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?