Thank Your Hound Day

Niece Melinda and I were exchanging emails this week: lasagna recipes, dungeness crab larvae, graduating parties, bedbugs...

Bedbugs?! According to Niece Melinda, bedbugs are spreading through the US. I tucked this gem of information somewhere in my head and gave it not another thought.

And then tonight I read an article about bedbug-sniffing dogs. Amazing. There is a trainer who trains bedbug dogs and then sells them for upwards of $9000:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/bedbugs

Having had the experience of being detained in Chilean Customs by fruit-sniffing dogs (I mentioned this in a previous blog...), I am very fascinated by the training of these canines or other animals used in tracking/sensing/whatever. (Like truffle-sniffing pigs?) My Chilean experience was pretty interesting. I was standing at the luggage carousel waiting for my bags. I collected my first bag (which contained the 2 bags of processed prunes, one of which I had opened), and as I waited for the second bag to appear, this ADORABLE yellow lab walked up and sat down right beside me. How cute! And so pretty! And then, lo and behold, a matching yellow lab appeared on the other side of me! And sat there just as nice and pretty as the first! Like bookends! I smiled at them both, and looked around for the no-doubt proud owner.

It was then that the Customs official approached me and asked if I had any fruit in my bag. No, I replied, I had thrown out my bananas and apples while still on the plane. (That is, after all, what one is supposed to do.) Did I have any dried fruit, raisins, perhaps? Why, yes, I have two bags of prunes with me. (Note: We were arriving on an very early morning Sunday morning into a S. American country which I assumed would have no grocers or restaurants opened on our 3-hour drive south of Santiago, so I packed tuna and prunes simply to get us through that first 1/2 day in Chile.) Well. Apparently Chile's import rules state that in addition to fresh produce, no packaged and processed fruit may be brought through customs. Tuck this gem of information somewhere in your head. One hour and $63.00 later, I was released from the little questioning room and into the awaiting rental car. All was well.

But back to these bedbugs. And the prunes. And the dogs who, in a catastrophic situation, can perform search and rescue. What a service (hence the name, right?) these animals perform for us humans with the inferior olfactory sense!

Go pet a dog.