “Teeter!”). Tracy Sklenar teaches that you should instead only point and call out the names of obstacles in specific circumstances, and never point or name obstacles when the obstacles are on a line that you’re already running or a gentle arc. So that seems impossible, right? How will the dog know where to go if you don’t point at things or call out obstacles?

She teaches that your dog should have two modes when running a course: extension (running all out) and collection (wherein your dog slows, gathers its feet and gets its balance to be able to turn or jump). She teaches that you cue extension entirely through the way you move your own body. It needs to look to the dog like you are running all out. You should be in a leaning-forward posture and should pump your arms and take big steps. If you don’t have room to run all out, then fake it, taking high steps, rather than long ones. Your dog, partly as a result of practicing this but largely as a result of what he/she has observed about how humans run, will understand that this means “run as fast as possible along a generally straight or gently-curved line, taking any obstacles in this line. If I need you to turn, I will let you know.” By not using your arm when you’re running on straight lines your dog doesn’t have to turn his head to focus on your arm and can confidently run straight ahead.

To cue the dog to collect, you use a deceleration cue. The “decel” cue is to stand straight up and put out an arm or finger. At all times when running agility, you should be watching your dog, but you may need to be especially intense about it (i.e. turn your shoulders toward the dog, lower your chin to your shoulder or chest so that your face is square to them) during a decel cue.

I tried this with Karma at practice this week. Even though we’d never practiced running without pointing/naming, we didn’t have a single miscue when running in extension mode. This was completely amazing to me.

Lots more for another day.

Wanted: Secretary

Karma the Dog seeks to hire a full-time secretary to support her agility career. Responsibilities include:

• Maintaining Karma's calendar
• Keeping memberships and dog registrations current for all sanctioning bodies (NADAC, CPE, AKC, etc) by tracking deadlines for renewals, filling out forms, mailing checks
• Investigating upcoming events to identify appropriate competition opportunities
• Docketing due dates for entry registrations and for "move-up" registrations
• Preparing and submitting competition entry forms within deadlines
• Storing and being able to find Karma's permanent height cards for each sanctioning body; scan/print the right one to accompany each competition entry
• Verifying accuracy of and maintaining database of her competition results
• Staying abreast of competition rules for each sanctioning body
• Packing her tools and belongings for competition (DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT forget the water dish)
• Maintaining her website
• Broiling chicken and cutting the chicken, and lowfat hotdogs, into teeny-tiny pieces for training
• Ironing her ribbons and polishing her trophies

The successful candidate will be:

• Crazy
• Well-organized
• Dedicated to Karma's successful career and without any other interests or commitments
• Proficient in Word, Excel, Filemaker Pro, Google Sites, and Adobe Acrobat
• Type 60 wpm

Salary will be commensurate with experience and will be paid in slobbery doggy kisses.

Karma is amazing (in case I hadn't already mentioned that)

She "qualified" in the "Tunnelers" event yesterday. "Qualified" just means she passed, by completing the course within the requisite time and without faults (like me touching her or her running an obstacle out of order). She ran 144 yards -- almost 1.5 football fields -- in 33 seconds, through 12 tunnels.

Pretty much just want to spend the day telling people about her success. Now who can I tell? And thanks in advance to everyone who pretends to be interested.

Update 7/13/10: Here's a video of someone else's dog competing in the same Tunnelers event as Karma ran on Sunday.

NADAC Novice Regular

This is not Karma, but this is a comparable event to her second run today:  It is the same complexity level (Novice), the same event  ("Regular") at the same facility (Soccerblast, Burnseville, MN), at a NADAC-sanctioned event. The dog in this video makes it look easy:



This dog, Mira, makes it look more difficult:

Happy day at our house

Karma competed in her first agility trial today.  The world of agility competition is a complex thing, with many different sponsoring organizations (AKC, North American Dog Agility Council (NADAC), U.S. Dog Agility Association, Canine Performance Events), and with many different varieties of events at each competition at many different levels (i.e. courses vary in complexity/trickiness).  Not all of the organizations allow mixed breeds to compete.  Karma competed in a NADAC event at the least complex level (Novice).  She competed in two events today (regular and "touch-and-go") and will compete in another event tomorrow morning.  This event was indoors.

The whole experience was intensely stimulating for her:  dogs everywhere, her first exposure to Astroturf, strangers in the ring doing the judging, her fear of the unknown, the inexplicable (to her) schedule of sitting in a crate, then competing, then going back in the crate, then competing again.  Her doggy brain had a lot to process.

It's not at all uncommon for dogs new to competition to completely wig out and just zoom around the course paying no attention to the obstacles or their handler.  I had very low expectations going in, but Karma did amazingly well in her first run.  She ran fast and clean through the first 14 of the 16 obstacles (A-frame, tunnels, wickets that she's never seen before), but then she came upon the dog walk and froze.  The dogwalk is an elevated level plank with inclined planks on either end.  She's never had any issue with the dogwalk in practice.  I suspect that from her vantage point as she was getting on, it looked like a teeter-totter, something she hasn't completely conquered yet.  In class, she gets a chance to see all the equipment as we get warmed up before class, so she can tell where the teeter is and where the dogwalk is.

So she took two steps onto the dogwalk, got scared and jumped off.  That's a disqualification.  Also, at some point when I was trying to coax her back onto the dogwalk, I reached out to her and ruffled her neck, not to physically maneuver her onto the walk, but just to give her some encouragement.  That too, though, is a disqualification; there is no touching your dog during a run.  It's a habit I'll have to break.

I was very pleased with her performance for the first time out.  Lots of more experienced dogs ran around completely out of control.

We sat around for a couple hours before the next event, and by that time Karma was pretty much mentally exhausted.  She ran her second run poorly, running around the jumps and getting distracted by smells on the ground.

We'll compete in one more event tomorrow if I can get her out of bed in the morning.  She is one tired pup now.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

This was a book club pick. I had pitched it, in part on LJ's suggestion.

The story is a re-imagining of Hamlet (or of The Lion King, if you prefer), set in rural Wisconsin in the mid-to-late 1900s.  The Sawtelle family is in the business of breeding and training dogs, as it has been for a couple generations.  They do not breed according to customary breeding practices, but instead find dogs with remarkable qualities (temperament, intelligence, etc.) and introduce them into the breeding population.  Before their dogs are sold into homes, they spend a year and half training them and recording the results of training, and use that data to better the lineage of the Sawtelle dogs.

The main character is Edgar who is not deaf but cannot speak.  This makes him similar to the dogs in the sense that he has a communication barrier; Edgar and his family develop a custom sign language to be able to communicate.  I appreciated this focus on communication because I find that 70% of successful dog training is about learning to communicate with your dog.  (The other 30% is operant conditioning; good training has virtually nothing to do with dominance or getting your dog to "obey".)

Some of the chapters are narrated by Almondine, an old dog with whom Edgar has grown up.  I think Wroblewski does a beautiful job of presenting dog thought in a unique way.  He makes Almondine something of a poet, and I preferred this to the usual approach in which authors turn the dogs into not-very-intelligent people.

I was hooked from the beginning and didn't want to put it down.  It wasn't slow for me at all.  I do have a couple quibbles with the ending.  Since they're spoilers, I'll slip behind the cut.

Free shaping: crate training

When we first got Karma (age 6 months), I tried to confine her to a crate at night and when we left her alone.  I thought that was the safest place for her (and for everything else in the house).  She went into hysterical fits in the crate, though, shredding her bed and shrieking like a banshee.  I gave up on the crating and she magically behaves herself really well when she's alone.

When we started agility training, the instructors warned that by the third level (week 19) our dogs would need to be crated sometimes during class in crates along the side of the room.

I re-dedicated myself to the task of training her to accept being crated. I tried to lure her into the crate with the big guns of dog training: bacon, peanut butter, Velveeta. She would not put a paw in the crate to get to them, even when she was alone. When that didn't work, I figured our agility training would come to an end at week 18.

A few weeks before the deadline, it dawned on me to try free-shaping to get her into the crate. (The first behavior she learned by free-shaping was backing up onto an inclined plank. She's so pleased with learning that behavior that she does it all the time spontaneously during class.)

Step by step, over the course of days, in 5-10 minute sessions:

• I put the crate in the living room and stocked myself with treats (chicken, hotdogs, Velveeta).
  
• Stood in the living room.
  
• Karma started offering behaviors (rolling over, backing up, sitting...) which I ignored.
  
• When she looked in the direction of the crate, I marked (with a clicker) the behavior and gave her a treat.
  
• After treating her a few times for just looking in the direction of the crate, I withheld the click/treat until she took a step toward the crate.
• Then I waited for her to take two steps toward the crate before rewarding her.
• Then I waited for her to get right up to the crate.
• Then the big hurdle: I waited for her to put one paw in the crate. She did it!
  

Eventually (this is over the course of many days), she walked all the way into the crate.

Then I worked on increasing the amount of time she had to be in the crate before treating her.  I did this while leaving the crate door open.  I increased the time by one second at first, then later, when she was up to 15 seconds, I increased time in 5 second intervals. Then, I worked on stepping away from the crate. At first, just one step away, then two, then five, then turning my back and walking one step, etc. Eventually, I worked up to being able to turn my back, leave the room, go upstairs and come back down, while she stands quietly in the crate even though the door is open. Then I worked on incrementally closing the door. Voila! We did it! She can be crated!  Finally, we went through the same process (but much more quickly) at the training center.

I can't explain why she was willing to put a paw in the crate when we were free-shaping, but wouldn't do it when she was lured with bacon. Something about it was just fundamentally different to her. Free-shaping is a fun game to her.

Tonight we start Week 27 of agility training.

Who knew badminton could be dangerous?

K and I used to play a lot of tennis together. We had both just started playing when we met so we made perfect practice partners for each other for years. We'd play for three-hour stretches a couple times a week.

But we aged and tennis can be hard on a body. In 2006, K gave up tennis, succumbing to increasingly bad knee and back problems. That left us with nothing that we like to do together for exercise. K suggested ping pong, so we tried that for a few weeks, but that was enough ping pong for me. (He's since gotten serious about it.) Then he suggested badminton. I liked badminton in gym in high school, so I was willing to give it a try.

So August 2008, on a hot Friday night, K and I went to a community center to play badminton. There were two nets up when we arrived and the people playing doubles on them were seriously good. We couldn't possibly slip into a rotation with them. But one of them was nice enough to say hello to us and offered to get another net out. Play came to a stop and people hauled posts and nets out and got a court set up for us. So we'd attracted a lot of attention and been quite a nuisance even before the incident, all to accommodate our pathetic beginner badminton game that didn't belong in the same room with what was going on at the other nets.

The birdie's path is difficult to judge when you haven't seen one fly in 25 years. And I'm not an athlete; physical coordination is not my strong suit. After maybe a half hour of playing, I was chasing the birdie, misjudged its path, tried to change directions midstep and rolled my ankle. I heard a bone crack and collapsed on the floor in pain. The sensation I had was that my shin bone near my ankle was broken, that I'd snapped my foot and lower shin off from the rest of my shin. It felt major. I yelped and clutched my leg, told K I broke something, and then passed out.

Fainting from pain is caused by stimulation of the vegus nerve which slows the heart. Blood vessels dilate which causes a dramatic drop in blood pressure which causes you to faint. That may have been what happened to me. But I've fainted several times in my life and in all other instances the fainting was a very pleasant, warm, peaceful sensation, and I've maintained a sense of self, sort of like a dream state, and I slipped into it gradually. This episode was nothing like that. It's very hard to describe. This was just completely, utterly terrifying. It wasn't gradual; I was just out instantly. I had no sense of self. It was just a sensation of complete abject terror. There was no dream-like picture of being in a place; there was just the condition of horribleness. K describes that I wasn't still, that I was shaking my head and moving my arms around. It's possible this was a pain-induced seizure, though I'll never know for sure.

When I came to, paramedics had been called and were on their way. Of course, play in the room had stopped and everyone was standing around me. They took down one of their nets so that paramedics could get through with a stretcher. Embarrassing. But the craziest thing was that when the paramedics arrived and started poking around on my ankle, it didn't hurt at all. They had me stand on it, and it felt fine. It felt like I was in the Twilight Zone because I KNEW something was broken because I'd heard it break and I knew I'd felt excruciating pain but it seemed perfectly fine. The paramedics canceled the ambulance which was en route. I actually drove us home.

A couple hours later it was hurting and swelling and bruising. In the morning, I went to urgent care and indeed I had a broken bone and I'd sprained all ligament groups in my ankle. I suppose there was some sort of adrenaline rush caused by the injury and passing out/seizure that had masked all pain.

The broken bone was not my shin bone, but just a chip fracture in the navicular bone in my foot. Took forever to heal but wasn't a big deal otherwise.

This epidsode was just one of six, count them six, brushes with emergency services (if you count urgent medical care) in a 12 month period for us, from December 2007 to December 2008.

1) Dec 2007: Karma broke her leg at the dog park. (I think I blogged about this, though I'm not finding it.) Emergency vet hospital.
2) Feb 2008: Karma lacerated her foot/ankle on some ice at the dog park, requiring stitches. Emergency vet hospital. [Update: no, this wasn't Feb. 2008. It was December 2008, right after the pond incident.]
3) March 2008: I broke my finger at the dog park. Got it twisted in a dog's collar as I was trying to help an incompetent dog walker keep her six dogs out of the street. Urgent care.
4) July 2008: The duplex that K owns had a big fire. Kids were playing with matches in the basement. Minneapolis fire dept. (No one was hurt, but one side of the duplex needed complete gutting and renovation.)
5) Aug 2008: The badminton incident. Minneapolis fire dept paramedics.
6) Sept 2008: The fainting incident. Minneapolis fire dept paramedics and ER visit.

Also in December 2008, Karma injured her tongue by licking something metal and frosty. And then, also in December 2008, we had the life-threatening falling in the pond incident. No emergency services for either of these, though.

It was really quite a year.

Dog training and bluegrass

Apparently, I was on to something when I drew a comparison between the folks at the dog training club and the crowd at the Ralph Stanley concert:

Karen is the project director for the “Star” room, the [building] expansion TCOTC has undertaken in 2009. ...I asked Karen if there had been any surprises [during construction]. She noted that ...[a] lot of volunteers are
bluegrass fans.

From the October newsletter for TCOTC, the dog training club.

Free shaping III: Training dog to flip a light switch

Here's a two-part video on how to train a dog to flip a light switch using free shaping:

Free shaping - a boxer learns to bow

Here's a video example of free shaping wherein a boxer learns to bow:


Update: here's another. In this one, the trainer just uses a marker word "Yes", rather than the clicker.



Update II: Here's yet another. This one is good because it shows the dog getting completely off track. Also shows the use of "jackpot" treats.

Free shaping

There are at least a couple different ways to teach a dog a new behavior. The most commonly used one is "lured" shaping, where you move a treat in front of a dog's nose, the dog follows the lure and does the behavior you want as a result. Then you reward the completed behavior. You gradually remove the lure and add a word or hand gesture to cue the behavior. For example, to teach a dog to sit, you hold a treat in front of the dog's nose and raise your hand upward and slightly behind his head, and he'll sit to be able to see the treat in your hand; when he sits, you give him the treat; then you add the command and voila the dog can sit on cue. Adding a marker like a clicker to let the dog know the instant he's done the right thing speeds progress. Lured shaping is an efficient method of training, but it is pretty dull and unimaginative for the dog.

"Free" shaping is done without any lure and is much more stimulating for the dog. You have a behavior in mind that you want to teach. You break it into tiny increments in your mind; when the dog offers the tiniest increment of its own free will without any prompting, you mark the behavior (e.g. with a clicker) and reward your dog. The dog figures out what behavior got the reward and will try it again. After a few rewards for the first increment, you then withhold the reward until your dog achieves the next increment. The dog "discovers" what the next increment is by trying things. For example, to teach a dog to back up, you might click/reward when the dog stands in front of you; once he's doing that, you might click/reward for staying standing; then you might click/reward when he moves any paw backwards; then you click/reward when he moves two paws backward; then you click/reward when he moves all paws backward; then you click/reward when he takes a couple full steps backward. In the midst of all this, the dog is offering all kinds of behaviors that you don't want, and you just ignore those. The dog keeps trying things to find out what works and keeps stringing the increments together to build on what worked in the previous increments.

The very first free-shaping training is very slow going. The dog just doesn't understand what the whole process is about. He stares at you wanting some direction and can't figure out what to do to get a treat. But I've seen this demonstrated with service dogs who were accustomed to being trained with free-shaping and it was astonishing how fast they would figure out really complicated behaviors. I saw a dog learn to flip a light switch in about 10 minutes. And the kind of exploration and problem-solving that dogs must do in free-shaping is ideal for service dogs who need to think and act, not merely respond, to do their jobs.

Karma and I tried free-shaping for the first time this past week as part of her agility training. I was supposed to teach her to back up. We accomplished that, but somehow I've trained her to walk in a circle around me before backing up. At first she sat and stared at me for long spells. It took her a long time to figure out that trying things was the only route to doing the right thing and getting the treat. But once she got the idea of that, it was fun to watch her mind work to come up with what she thought she was supposed to do. "I'll try lying down; I'll try rolling over; I'll try getting on the wobbly board; I'll try getting one piece of mail off the mail stack and taking it to the crazy lady; I'll try barking; I'll try sitting down with more determination; I'll try getting my food dish". Next up, teaching her to back up onto an inclined plank. I think it'll be easy now that she's got the idea.

Extreme Shepherding

One of these days I'll figure out how to post these deals.

Behold, from youtube, I give you extreme shepherding. Even if faked it's pretty cool.

Twitter

I've put my toe in the Twitter water to see what the fuss is about. Reading Twitter is sort of like reading Herodotus, because they're both composed of letters.

As far as I can tell, the fun of Twitter is not in tweeting myself or in following people I know personally, but instead in following public figures -- celebrities, journalists, athletes, politicians, musicians. Here's what one gets from Stephen Colbert, for example:

I'm also enjoying Ezra Klein, Andy Roddick and Rob Dyrdek. Andy's life consists of four things: "going to the track," "practice," "eating!!!!!" and "watching the BB game". Dyrdek occasionally shares pics of his two bulldogs and seems to have a staff dedicated to finding funny youtube videos for him to share on Twitter. You could use it less for entertainment and more for utility: local businesses, theaters, restaurants, community organizations, non-profits, etc Twitter too.

My dog is above average

Karma the Dog passed a rigorous evaluation to be accepted in a hard-core agility dog training class (or should I say “cult”). Her exam included:

• walking with me through a meandering sort-of-densely-packed crowd of people and dogs without pulling on the leash or greeting the other dogs or otherwise misbehaving;
  
• immediately sitting/downing on command after excitedly playing;
  
• sitting quietly while I greeted a stranger; and
  
• sitting quietly while people walked around us squeezing squeaky toys and bouncing balls.
  

It amazes me that she can do these things when I think back to our very first obedience class about a year ago. I thought that night that surely it was completely impossible to get her attention in the presence of other dogs; I thought she simply wasn’t like other dogs who look at their owners when they hear their name, that her inattention was some sort of immutable personality trait. And, a year ago, I was so clueless about dog training that I didn’t even know that one wasn’t supposed to use the leash to maneuver one’s dog.

I grew up with two dogs who had no obedience training and were so poorly behaved that they had to be locked in a bedroom when company came to the house. (My folks disciplined the dogs by blowing cigarette smoke in their faces.) My first dog in my adult years was old and rug-like when we got her, so I didn’t bother with any training. So Karma has been my first training experience and it's been so rewarding to be able to communicate with her and get the behavior I want from her, at least some of the time. It’s convenient to be able to say “leave it” and have her walk away from yucky things (like the head of a pig, sans eyes and brain but with fur, that we encountered during our most recent dog park visit – wacky teenager fun, I’m guessing). There really is no bad behavior that hotdogs and Velveeta can't correct.

Karma is athletic and smart, so I think she might be a good agility dog. I don’t think of myself as a dog-agility sort of girl, though. The crowd of experienced handlers/evaluators and hopefuls last night laughed and giggled wildly at this exchange:

Person running the evaluation: Are there any intact males here tonight? Raise your hand.

Man in crowd (and I know you already know what’s coming which is exactly why it’s not that funny): You’re just asking about dogs, right?

I felt there like I feel at the grocery co-op by our house: these just aren’t quite my people and I don’t really want to turn into these people. Not that they’re not lovely people. It’s just that they’re a little bit crazy in ways that aren’t the same as my crazy.

The place we’re going for agility training is a nonprofit membership organization that has a reputation for being very serious about dogs and training. They’re not interested in provided agility training for everyone who wants it, so they have this evaluation process. There were about 30 dogs at the evaluation last night and eight were rejected (effectively, for a year). But Karma passed, so we’ll start our training in June.

Someone slap me if I start making double-entendre “bitch” jokes.

(Update: Link to the training club here.

Update II: Top photo is Bella, the old well-behaved dog; Bottom photo is Karma)

Bad name

Bo is a horrible name for a dog; it'll be hard for him to distinguish between "No" and "Bo".

Mmmmm, Purina (Nestle)

When I first lived in Denver with Malcolm and Mollie, my collies, I pretty much spent my first six months or so goofing by camping in the various national forests within about a 200 mile radius to the west of Denver. Doggies weren’t so welcome in national parks and I rarely got in trouble when I violated the leash laws in the national forests.

About half of those excursions resulted in our returning to Denver from the west on I-70. The descent into Denver is one of those long grades where truckers are always cautioned to gear down lest they gain too much speed. Depending on the weather, sometime after passing Golden but always before I hit Denver proper, Malcolm and Mollie would start drooling. The first time making that trip back into town I had no idea what was going on, thinking the dogs might be sick.

Then, shortly after passing I-25, I got my first whiff, looked around and figured it all out—I was passing Purina’s factory just north of downtown Denver.