Science Chat: The Extraordinary Role of Detection Dogs in Wildlife Research

Kayla Fratt joins us from the rugged wilderness of ecological conservation, bringing stories that transform our understanding of how dogs' incredible noses are not just for sniffing out treats, but are vital tools in wildlife research. As a PhD student and conservation detection dog specialist at Oregon State University, Kayla shares her journey from an animal-crazed kid to a trailblazer in utilizing canines for conservation efforts. Her tales of four-legged professionals navigating the field with GPS collars and doggles are not just fascinating—they're a testament to the unique bond between humans and their furry partners.

Imagine a dog that can sniff out not just your hidden stash of cookies, but also elusive wildlife scat that's crucial for ecological studies—and yes, that's exactly what Kayla's canine colleagues do. Our conversation with her reveals the intricacies of training these talented pooches, balancing their lives as both working dogs and beloved pets. As Kayla describes the gear these dogs don and the importance of maintaining peak physical fitness for both handler and hound, it's clear that these conservation dogs are in a league of their own.

We round off our chat with the heart-stopping excitement of Kayla's close encounter with a jaguar in Guatemala, bringing home the reality of the wild and often untold stories from the field. For those eager to be part of this dynamic and challenging world, Kayla invites you to explore the resources on Canine Conservationists and engage with her work through social media. Join us for an episode that is as educational as it is inspiring, highlighting the incredible contributions of our canine companions to the field of conservation.

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:09

Hello science enthusiasts, welcome to science chat. Welcome back to science chat. We've been away for a month and in science chat we bring you amazing guests. We'll get to that in a second. I just got so excited I screwed up the intro. My name is Jason Zakowski. I'm the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker the science dogs on social media. My co-host is with the most is hi there, I'm Chris Zakowski.

Speaker 3: 0:36

I am the dog mom to Bunsen and Beaker and the cat mom to Ginger.

Speaker 2: 0:41

We are multi casting our show from Twitter audio to live video on Twitter live, on Facebook live and Instagram live, so we have people from all over the place. Kayla is live with me, so hello, welcome to Kayla frat. Hello, how are you doing, kayla?

Speaker 4: 0:59

I'm doing great. How are you doing?

Speaker 2: 1:01

I am so excited to have you. It's a really going to be a really interesting discussion. If you've never tuned into science chat, it's a little bit different than pet chat. We have a guest, we have some interview questions and then in the last like 20 minutes or so, the audience gets to ask questions. So, kayla, my first question is where are you calling in from? Where are you in the world?

Speaker 4: 1:24

Yeah, I'm currently in Corvallis, Oregon, so I'm on the campus of Oregon State University and you're currently looking at my grad student office, which I share with a salamander research, hence the terrariums and salamanders you see over my shoulder.

Speaker 2: 1:37

What's that? What's the stuffy of the dog back there?

Speaker 4: 1:41

This is a stuffy of my dog Barley. Oh he's always here in the office, even if I have to leave him at home and I don't know why he's got a red panda on his head. I think my office made it that, but it works, so we need.

Speaker 2: 1:57

I love it. Now, kayla and I have already talked and I've banked that interview for the science podcast, so this is going to be a little. We're going to do things a little bit differently, but some of the questions are the same. The first one is like you are a scientist yourself, like you're doing some pretty, you have some training in science. Could you tell everybody just a little bit about that?

Speaker 4: 2:18

Yeah, so I am currently a PhD student here at Oregon State University and I have an undergraduate degree in ecology and, yeah, currently my main job is that. Well, other than being a PhD student, which is more than a full time job, is that I work with conservation detection dogs, and I've been doing that for about five years and I know we're going to get into that in a moment. Yeah. Yeah, kind of kind of all over the place with the ecology, the dogs, the conservation, the whole thing.

Speaker 2: 2:45

Okay, and before we we're going to that game that I mentioned. That's going to be the bridge to detection dogs, because the game is all about the power of a dog's nose, so it's going to be kind of interactive. Before we get to the game, though, A common question I ask is were were you all in on science as a kid? Were you a big animal lover as a kid?

Speaker 4: 3:08

Yeah, absolutely. My parents love telling stories of like me throwing fits when I found out that they were using snap traps to take care of the rats in our basement. I had a pet toad for a while when I was four, and when he died I had a, you know, like a meltdown that he was my only friend. Real, real, weird animal. Kid for sure. Yeah, from day one.

Speaker 2: 3:32

Those sounds like awesome pets Like how big was your toad? Like a two-hander.

Speaker 4: 3:37

He was like, he was a normal, like American toad. Oh, okay, he was four, so he was. He was a multi-hand situation.

Speaker 2: 3:43

Multi-hand situation.

Speaker 4: 3:45

Yeah, yeah, but he lived. He lived under our front porch and I just went out and, you know, gently harassed him every day for a summer, Chris did you have any like reptiles when you were little, or were you like dog, cat, family?

Speaker 3: 4:01

We were a dog cat family. We didn't have any reptiles.

Speaker 2: 4:03

Right, we had no pets at all until I was in grade 12. No pets at all. And that's weird, because now we have like a really big. You know, our Instagram isn't as big as the Twitter or TikTok, but we have like the big, this big pet thing. So I felt but I love dogs all the time. Now, speaking of dogs, and why you are our guests today, we're going to do the Kahoot. I left it for a second because it's going to be a good bridge, so I'd love for everybody who's listening to sign into Kahootit. 434-910-153.

Speaker 2: 4:39

Now, chris doesn't have an advantage at all. That's my wife, kayla. She always wins these Kahoot games and pet chat. So normally, like I, there's one mission and one mission only, and that's to beat Chris at Kahoot. But that's that's not. We don't need to worry about that. So we've got some people playing. I'm going to share the screen so the live viewers can see, and I'm going to make sure we don't crash Chrome, because I did that last time. So we're just going to share one screen and that's it, okay. So here we go. So what, what you should see on live is like Kayla and me off to the side and then the little Kahoot screen so we don't have a ton of people playing. Chris, did you just sign in as KZ? I thought you're Slim.

Speaker 3: 5:28

Shady, that's probably Kathy Zerker.

Speaker 2: 5:31

Right Cause, like you're always, slim Shady, when we do this.

Speaker 3: 5:34

I am, and I am Slim Shady and I have pancakes on my head.

Speaker 2: 5:38

You have pancakes on your head, kayla's in. So Kayla knows a thing or two about a dog knows. We'll see if Kayla comes out on top. So last chance for Kahoot, we're going to get playing and you can play along at home. Okay, so here we go. We're going to start Now. This is. Most of these are true, false questions. So the dogs knows knows five questions about the dog. Here we go, true or false? Humans, like dogs, can detect pheromones. So is that true or is that false? Can humans detect pheromones like dogs? What do you think, kayla, you got to lock in on this one. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: 6:22

I feel pretty good about it.

Speaker 2: 6:23

You proved pretty good about it. Okay, three seconds, okay, that is. Yeah, humans, like dogs, can detect pheromones, sort of Sort of. So I did the research and I looked at it. Humans cannot, but some maybe we can, but not any really like important, important thing like dogs can, okay. So we've got Dr Liz up top there. Kayla got it. Kayla, you got it. You're in third place. Do you see yourself there? Yep, dr Liz Button is pretty good at this, okay. Next question True or false? Dog smell in 3D. So when a dog takes a big ol' smell, what can they smell in 3D?

Speaker 4: 7:10

God, what a mind, what a what a like mind-bending sort of question to even contemplate Right.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Yeah, and they can. They can smell in 3D. They absolutely can take a smell and make a picture of it in their brain. That's wild.

Speaker 4: 7:24

Yeah Well, and they can tell which nostril it's coming out of and they can actually smell on the inhale and the exhale at the same time. It's nuts.

Speaker 2: 7:33

I love it. Okay, so we got. Let me up there. Okay. Next question True or false? Dogs can breathe in and out at the same time? Oh, no, I think Kayla gave that away. We should get a hundred percent on the. We should get a hundred percent on this. Everybody, dogs can. Yeah, that's true. Who said false? Kayla gave you the answer. You silly folk. That's silly. Okay, next oh, it's a tight race. Look at that. It's like so tight for first. Okay.

Speaker 2: 8:15

Question four a dog can smell this many times better than a human. A billion times, a hundred thousand, a thousand or 10. Now, this is, of course, on average. Some dogs are a little better, some dogs are a little worse, especially if there's moose legs involved. Yeah, it's 100,000 times better on average. One billion is pushing it and a thousand isn't quite as quite enough. Okay, oh, we've got a Chris, and Chris and Kayla are in one. Two last question for all of the bananas. A dog's nose has the ability to separate air, true or false? Can a dog's nose separate air, true or false? And that is true, that is true. Okay, so a little bit about the dog's nose. We do pretty good here. You guys who are playing, you're doing awesome. And in third place we've got Mrs Dawn, in second place we've got Kayla. And, oh my goodness, did Chris win again. Chris, you're so good at these. Chris won yet again.

Speaker 3: 9:31

It tells me I'm a big cheese, you're a big cheese. That's what it says. Slim shady big cheese.

Speaker 2: 9:41

Well, our expert guess was number two. I don't know. I think, kayla, you got 100%, hey, I?

Speaker 4: 9:47

did yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:48

So bringing the dog nose, the power of the dog nose, to what you do, can you tell everybody a little bit about the organization that you founded?

Speaker 4: 9:58

Yeah, so to yeah gosh, I never quite know exactly where to start because my brain goes so many different directions. I've got so much to say. Basically, what I do is I train dogs to use their amazing sense of smell to find things that biologists have a really hard time finding. So in a lot of cases that's scat, so animal poop, and we're training the dogs to find a specific species that either is really tiny or really rare or just really hard to find. Maybe they live somewhere with really really dense forest or something like that. We also will train dogs to find things like unendangered or unawasive muscle or those sorts of things.

Speaker 2: 10:38

And why did you decide to get into this? That seems like a wild thing to just decide to train some dogs for this purpose.

Speaker 4: 10:48

Yeah, so I didn't come up with the idea. I think it's the important place to start. So when I was getting my undergraduate degree so I was studying ecology at Colorado College I actually was working as a dog trainer throughout college to make me so. As we mentioned, I was an animal crazy kid, so I really wanted to work in ecology and conservation. I wanted to be a scientist, but I also really enjoyed having that hands-on, one-on-one relationship with animals, and I kind of spent four years spending half my time studying ecology and conservation and half my time training dogs. And then, somewhere around my third or fourth year of college, someone found a video on YouTube of people who were training dogs to find the poop of orcas out on the Salish Sea, which is just off the coast of Washington.

Speaker 2: 11:36

Yeah, sorry, I just I pointed because I saw that too. Right, it's wild.

Speaker 4: 11:43

Right, yeah, so crazy. And that was like one of those moments where I just I was immediately like, oh my God, this is it. Like because I had been spending the last couple of years being like, okay, I'm getting this degree in ecology, I'm spending all this time in classes, but I also already have a successful business training dogs. And I would have people kind of asking me like, why are you doing college? Like why are you? Do you really want to be a scientist? Why don't you just train dogs? You're good at it, you like it, you're already having success.

Speaker 4: 12:10

And I was always like, well, I really care about conservation and biodiversity and that's really what I like, where my heart is. So then I yeah, I heard about this field. I was like, well, obviously that's what I need to be spending my life doing. And it took three or four years between hearing about the field of conservation dogs and actually getting the job. I had to get a lot more experience and you know twisting turning path with a lot of other, you know side paths and whatever. But here we are now. I guess.

Speaker 2: 12:40

If you're just tuning in, welcome to the Science Science Chat multicast. Our guest today is Kayla Fratt, and we're talking about detection dogs. Hello to everybody on Twitter, audio to Twitter live, instagram live and Facebook live. So, kayla, how, how do you train a dog to detect stuff? I know that's a crazy big question, but like, yeah, we didn't have to train Bunsen to detect moose legs and he's very good at sniffing those out.

Speaker 4: 13:10

Exactly so you know fundamentally dogs are, you know they're olfactory based predators, or you know that's what wolves are, and dogs are probably a little bit more scavenger. So they're, you know, supposed to use their noses to find stuff that they want to find in the environment.

Speaker 1: 13:28

That might be food.

Speaker 4: 13:29

It might be a mate, but that's what dogs are built for. And then we basically. So what I do is I look for a dog that is really, really motivated for something that I can easily control. So usually that means a toy. So I'm looking for the sort of dog that is just like woo bonkers for a toy.

Speaker 3: 13:48

Okay.

Speaker 4: 13:48

It also can be food, so a very, very hungry dog and then basically you teach them this scent that I'm looking for is the thing that makes your favorite thing in the world appear and that that's basically it. You know that they obviously can take weeks or months to actually get them to the point where they understand that, to the degree that we can take them out into the field and there's a lot of safety skills and other training that goes into making the dogs kind of functional out in the field to make sure that they don't get distracted by squirrels or moose legs or whatever it is but fundamentally this is actually something that anyone who is listening, who has a dog, can do at home. You just teach them you know and it could be the scent of your car keys, it can be literally anything. You just teach them that that makes their favorite you know piece of pepperoni up here and you will very quickly have a dog that can sniff out whatever it is you're looking for.

Speaker 2: 14:43

You know, it would be very helpful if Bunsen and Beaker could sniff out my car keys on certain days, or my school keys, right, chris? How many times, like after a break, I lose my school keys, like every day, every time.

Speaker 3: 14:56

Every time, every time, all of the time.

Speaker 2: 14:59

It's like it's a break in routine, like I change. What it is in Canada is I have like three coats. Right, I've got like my coat so I don't die in the winter coat because it's so cold. And then I've got like my in between winter and like spring, so you don't want to wear that because you'll sweat and like die of heat exhaustion. And then I've got this other coat and I, when I switch coats, I always lose my keys. Because it's a change in routine. That's neither here nor there. I guess I just need to train Bunsen or Beaker to sniff out the car keys. Yeah, now you mentioned, like you, your personal dogs are part of this system.

Speaker 4: 15:40

Yes.

Speaker 2: 15:41

Okay.

Speaker 4: 15:41

Yeah, so I, yeah, I have two border colleagues and then I actually have two amazing co-founders as well, so two other humans and we all work together, and then they also have three or four dogs between the two of them. So we've got five dogs, total three people. And, yeah, we all work as a as a team not all at the same time, but you know, we've got we've got multiple dogs to go around and these dogs live with us. They sleep in your bed, in my bed, they go on runs every day. They're they're kind of normal parts of the family, but they also have a job.

Speaker 2: 16:13

Okay, so that their job is to detect. Now, when is it a? When do you have a job? When do you call the dogs in? You know what I mean. Like when is it a when it does that happen?

Speaker 4: 16:27

Yeah, so basically what happens is we're a business. You know we are a nonprofit, but we are a business.

Speaker 4: 16:32

So, basically we'll get an email from a scientist saying hey, have you ever trained dogs to find X? And we'll say yes or no. And usually, even if it's a no, we'll say no, we haven't yet, but there's, we absolutely could. And sometimes it's a no, but maybe, and maybe there's reason for it. We once had someone ask us if we could train our dogs to find rattlesnakes while they were hibernating. You're, like, probably not going to teach our dogs to seek out rattlesnakes because even if it might be safe while they're hibernating, it's just not something we'd want them to do the rest of the time, because once you've trained a dog to find something, it's very, very difficult to get that dog to not find that thing in the future. It's not like I tell everybody today.

Speaker 4: 17:13

it's bears, it's, you know, if they know that that scent makes their ball happen, you can't get them to not find it again without a lot of extra training.

Speaker 2: 17:23

Oh, my goodness, that would be a disaster. Right like they'd be like. Oh, it's the rattly thing, where's my, where's my? And then they get bit or something, right, exactly, yeah, yeah so that's a like, no and we probably won't do that.

Speaker 4: 17:38

You know, let's talk about maybe some other options that might be better for solving the problem that you have. And then from there you know we have to write up a budget and do a contract and all that fun stuff. That's also part of my job. It's not all you know. Walking through gorgeous national forest with my dog.

Speaker 4: 17:54

Oh yeah, lots of contracts and budgeting.

Speaker 4: 17:58

And then we agree on a time usually that's based on both our schedules and when you know when it's safe to have the dogs out, if there's temperature limitations or movement limitations as far as that target species, and then we go out and we do the work and it can range from maybe two weeks at a time. If they just kind of need the dogs to help boost their sample size, so they're having a really hard time finding something and they just need us to find a bunch of samples over the course of two weeks, that's totally fine. Or it can be up to, you know, nine months or a year round. That's more for like a monitoring project where maybe they're trying to figure out how many bats are dying on a wind farm over the course of a year. Or, you know, invasive species wildlife trafficking can also be. That's more of like a year round to sort of things. It really depends on the contract. But basically, yeah, we get, we go out when, when someone's paying us to go out for a given project.

Speaker 2: 18:52

Chris, you've been putting a bunch of Kayla's tweets in the audio space nest. Do you want to talk about some of them before I ask my next question?

Speaker 3: 19:00

Well, I have really been loving looking at your dog and dogs and you have Nifflr and you have Barley, and can you tell us a little bit about Barley's daily stick?

Speaker 4: 19:15

Yes, yeah. So Barley is, as I mentioned, absolutely obsessed with sticks and he has gotten in a habit. So we're currently living in Oregon. We have lots of very, very, very large trees here and he has this, this hilarious habit of grabbing giant sticks, trying to bring entire logs with us on hikes. Sometimes and these are haven't made it into the daily stick quite as much sometimes he grabs very, very tiny sticks to carry with us. He just loves having a stick in his mouth, and I've actually here. Hang on, you'll get a kick out of this.

Speaker 4: 19:47

So you're in my office and this is the picture I have on my phone.

Speaker 2: 19:51

Oh my goodness, I love it the two of them sharing a stick. So for the audio folks, kayla showed like this really gorgeous photo of, yeah, the dog with the stick.

Speaker 3: 20:04

Well, and then Nifflr would also like to submit a daily stick. So Nifflr's there and tell me about Norbert, your cat.

Speaker 4: 20:11

Norbert, I do. I have a cat. I found him in a ditch during a field project and he kind of adopted us and we, we just. You know he's a total adventure cat. He's really cool. He and Nifflr love to wrestle. If you follow us on Instagram, I just like once a week will post a video of them with John Cena music. Yeah, he's, he's a ton of fun. He doesn't have a job currently. If anyone needs a cat for something, he is available for hire, but he is not currently a conservationist in any way.

Speaker 2: 20:47

You know, what's funny is I used to have a John Cena sound effect. I'm my sound port. I just about I was looking for it when you mentioned it. Yeah, yeah, that's funny, I forget, if I mentioned, we have a beaver named Norbert.

Speaker 4: 21:08

That's amazing, like in your neighborhood or no, well, well, I guess.

Speaker 2: 21:12

So he lives in our creek, he or she, we don't know and the internet gave Norbert that name, so that's the name of our beaver. We've got everybody. Everybody loves the beaver, everybody loves the beaver so much, we love the beaver so much. Yeah, that's hilarious.

Speaker 3: 21:36

Anything else, chris from from Twitter audio well, I think you already talked about the Google form for your canine conservation group there. Where from folks who want to train their dogs to detect data for conservation. So you ask that question or you answer that question already for me. But I did put that tweet up in the nest too, if people are interested in seeing that and looking at the link and reading your thread okay, perfect, and anything from the chat you'd like to address.

Speaker 2: 22:06

From Twitter, we have only Paula. Paula is very friendly. She just said hello, hi, kayla. So that's. That's the only thing from the live chat right now. I'll give you a second. I'll throw back to you. Kayla, I have one. My question, my kind of like along the line, is are there things that are like aside from a sleeping rattlesnake or a bear? Are there things that the dogs are like not appropriate to detect for right, like as could you? Could you give us some of those?

Speaker 4: 22:37

yeah, definitely, you know, anything that is really high risk for the dog safety is probably that's kind of our biggest category of things that we're not going to be looking for so there and there are limits to that as well. So, like I am going to be going up to Alaska and the dogs are trained to find Wolf Scott, but we're going to be working really hard to make sure that the dogs and the wolves don't actually meet each other at any point you need Bunsen to protect your dogs seriously.

Speaker 2: 23:06

You need our, we need, you need our bear guardian to protect your border collies honestly, it would be great.

Speaker 4: 23:14

So you know that's probably our biggest or the most obvious category, and then the other really big category that we have are things that generally the answer is can if? If you're asking, can dogs find something, the answer is almost always yes. There was actually just a study that came out today finding that dogs can detect the scent of a trauma response in PTSD patients. Like that level of specificity is something that dogs and sensitivity is something that dogs can do. The question is, are they actually the most cost effective or reasonable way to do it? So there was there's a study that hasn't actually it hasn't been published, but I've spoken to the researchers about it a couple times where the dogs were being trained to find the specific species of invasive snail and basically what these researchers found after doing a ton of work, is that the dogs can do it in a lap. No problem, the dogs will find this snail. You know 10 out of 10 times but it's fine to say yeah, but and it was.

Speaker 4: 24:14

It's this really voracious invasive snail in Hawaii, so they want to be able to find this now so that they can remove it from the environment and give these native snails a chance to bounce back. However, when you get out into the wild, these snails are like under the leaf, litter and basically the dogs detection distance, which is what we say when we're saying how far away can the dog actually find this thing? The detection distance was something crazy like two centimeters oh, that's not fair snails.

Speaker 4: 24:42

Yeah, these snails are under leaf litter and they're just not that stinky and you know. So you would need to. If you had like a one foot by one foot area, the dog would literally need to go all the way from one side and then one inch up and then all the way back the other side. You know there's no way that you're going to be able to cover enough ground to actually do that with a dog. So that's the other big category of times where we just don't use the detection dogs is it's just like, it's just not reasonable, it it doesn't help.

Speaker 2: 25:14

I get it. I get it, yeah, yeah, that makes sense, right, like it's cost effective. We talked to Dr Amaritha Mollie Karjun like a multiple time. She's she, I don't know if you, if you, that name rings a bell with you. She, she trains, yeah, okay. So what she, they found is that dogs can detect COVID. Right, they're pretty good at it. But the amount of training it took to get them to detect COVID versus just taking, like a, you know, a nasal swab or something like that, it was probably go with the nasal swab, yeah.

Speaker 4: 25:47

And and that's that's a great example as well. I don't know exactly with her research and I haven't kept up with all of it but a lot of the studies that were coming out that, yeah, like we're showing, yes, dogs can smell COVID. Yes, dogs can smell COVID. Yes, dogs can smell COVID. It was all with, like you know, like arm pit sweat samples or something like that, yeah.

Speaker 4: 26:06

With people who were hospitalized with intensive COVID, and what we really need, what would be really helpful, is a dog that could sniff a group of a hundred people and detect those asymptomatic cases.

Speaker 3: 26:16

Gotcha.

Speaker 4: 26:17

And that's a really big gap between yes, they can find it with hospitalized patients and sweat samples. But anyway, it sounds like she's already explained all of that to your listeners.

Speaker 2: 26:27

No, it's, it's so fascinating. No, you got it. That's, that's exactly the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, like. Can you imagine you're just like doot, doot, doot and a dog like sniffs you and like, and the handler's like excuse me, you got COVID or something right?

Speaker 4: 26:43

Like, yeah, and it is hypothetically possible. It's just, you know, a matter of is it really the most reasonable thing? You know dogs can detect things in like these parts per billion, but you know the amount of training necessary to actually get to that point is pretty extreme.

Speaker 2: 27:04

So, like that's a good kind of like, maybe a little wrap up to the section is like dogs aren't. They're dogs, aren't magical. Right, they have extremely good sense of smell, but they don't they're magic creatures.

Speaker 4: 27:18

Absolutely yeah. I think that's really important to remember. You know I love singing their praises, but they are also not necessarily the answer for everything. One of the first questions we ask anyone who comes to us and says, hey, we want dogs to work on this project is we ask what are you doing currently and why isn't it working? Like what is the gap that you want dogs to fill? Because that really helps us understand whether or not it's reasonable to expect our dogs to fill that gap, because sometimes it's not. Sometimes the gap that they have is just not. It would be better served by camera traps or LiDAR or, you know, heat sensors or you know whatever. There's all sorts of other cool tools out there as well.

Speaker 2: 27:55

Gotcha If you're just tuning in now. Welcome to Science Chat. It's the multicast from Twitter audio, twitter spaces, twitter video, instagram and Facebook. Hello to all of our new listeners. Normally we were just on Twitter, but this is a whole new thing with live video and all of it, so I'm glad everybody's tuning in. Chris, I'm going to throw back to you any comments on Twitter audio.

Speaker 3: 28:19

Not that I'm seeing. We know about the dog in the background. That was one of the comments.

Speaker 2: 28:24

Okay.

Speaker 3: 28:25

And yeah, Kara asked is that a bunsen behind Kayla? Because we have our own stuffies. And then there was a comment about about the scent detection dog that was finding rare turtles in Rhode Island about two summers ago. Yeah, so if you did, you know a lot about that.

Speaker 4: 28:53

Yeah, they were actually. They're our students. So, yeah, we run an online mentorship group as well as an online handler course for people who are interested in getting into this line of work, and Dr Christine Hoffman has been in our student group now for gosh probably close to a year. She's kind of the main researcher on that project and her students will go out and work with Newt, the turtle detection dog. They're doing really, really amazing work.

Speaker 1: 29:19

And if you want to get to hang out with them.

Speaker 4: 29:20

You can just join our student group and we. She's very active and is really eager to learn as well as share all of her experience, because she's got a ton of it.

Speaker 2: 29:29

The dog's name is Newt. Yes, oh my heart, it's like adorable, oh my goodness, yeah.

Speaker 4: 29:38

A lot of good names in this field.

Speaker 2: 29:40

I love that. Well, thanks, chris. Thanks for keeping track of the comments on Twitter. Oh, we got another one here on live. Oh, this is a good one. I'll throw this up, maybe for you to answer, if that's okay. Kayla Diane is wondering what gear do the dogs wear? Is it tricky keeping up with them in rough terrain?

Speaker 4: 30:01

So, as far as what gear the dogs wear, kind of, at a minimum they're wearing a GPS collar in the field, and that's not because we're necessarily worried about losing them, but that actually allows us to record their location every two and a half seconds for several hours at a time, so then we can actually go back and look at the exact area that was covered by the dog and submit that to our clients. So that's pretty neat. Just it's always fun to look at that map. And then, depending on the situation, the dogs generally are also wearing a harness. They wear a harness that actually is made so that we can pick them up. So if we need to get them over something or get them under something, we can help them with that.

Speaker 4: 30:39

Sometimes they wear booties. That's really dependent on kind of what's going on under their feet and whether or not they need it. And then they also will have some productive doggles so little they look like ski goggles and they will also wear those in some situations. We've got some other safety gear that we bring out Again. We've got like a snake proof vest that the dogs can wear and a hood that protects their eyes, ears, nose from grass seeds. That can be a really big, expensive problem if they get into the dog's eyes, ears or nose. But yeah, it's very environmentally dependent. And then as far as keeping up with them in rough terrain, absolutely yeah, they have four-paw drive, they have built-in crampons.

Speaker 2: 31:23

They are very difficult to keep up with oh my God, Are they ever hey?

Speaker 4: 31:29

Yeah, but we do train them to stay close to us. So we and that's a safety thing we're working in grizzly country, we're working in rattlesnake country, we work in jaguar country, whatever it is there's a lot of reasons that we don't want them getting out of our sight. So we will slow them down with our voices if necessary, both for our own cardiac health to be able to keep up with them, and for their safety as far as like wildlife interactions or we don't necessarily want them running off and getting too close to like a Russian river or something else unsafe.

Speaker 2: 32:04

Yeah, I love that comment, diane. Thank you, that's so true. Like Bunsen is enormous. He's our big burner right and he looks like a big lug. You could never catch him. You could never catch him if, like you, I don't know how you would catch him. He looks so slow but he is not and in the snow he just effortlessly moves through the snow where I'm like trudging through like some you know out of place orangutan with big boots on, you know, compared to this guy, so I can just see like a border collie which is a little athletic dog, like there's a zippin, there's so fast.

Speaker 4: 32:45

Yeah, yeah, and they can get into a lot of things that we can't get into. So Barley in particular is notorious for like diving into brambles, you know thorny whatever, and and then finding something in the middle. And then you know we've got to get like the field tech with the machete to help us get in there so that we can figure out what it is he's found in there, because you know he's he's just so much lower to the ground he could just right in there and you know he's not even that far away, but like, and I'm not a big person, I'm five foot two but I can't always go where he goes.

Speaker 2: 33:16

Oh, my goodness, I would not be helpful on any of your expeditions. I'm kind of a big guy. I'm six three, so there'd be no squeezing me into like tiny areas.

Speaker 4: 33:27

Yeah, and I guess actually on the rough terrain question as well, you know that is something. It's not necessary for everyone in this field. We've got plenty of students who are disabled or, you know, maybe aren't like little mountain goat people, but for us and the sort of jobs that we take on we do also like handler, fitness and agility is almost as important, if not more important than than as the dog fitness and agility. So we're, all you know, in the off season running and hiking and doing yoga and like doing stuff to make sure that we can physically keep up with the dogs. And the dogs also get all sorts of physical therapy and training and those sorts of things to make sure that when they go out and hit the field it doesn't feel hard to them. You know they are, they are very high caliber athletes and then we do our best to keep up with them. Again, that's not everyone in this field has to do that, but the sort of jobs that we take on do tend to require that.

Speaker 2: 34:27

Awesome. So I have one more, one more, maybe one or two questions and then we'll throw it to the audience if they have questions for you, kayla, Excuse me, there's been some good back and forth already. So the folks on Twitter audio, they can, they can actually join and speak and then if you're watching live, you'll have to type your comment in and we'll try our best to get to it. So when we do these, these live shows, sign science chats I like to like ask our guests some pop culturey questions. And since you know like you're a dog trainer right, you're so good at it, you know a lot about the, the science of dogs. Are there some movies where you've, where you've been really impressed with the dog work in them? Like movies or TV shows that come to mind Because I'd imagine you're like well, that's pretty impressive, they got the dog to do that.

Speaker 4: 35:22

Yeah, gosh Well. So I'm in a PhD program right now. I have watched so little TV lately I I can't even think of the last thing I saw that had a dog in it.

Speaker 4: 35:33

I was. I was on a TV show once with Barley. I was on a survival show with Barley and trained him to find some edible plants for me. Which show is that it was? It's called called to the wild. It's on Disney plus and it's a dog human survival show. It's really fun to watch and it is all it's. It's real. I was. I was out there.

Speaker 2: 35:59

We'll have to. We'll have to check that out. That's amazing.

Speaker 4: 36:02

Yeah, yeah, I think there's more good depictions of tracking dogs out in in media than than detection dogs, and the difference is a tracking dog is actually following where someone has been, versus the detection dog is just finding something that is in a single place, and they're actually finding that through the odor that's moving through the air. And actually I think some of the depictions of tracking dogs in Game of Thrones are very, very good the way that those dogs worked and the way that those dogs follow people and track them down truly terrifying if you can imagine being chased by bad guys with well-trained dogs. But I think it was a really good depiction.

Speaker 2: 36:49

Amazing. I love Game of Thrones. I'll have to think about.

Speaker 4: 36:53

Yeah, I think it's Leon and Sansa getting away from Ramsay.

Speaker 2: 36:58

Right, I was going to say he's. That's terrifying. Well, he's an evil guy. He's an absolute a-hole. What's the guy's name? He's from the Flayed man House. He's Bolton Ramsay. Ramsay Bolton, you said his name. I'm sorry, ramsay Bolton. Yeah, yeah, that was terrifying.

Speaker 4: 37:18

Yeah, the one caveat I'll say is I think the sorts of dogs that are depicted there are not the sorts of dogs he would use for that because you know it's Hollywood, they pick really big, scary-looking like boar hounds you probably would be using more like a bloodhound for what they're depicting. But you know, the scene is good. The dog casting is made to be scary rather than realistic.

Speaker 2: 37:40

Oh well, as they do in Hollywood. Yeah, yeah. My other pop culture question is more about like the myths of dogs, like a dog, for whatever reason, is separated from its home by miles, miles and miles and miles, and then it finds its way back home. Would they be using their nose for that? Are those stories somewhat accurate? Do you think Like? Is it plausible?

Speaker 4: 38:08

Yeah, I mean it does happen. There are real stories of dogs making their way home, but there are also a lot of stories where dogs don't.

Speaker 2: 38:18

Right.

Speaker 4: 38:19

So it's you know, I don't think we know exactly what's going on there. You know dogs, dogs, okay. So when you think about, like, how you experience the world, we experience the world almost exclusively through sight and language. That's you know. I don't know 90% of how we experience the world right now. That's why we're talking on video right now and talking verbally.

Speaker 2: 38:44

Right.

Speaker 4: 38:44

And not like transmitting pheromones through the internet somehow.

Speaker 2: 38:48

Right.

Speaker 4: 38:49

Dogs it's the opposite. It's so focused on olfaction that if you've got a dog that is managing to get its way home successfully almost certainly odor was part of that my guess as well and we're kind of at the edge of my knowledge here is that the dogs that manage to make it home it's more likely that they make it home because they have been to the area where they were lost. So I can imagine if I lost my dogs 10 miles from home, but on a route that we've run before, they've got a better chance of making it home than if you know. I drove them somewhere eight miles away, so we've been less bar, and then they, they got dropped off. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 39:32

Yeah, it totally makes sense, Absolutely.

Speaker 4: 39:34

That's my guess. I'm not 100% sure on it.

Speaker 2: 39:37

Absolutely, that makes sense. So, kayla, I'm just, my Chrome browser is just frozen up a bit. If you, if you. Oh, there, I'm back again. Okay, perfect, sorry, I just thought I was going to be lost. Oh, I'm frozen again, can you? Can you hear me?

Speaker 4: 39:58

I can hear you yeah, you found fine, I've just got my mouth open.

Speaker 2: 40:01

I look yeah, my mouth is open. I look like a wild, a wild person, so it'll probably get synced up. I wasn't trying to do anything silly, chris. Sorry about that, but I think we'll move. We'll move to maybe some questions, unless you have some from folks everywhere.

Speaker 3: 40:15

If you have some questions for Kayla Sure, so at this time, if you're interested on Twitter audio to come up and ask a question, you can request the mic. We tend to vet our participants. We, if we know you, then we bring you right up, and then otherwise we do a little bit of super sleuthing to find out who you are. And Tracy is up, and so Tracy you'll be first.

Speaker 2: 40:48

Kayla, can you still hear me? Yes, okay, good, so I'm. I apologize, I'm probably a little frozen, but as long as the audio goes through, we're good, yep still hearing you. Perfect.

Speaker 3: 41:03

Hi Tracy.

Speaker 5: 41:06

Hi everyone. So I actually fell asleep to miss like this whole thing, but I'm hoping I mean I'll go back and like re listen, but hoping no one asked my question. So I just want to know if you have a pet story for us.

Speaker 4: 41:29

Gosh, what is a pet story? All my stories are pet stories. I mean, I think one of the fun facts about all of my animals is that we spent the last two years living in a sprinter van and traveling around to various field jobs, around around not just the country but actually down in Central America as well. So, yeah, my dogs and two dogs and a cat and me all lived in a van together for about two years traveling around, you know, going to beaches and losing the cat up mango trees and having the dogs chase coconuts around the beach and finding Jaguar poop.

Speaker 2: 42:12

Well, that's a story and a half. Yeah, were you expecting that, tracy?

Speaker 5: 42:20

Um no, but it was great and not like you know what I wouldn't, you know, normally expect to hear.

Speaker 2: 42:26

So yeah, Okay, anybody else from Twitter spaces? Chris, I'm just having some trouble with Chrome. I might have to restart.

Speaker 3: 42:41

There aren't any more questions or speakers who are coming up to request. But what legislation would you change to improve how your science and your field is, I guess, accepted or like? Do you run into roadblocks that when you're going to different places where some legislation allows you to do certain things and other legislation doesn't, and how does that affect your research?

Speaker 4: 43:08

Yeah, I think it's not necessarily legislation, but one of the things we do run into is I may have lost Kayla Chris.

Speaker 2: 43:21

I don't know if you can still hear her.

Speaker 3: 43:25

What happened was? She said it's not legislation, but something we run into and then nothing. Sorry, Chrome, Chrome crashed so it'll take, yeah, it'll take a second for me to bring it back.

Speaker 2: 43:39

So sorry about that. Sorry, everybody, tech issues, it'll take one second. I'm just re-entering the studio.

Speaker 3: 43:55

Okay.

Speaker 2: 43:58

Just about there, Hi Kayla.

Speaker 4: 44:06

Sometimes there are policies, but generally if folks you know after a conversation if they're really dedicated to getting the dog work done, they're usually able to provide waivers, get us special permissions and those sorts of things.

Speaker 2: 44:21

Okay so.

Speaker 4: 44:24

I guess one thing again.

Speaker 4: 44:25

I'm not sure if this would be legislation, but there is no kind of like certification or exam or anything to kind of show that my dog has earned this certificate that says that my dog and I are safe to have our own wildlife, and that would be something that I think I would really welcome and would like to see, because as of right now, it is relatively easy If one wanted to put up a really flashy website and do a bunch of networking. Someone with a dog that is not actually adequately prepared to be in these highly sensitive environments could absolutely start getting clients and go out there and put their dog into contact with endangered species or sensitive areas and kind of make the rest of us look bad, and there's no good way currently to differentiate between that. So it would be nice. You know, like hairdressers have to pass exam, then do certain numbers of hours of continuing education, and it would be nice to have you know something similar to what hairdressers have, at a minimum to make sure that you know we're we're being really responsible with our dogs.

Speaker 2: 45:35

Yeah, Thanks, kayla. I apologize for if you saw I left, that's because I crashed and then we lost because I'm the bridge to Twitter audio. I apologize to the folks on Twitter audio. Everybody on live totally heard your answer to that question. We did to Jason, you did. You heard the whole thing.

Speaker 3: 45:57

Yep, all the way from the certificate to wishing that there was that, I guess, a standard that instead of other professions have certificates like hairdressing. So yeah, it was very strange. It played back all the way through.

Speaker 2: 46:18

That's amazing. Look at that built in Amazing. No, you don't even need you don't even need me, I'm redundant, I'm like you are not, it's totally fine, but that's good to know.

Speaker 3: 46:28

I guess it did. It came through for me, tracy, you have your hand up again.

Speaker 5: 46:35

Yeah, I just want to know, like, if certain dogs can like detect like cancer in people, can they also detect when there's cancer and other dogs?

Speaker 4: 46:48

If you know that or not, yeah, I certainly could, kind of similar to what we talked about with COVID. The limitation for most of the cancer detection dogs is, to my understanding, I don't think any of those dogs are going up and sniffing people. We're a pretty far away again, to my understanding, from having a dog sitting in a waiting room and just sniffing people out and then being like, oh no, you've got ovarian cancer without having to do a procedure. To my understanding, these dogs are still sniffing saliva samples or blood samples or even sometimes like cells taken from like in this example, like from your cervix or something for cervical cancer. And from talking to people who spend a lot more time in that area of work, that is one of the areas that they expect technology to outpace dogs pretty quickly. So currently dogs are really good at it.

Speaker 4: 47:39

There's a lot of studies like proof of concept studies.

Speaker 4: 47:42

Dogs do do a great job at it, but because you still do need to collect that sample and run it through a dog, we're very close, if not already there, to where it's actually more effective to run it through a lab instead, like a laboratory instead of a labrador, where the dogs are still like how you know, where we have job security, so to speak with the dogs is where it's helpful to have dogs moving through the environment and reading air currents, so stuff where you're actually out and searching is where the dogs are probably going to retain the most usefulness for the longest time.

Speaker 4: 48:23

Anything where you kind of have to bring a sample into a lab to have a dog check Some things the dogs are going to hang on to for a while. But I think that's something that in our lifetimes we're likely to see. Those dogs kind of like spike up and like, oh my God, they can do this and then like very quickly, it's just going to go back to the machines are feeding the dogs at it. That's my understanding from talking to people who are experts in it.

Speaker 2: 48:48

Great question, Tracy. It looks like we have somebody else has a question on Twitter audio. Go ahead.

Speaker 3: 48:55

Paula Paula's ready.

Speaker 1: 48:57

Hi Paula, Hi everybody, How's everything everybody doing? Hi, Kayla, Great to have you on tonight. It's very interesting. My question is is there a reason why you picked the border collie breed to own to do your investigation, study and for sense and stuff? Are they any better than any type of breed of dog that would have a better sense than others, or is it just a training thing? And my second question is where did you get Barley's cute stuffy? Did somebody make that for you or did a company? Because that is awesome, I think he's really cute.

Speaker 4: 49:34

Yeah, so yeah, the first question as far as border collies go, we do. Currently within our organization all five of our dogs are at least 50% border collie. We do. I think four out of five of our dogs are shelter dogs and then my younger dog, nifla, is from a breeder. But we like working with border collies because there's a lot of reasons that actually don't really have anything to do with their scenting. Basically they are the right size, so they tend to be 35 to 45 pounds, somewhere in the 20 to 25 kilo range, maybe a little bit smaller, so they're relatively easy to carry. But they're also big enough that they can really put on the miles in the field without too much trouble. They're also highly responsive and easily trained and that's really helpful for us.

Speaker 4: 50:23

And with that, if you think about historically, border collies are bred to herd sheep. So one of the things that we do struggle with is they tend to lock onto motion and want to control motion, so that can be a little tricky. If you've got a herd of deer, the dog's kind of like oh, sheep. But a dog that doesn't listen to their shepherd and doesn't leave the sheep alone when they're asked is not a good farm dog, even though they're interested in that kind of genetically speaking. They've been selected over many, many, many generations to listen to people, even when they want to chase stuff, and with that as well, any border collie that harmed lambs or chickens or chicks or anything else that you find on a farm is not a border collie that's going to be bred again, historically speaking. So when you look at the genetic package of a border collie, there's a lot of things that make them really easy to manage in the field. They really want to listen to you, they really want to work with you. They're bred to work and be highly responsive off leash.

Speaker 4: 51:25

That said, all of that said, they're absolutely not the only breed that can do this work and they're actually not even the most popular Us at Canine Conservationists. They're kind of our guys, but if you look at rogue detection teams, which is based out of Washington, they work a lot with healers and, like cattle dogs, they love their cattle dogs. There's Conservation Dogs Collective, which is out of Wisconsin and Minnesota. They have almost entirely Labrador Retrievers. There's a couple guys down in well, all over the place. Spaniels are really really popular as well.

Speaker 4: 51:58

So what we tend to see is it's kind of the herding dogs and the hunting, retrieving, pointing dogs tend to be what we see in this line of work, and then there's a couple people doing it with really interesting, weird breeds. Fundamentally, it comes down to what you want to live with the rest of the year, the rest of the day a dog that can physically do the work, and that's going to depend a lot based on your specific niche whether you're covering dozens of miles every day or not, and what sort of terrain and whether or not a certain coat type or leg length is important to you. Yeah, there's a ton of things, but yeah, we are not representative of the breeds that can do this line of work and actually I think my next dog is going to be a spaniel, just to kind of break our border collie mold for a little bit.

Speaker 2: 52:44

And then you're stuffy.

Speaker 4: 52:47

Oh and then, yeah, I actually need to check. So he is from a company. I'm hoping that they marked him Cuddle Clones.

Speaker 2: 52:56

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 52:57

So he's from Cuddle Clones.

Speaker 2: 52:58

Cuddle Clones yeah.

Speaker 4: 53:00

Yeah, and it is funny. So this is. It's not just like a normal border collie. Barley's tongue is too big for his mouth and they even got that here. So very accurate to my man.

Speaker 2: 53:12

And, of course, this is live on Twitter everybody, so those of you listening on audio on Twitter the Twitter just posts this video in Proto-a-Doo-Doo Live, so you can just check this. This is at 58 minutes if you want to check out the super adorable stuffy.

Speaker 4: 53:31

Yeah, we can get him to stand up again now.

Speaker 2: 53:34

Yeah, we have stuffed animals of Bunsen, beaker and Ginger but we didn't go through Cuddle Clones to make them commercially, for obvious reasons. They're. They do a really good job. But if people are wondering, it's maybe a little bit more expensive.

Speaker 4: 53:54

Yeah, I actually got this one for free because I ran a dog behavior blog for many years. Oh. And they wanted to make one for free so that I would review the company and the product.

Speaker 2: 54:05

I love that.

Speaker 4: 54:06

Because, yeah, they are quite. I want to say they were like 200 bucks or something. Yes, yeah. It might have come down or it might have gone up, I don't know. But I want to say that's about what it was like three, four years ago.

Speaker 1: 54:16

Yeah, no, it's still it. It's excuse me, but it still is pretty expensive. I think it's like 200 bucks still yeah.

Speaker 2: 54:22

Worth it for your one dog, though. Man, they do good work. It's adorable.

Speaker 1: 54:27

It is adorable. Thank you so much.

Speaker 4: 54:29

Because Barley is such a classic border collie. I honestly could just go and get like any border collie stuff and it's going to look like Barley. But Nifler is a much more unique looking dog and it would be nice to have the custom one of him. But oh well, I didn't have him yet when I when I got this offer.

Speaker 2: 54:46

Love it, paula. Great question, thank you, thank you, okay, I'll throw it back to you, chris. How's things going on Twitter? There, we've got still we've still got a whack of people listening. Over 1,000 people have tuned in on Instagram, which is wild.

Speaker 3: 55:06

There doesn't appear to be anything else in the chat here that's happening on Twitter Spaces. Okay.

Speaker 2: 55:14

So I think, as it is the top of the hour and Science Chat is about an hour, we can do a little bit of wrap up. Last call for any questions or comments Alrighty. So, kayla, before we say goodbye, if you're watching the live, I've been putting your website up, canineconservationistsorg, and Chris has been doing a good job on Twitter linking to your Twitter profile. I don't know if you have your Twitter opener or this little thing going, but anyways, chris has been doing amazing work there so people can def, people on Twitter know who you are, and then folks on live can folks on live, you can see the little, the URL there. And, kayla, is there anything you'd like everybody to know before we do our wrap?

Speaker 4: 56:03

Well, well it goes, barley. Yeah, I mean, we're always stoked to talk to people, so definitely check out the website. We've got a ton of FAQs and like how to get into this field and like how much does it pay, and like all of those sorts of things. I've put a ton of effort into trying to make sure that all of those questions are answered on our website. But if you do go through it and have any other questions, listen to the podcast, you know, search for some keywords, see if we've answered it. But if we haven't, definitely reach out, always start to talk and then, yeah, if this is something that really really peaks your interest, we've got a bunch of different ways to help people get into this field. So check that out as well on the website. And, yeah, we'd be thrilled to have you. We're running our live course right now. You've only missed the first class out of 18. So it would be a good time to sign up if you want to take that live right now.

Speaker 2: 56:53

I love it, kayla, and Diane just has one last question, if you don't mind answering it, if you have time any Jaguar encounters?

Speaker 4: 57:00

Cool story? Yes, because I do. I do. This is crazy. So you know, Jaguars are just not an animal you expect to get to see, unless you let go on a tour to the Pantanal in Brazil. They're just not a predator you generally expect to get to see in your lifetime, even when you spend a lot of time in Jaguar country. So we did get to see one, though. So we were doing fieldwork in Tikal Preserve in northeast Guatemala, so kind of up in the corner by Belize and the Yucatam, and we were doing a search with Nefler, my younger dog, and we were on our way back to camp and we're walking through these like Mayan ruins or in dense jungle just you know, such a cool place. To begin with, I'm like so grateful to get to be there. And Nefler alerts to a scat, so he lies down with it in between his front paws. He's very cute and very perfect and I yay, good boy.

Speaker 4: 57:52

And I pull out the ball and I throw the ball and as we all look up to watch Nefler chasing this ball down the trail, one of the guides goes Jaguar. And you know, at first I was like oh he's just kidding, you know, like. And then I see it and like register at this moment that I've just thrown a ball at a Jaguar. And Nefler is running towards it and luckily he's a very good boy, he was totally focused on his ball. That's exactly what we're trying to do. He grabs the ball, he comes back.

Speaker 4: 58:24

I put one hand on his collar so I've got control over him and I'm tugging with the other hand and telling him what a good, perfect boy he is, and looking up over his shoulder at the Jaguar, and it kind of pauses and looks at us and then just disappears into the forest. It was not interested in us at all and, to be clear, I was very far away from hitting the Jaguar with the ball. It was very far away and I don't have that great of a throwing arm, but yeah, it was just like absolutely incredible. And then we all just kind of like stood there in silence, being like did that just?

Speaker 3: 58:53

happen.

Speaker 4: 58:54

Did we actually just see a Jaguar? And I thought it would be fun and so many people to all see it at the same time. I don't know if I would believe that it happened. It was just magical.

Speaker 2: 59:03

Wow, I've heard that story. You told that on the science podcast and it just it's such a great, wild and amazing story. I'm glad Nefler was okay.

Speaker 4: 59:17

Yeah, me too. Yeah, what do you?

Speaker 2: 59:20

think, chris? What do you think Bonson or Beaker would do if they saw a Jaguar?

Speaker 3: 59:25

I don't know.

Speaker 2: 59:27

Do you think? Beaker would think it's just a big ginger and they'd have a fight over a couch with it.

Speaker 3: 59:32

Maybe, but it's just too terrifying for me to think about.

Speaker 2: 59:36

Yeah, bonson would probably stand as ground and lose. I guess He'd be like get out of the tree, you stupid cat. And then, well, good thing he's a mountain dog and there's not a whole lot of Jaguars where we live. So, yeah, kayla, this has been an absolute treat having you as a guest today. Thank you so much for giving up your time to chat with us on science chat. I think it's very cool what you do and your organization, so people can check out your website and, if they want even more of Kayla, in the next two or three weeks we're going to have the full interview on the Science Podcast, which is quite a bit different than what happened tonight. So thank you so much for being a guest.

Speaker 4: 1:00:23

Yeah, no. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm always stoked to get to talk about my dogs and conservation.

Speaker 2: 1:00:29

And lastly, where can people connect with you on social media or follow you?

Speaker 4: 1:00:34

Yeah, so on Twitter slash X and Blue Sky, I'm at Scat Dog Allegist, so that should be relatively easy to find. That should be the only one. And then on Facebook and Instagram you can find the organization at Canine Conservationists. You can find me on Instagram at Collies Without Borders so kind of a lot of different names. And then my personal Facebook is personal so don't try to be there.

Speaker 2: 1:01:02

Gotcha. Well, thank you. Thank you from us to you and to everybody. What a wonderful conversation. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 4: 1:01:11

Again, thank you so much and thanks for everyone who tuned in. It's always just a pleasure to get to talk about my work.

Speaker 2: 1:01:17

I love it. Well, as we wrap up, chris, what a cool conversation hey it was so awesome.

Speaker 3: 1:01:23

Thank you again, Kayla, for your time and your area of expertise. We definitely learned a lot about dogs and scent and scat and what it takes to work in your field of conservation, which we love.

Speaker 2: 1:01:39

You're getting lots of love on Twitter audio, kayla. Lots of emojis of clapping and hearts and thumbs up, so that's very cool. There's a bunch of emojis in the chat too. And then there's there's still folks on Instagram. Oh, it just quit because we got one hour on Instagram. So, again, give Kayla a follow somewhere on social media and check out her full interview in a couple of weeks on the science podcast. We are back on Saturday, chris. Two live shows a week. Can you believe this? We're back to the normal pet chat on Saturday. Everybody tune in at 6 pm Mountain, 8 pm Eastern, 5 pm Pacific for our zany live chat just about pets. We'd love to have you back. All right, kayla, take care, best wishes. If you need any social augmentation of whatever you're doing, give us a shout, we'll give you a boost.

Speaker 4: 1:02:35

Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, always excited, very grateful.

Speaker 2: 1:02:39

Okay, take care, all right. Live live stream closing in three. Oh, we got a comment. Thanks, kayla. Somebody just said thanks, thanks, thanks, kayla. Okay, audio, our live stream closing in three. Two, one.