maybe the only good thing I do

I help out with an animal rescue. I foster dogs that are awaiting a permanent family. I also help with other things. It is possibly the only truly good thing that I do. That rescue needs help. They are trying so hard to stay afloat so that they can continue to save lives. It isn't easy for a non-profit to make it in this economy. You can help. Below is a link that will let you give any amount that you can. Even a dollar makes a difference! Plus, your donation is tax deductible! Yay! tax deduction!

All God's Creatures

That link will take you to the go fund me page. Just go look at it.

Dogs and Men

Okay children, I have shared this before, but things have gotten more real since then. All God's Creatures is a small animal rescue in Columbus, KS. They have, over the last few years saved and homed hundreds if dogs and cats that may otherwise have been euthanized. They do good work. Great work.

They need a building. They have wanted to buy or build their own building for a long time. In the interim they have been using the Columbus Shelter to house dogs. They are losing the ability to use those facilities. If they cannot raise money soon, they will be out of business. No one else will fill the need and the animals will suffer.

If your read this annoying blog, follow the link and give a buck to help out.

Thank you

save the dogs

Help the animals

All God's Creatures is a 

small animal rescue and shelter in Columbus, KS. They need your help.

please visit the gofundme page to learn more

The truth about drug dogs

Having worked in law enforcement, I already knew that drug dogs were bogus. Even many of the handlers that use these dogs know that they are fabricating probable cause, but continue to do so in order to carryout searches that they hope will lead to cash (the real target in today's civil forfeiture society).  Now this article confirms much of what I already new:

A groundbreaking study into the behavior of sniffer dogs and their handlers published by Lisa Lit in the journal Animal Cognition in 2011 supports my suspicion. Researchers tested drugs dogs and their handlers with a couple of Machiavellian tweaks to standard study protocol: Firstly, there were no drugs; secondly, the handlers were told that there were drugs hidden in various places inside a church, labelled by sheets of red paper.
In order to trick the dog handlers into believing that they were participating in a genuine drugs study, the researchers carried a box of 12 genuine triple-wrapped half-ounce bags of cannabis past the handlers while they pretended to set up the experiment. In reality the box was never even opened inside the church. Instead of drugs, sausages were placed in some of the various hidden locations around the church. Some of these locations were labelled as containing drugs — indicated by a sheet of red paper, while some locations that were labelled as containing drugs contained neither drugs nor sausages. The experiment was double blind; the experimenters were not aware whether a location was a decoy containing a pair of sausages or a decoy containing what the handlers had been led to believe was cannabis.
Despite there never being any drugs whatsoever in any of the locations used in the experiment, 225 alerts were issued by the 18 handlers and their dogs, every single one of which was, of course, a false alarm. To the dogs' credit, the dogs were not swayed by the sausages, but to the handlers' discredit, there were drastically more false alarms wherever the red markers told the handlers that there would be drugs.

So what went on here? Did the handlers simply cheat and pretend they'd seen their dogs show the correct responses to smelling drugs, or did the handlers somehow lead the dogs to provide positive responses with unconscious cues? This is a difficult question, which requires further research, but a clue to the likely answer lies a century ago in a horse called Clever Hans.

The article


The police will create any hint of cause they can to facilitate a search so that property can be seized. 

A groundbreaking study into the behavior of sniffer dogs and their handlers published by Lisa Lit in the journal Animal Cognition in 2011 supports my suspicion. Researchers tested drugs dogs and their handlers with a couple of Machiavellian tweaks to standard study protocol: Firstly, there were no drugs; secondly, the handlers were told that there were drugs hidden in various places inside a church, labelled by sheets of red paper.
In order to trick the dog handlers into believing that they were participating in a genuine drugs study, the researchers carried a box of 12 genuine triple-wrapped half-ounce bags of cannabis past the handlers while they pretended to set up the experiment. In reality the box was never even opened inside the church. Instead of drugs, sausages were placed in some of the various hidden locations around the church. Some of these locations were labelled as containing drugs — indicated by a sheet of red paper, while some locations that were labelled as containing drugs contained neither drugs nor sausages. The experiment was double blind; the experimenters were not aware whether a location was a decoy containing a pair of sausages or a decoy containing what the handlers had been led to believe was cannabis.
Despite there never being any drugs whatsoever in any of the locations used in the experiment, 225 alerts were issued by the 18 handlers and their dogs, every single one of which was, of course, a false alarm. To the dogs’ credit, the dogs were not swayed by the sausages, but to the handlers’ discredit, there were drastically more false alarms wherever the red markers told the handlers that there would be drugs.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2015/08/24/another-study-shows-unreliability-of-drug-sniffing-dogs/#sthash.hTAI9Rbs.dpuf

A groundbreaking study into the behavior of sniffer dogs and their handlers published by Lisa Lit in the journal Animal Cognition in 2011 supports my suspicion. Researchers tested drugs dogs and their handlers with a couple of Machiavellian tweaks to standard study protocol: Firstly, there were no drugs; secondly, the handlers were told that there were drugs hidden in various places inside a church, labelled by sheets of red paper.
In order to trick the dog handlers into believing that they were participating in a genuine drugs study, the researchers carried a box of 12 genuine triple-wrapped half-ounce bags of cannabis past the handlers while they pretended to set up the experiment. In reality the box was never even opened inside the church. Instead of drugs, sausages were placed in some of the various hidden locations around the church. Some of these locations were labelled as containing drugs — indicated by a sheet of red paper, while some locations that were labelled as containing drugs contained neither drugs nor sausages. The experiment was double blind; the experimenters were not aware whether a location was a decoy containing a pair of sausages or a decoy containing what the handlers had been led to believe was cannabis.
Despite there never being any drugs whatsoever in any of the locations used in the experiment, 225 alerts were issued by the 18 handlers and their dogs, every single one of which was, of course, a false alarm. To the dogs’ credit, the dogs were not swayed by the sausages, but to the handlers’ discredit, there were drastically more false alarms wherever the red markers told the handlers that there would be drugs.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2015/08/24/another-study-shows-unreliability-of-drug-sniffing-dogs/#sthash.hTAI9Rbs.dpuf