Not long ago, I had a conversation with a couple of women at a pet blogging convention where the majority of attendees tilted in favor of shelter and rescue dogs. Many had come with their own reclaimed dogs, and of them I thought, “Good for you!”  In my estimation, the majority of shelter and rescue workers do God’s work, and the people who take in these dogs are angels. But I've also learned that with the exception of people affiliated with breed clubs, most in the shelter and rescue world are woefully misinformed, if not ignorant about the world of the purebred dog owner and breeder.

Eva, who works as a foster mom for Badass Brooklyn Foster Dog, rescued this one-eyed dachshund mix from a high-kill shelter in Alabama. She fell in love, bringing him back to her farm in Pennsylvania and naming him Captain Morgan.

Captain was eventually adopted by an awesome couple a few months ago, and it’s been happy-ever-after since. The couple brought Captain to a Badass Brooklyn block party where he was reunited with the woman who saved his life.

As soon as he saw Eva, he jumped into her arms to say “thank you.”

There is no reason to use these dangerous jumps anymore! Period. There are just too many opportunities for injury.

Jeff Boehne, who is one of several new people to field trial at this event, finished his red standard wire GCH DC Hundeleben Zis Und Zat of Brownwood SW (Ziggy), on Friday at the DCGL field trail and then Ziggy got NBQ at the MADC FT during his first time to run with "the big dogs." Patt Nance finished her red, standard long, FC Cadium Aurinkosoturi (Viljo) on Friday at the DCGL FT and he took first place in the FCD class at the MADC FT on Saturday! Sherry Ruggieri finished her 7 month old wild boar standard wire bitch, FC Tusoksori-Ugraszto Husniya (Niya) and she came back to earn a third place in the field champion bitch class. Pamala Hopkins finished her wild boar miniature smooth boy, FC Hoppledachs's Keokut ME CGC (Keo) and he came back in the field champion dog class with a fourth place. There are definitely some very competitive new dogs in the Field Champion classes and I will look forward to seeing more of them.

From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories?

Harvard scientists are shedding light on a neural feedback mechanism that may play a key role in how the olfactory system works in the brain. The mechanism was first identified more than a century ago, but little was understood about its workings till now.

As described in a Dec. 19 paper in Neuron by Venkatesh Murthy, a professor of molecular and cellular biology, researchers have, for the first time, described how that feedback mechanism works by identifying where the signals go, and which type of neurons receive them. Three scientists from the Murthy lab were involved in the work: Foivos Markopoulos, Dan Rokni, and David Gire.

“The image of the brain as a linear processor is a convenient one, but almost all brains, and certainly mammalian brains, do not rely on that kind of pure feed-forward system,” Murthy said. “On the contrary, it now appears that the higher regions of the brain, which are responsible for interpreting olfactory information, are communicating with lower parts of the brain on a near-constant basis.”

The mechanism’s precise workings remained a mystery in part because the technological tools needed to activate individual neurons and individual pathways simply weren’t available.

“One of the challenges with this type of research is that these feedback neurons are not the only neurons that come back to the olfactory bulb,” Murthy explained. “The challenge has always been that there’s no easy way to pick out just one type of neuron to activate.”

To do it, Murthy and his team turned to a technique called optogenetics.

Using a virus that has been genetically modified to produce a light-sensitive protein, Murthy and his team marked specific neurons, which become active when hit with laser light. Researchers were then able to trace the feedback mechanism from the brain’s processing centers back to the olfactory bulb.

Reaching that level of precision was critical, Murthy explained, because while the olfactory bulb contains many “principal” neurons that are responsible for sending signals to other the parts of the brain, it is also packed with interneurons, which appear to play a role in formatting olfactory information as it comes into the brain.

Without that formatting process, Murthy said, the brain would likely have trouble interpreting the wide range of signals — from very weak to very strong — it encounters.

“If you make a system that is very good at detecting weak signals, it becomes saturated as the signal gets stronger, and eventually it’s impossible to differentiate between strong signals,” Murthy said. “To avoid that problem, brain circuits use a process called gain control. By inhibiting certain neurons, it ensures that you stay within the detection range, so you don’t miss the weak things, but you don’t miss the very strong things either.”

Earlier studies had hinted that the interneurons in the olfactory bulb are the primary target of the feedback signals, but Murthy’s study is the first to prove it, and to show that those feedback signals effectively inhibit the activity of the principal neurons.

“When the cortical area decides to send these signals back to the olfactory bulb, it’s effectively turning down the activity of these principal neurons,” Murthy said. “Why does the brain do this? Our theory is that the feedback is a way for the cortex to say, ‘I heard you.’ As the olfactory information is sent to higher regions of the brain, these signals come back and turn down the volume on the input.”

While similar systems have been identified in other parts of the brain, the extent of the olfactory feedback was surprising. Murthy’s research showed that the system doesn’t simply send signals back to the olfactory bulb, but sends them to its very first layer of neurons.

“That feedback is coming back to the very first synapse, if you will,” he said.

Even more surprising, Murthy said, was evidence that the olfactory bulb’s principal neurons were also receiving feedback signals — albeit weak ones — that appeared to prime them for incoming signals.

“These weak connections help the principal neuron get over the top when it’s listening to weak inputs,” Murthy said. “If there’s a weak smell coming in, but it’s not able to drive the principal neuron over the threshold to signal the rest of the brain, but say you’re in an environment where you’re primed to smell that weak smell — we believe this feedback from this higher area of the brain is sort of tickling these principal neurons, so when there’s a weak input you’re able to smell it.

“For most animals, smell is a very, very important thing,” Murthy added. “If they are in an environment where there’s one overwhelming smell that’s irrelevant, they need to be able to detect a weak smell that may signal danger. We are hypothesizing that this mechanism, where the cortex is talking back to the olfactory bulb and suppressing neurons, through this feedback they may be able to detect that weak signal.”

I took a track on Christmas Eve during the afternoon for my cousin's good friend. I called my brother in law Andre where he could get his new pup Aleah some OJT.

Hunter's Story
The shot was about 250 yards on a broadside buck standing. At the shot the buck hit the ground then jumped up and ran to the thickest stuff you can walk in. They had good blood that they tracked for 150 yards. Hunters also reported seeing some corn stuff in the blood.

What we found
The shot site was down a gravel/ grass road. We drove in our trucks followed the hunter to the shot site. When we got ready to go to the hit site, I looked down and saw, quite by accident, a drop of blood under my truck. Hunter said....Oh yea, After the deer was shot, fell down and jumped back up....it ran that way and then turned away and ran fifty yards before cutting into the woods. Tasha checked the hit site and found nothing. Tasha took us to the cutover which may be the worse briers that I have ever been in. Andre and Aleah were also working the blood trail we found here. The trail was lite drops of blood scattered along with a few small waist high smears on grass. There were two small areas about the size of saucers where the deer had stood and dripped blood. We only found blood for 60 yards when I checked the GPS.  Tasha took the track about two hundred yards but I never saw any indication other than a very deep track along this trail.  We never saw any corn or any other indication of gut shot. We started over, walked the perimeter and even tracked blindly down deer trails. They was no wind blowing but when we did get a breeze, Tasha raised her nose and sampled the air for 20 seconds or so. I made sure that we spent some time checking this area out thoroughly. After over two hours of thick thick cutover tracking, we were not able to advance the track.

Learnings for us:
- don't park in you hit site.
- do a complete interview of the hunter.....I didn't do a complete interview over the phone because I knew that I was taking this call regardless. I am still not sure if the hunter shot once or twice. This was a new bullet for his rifle that had not been sighted in prior to the hunt. I probably still don't have all the pieces of the puzzle.
- a good pair of brier pants, brier jacket and brier gloves are worth the investment.

Well, we didn't find the deer. I believe it was hit high because of the blood smears it left high on the grass and the fact that it dropped instantly but then jumped up and regained his composure. They will watch this area for buzzards. It is right by his house. I mailed him the GPS track analysis with areas of concern highlighted on it. They will let us know if they find out anything else. The hunter also shared some homemade pickled okra, homemade salsa and homemade hot pepper jelly with us. Another fun outing. Tasha and Aleah crashed all the way back home.

20 reasons why dachshund size is important

1st of 2 photos of the same den

2nd of 2

1st of 3 photos of the same hole

2nd of 3

3rd of 3

1st of 3 pictures of the same entrance

2nd of 3 - This is as narrow as it looks

3rd of 3 - She gets in

"Good girl" for a good day's work!