Awesome Pawsome 4-H Club meeting....

Jasmine is in 4-H with her cat Stefani:) Today, we had the 4-H meeting at the Moorehead Library. Julie Stein is a sheriff with Clay County. She works with her dog Brady who was chosen from the pound for his unruliness and friendliness to sniff out Zebra Mussels- which are a huge problem in Minnesota. The mussels attach to boats and can destroy a lake ecosystem when introduced to the lake by being stuck on someone's boat. Literally everyone around here has a boat since there are so many lakes for boating and fishing. Brady went thru a process which only took a few months of training for him to recognize the mussel smell. When he finds the smell, he immediately sits down and gets a toy. Brady also can find a firearm buried up to one foot deep in an area of a football field. One time, he was on a mission to find some guns in a field that were related to a crime 30 years ago. There were no guns, but he did find an old firecracker buried in the field. The criteria for the dog is to be friendly and floppy eared (as opposed to straight ears for the "attack dogs") be toy motivated and also be somewhat unruly. They do not want a well- disciplined dog. They want one who will jump on tables, get into people's pockets and bags:) Apparently, Brady fits all of those criteria:) Jasmine did smile a little when Brady came over to meet her. Here is our Awesome Pawsome 4-H group.