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.

Fargo P & R Gingerbread House making.....

This morning, I told Jasmine I had a "surprise" for her. We went to downtown Fargo to a very old building which used to be the first schoolhouse in Fargo. It is now used as one of the many Parks and Recreation buildings. Apparently, the school was built in 1894, had many additions, and now is used for offices and P&R classes. We did pretty well with the gingerbread house until we had to take it to the car, then it collapsed. Here is Jasmine with the loveliest smile she could come up with for the morning. Believe me, the others were much worse. She wouldn't let me work on the gingerbread house until it was apparent that we were very behind all of the other participants- since the kids were working hand in hand with their mom or dad. Here is the first schoolhouse built at the location where we made the gingerbread house. This photo was taken in 1878. Here is our house when we got it home:) I had fun, even though Jasmine pretended not to.