My biggest strength as a field biologist: sleeping on a moving boat. My biggest weakness: I can’t stand any reasonable field breakfasts. Cold bagels and oatmeal are equally depressing to me. Any field breakfast tips?

The view from our front porch on the “Sinking Dungalow,” a decrepit floating house in a bay off a remote island in southeast Alaska.

Another aspect of Skipper’s apprenticeship is generalization to different diet items and discrimination between wolf scats and other scats. Even when we introduce nontarget odors at home and dozens of positive training samples, this stage is important to solidify in the field. (1/5)

Onboarding new dogs to projects is far from straightforward. Though we spend an extraordinary amount of time screening prospective dogs and training them at home, there is almost always an “apprentice” phase for a dog on their first project. (1/9)

Skipper is our newest conservation detection dog. He's in his "understudy" phase on the Island Wolf Project, where he learns the final stages of being an operational conservation detection dog. Today's lessons: 1. River otters, like birds/deer/rabbits, aren't anything to get excited about. (1/x)

A big old tree blew down on Noyes Island, Alaska recently. It knocked off some of its shelf fungus when it fell. How old do you reckon this is? I am so incredibly lucky to work in the world's largest temperate rainforest and walk among these giant trees.

The dog team and I are in Alaska for the third year of the Island Wolf Project. We are in the early stages of my young pup Skipper's "understudy" role while my older dog Barley shifts into "professor emeritus." Follow along with our updates on Patreon.

We made it to Alaska! | K9 Conservationists

We made it to Alaska! by K9 Conservationists on Patreon. Join K9 Conservationists's community for exclusive content and updates.

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And that’s a wrap! Season two of detection-dog-led scat collection for diet and genetic research on the Alexander Archipelago Wolf. We ended up with over 600 samples! Barley (black and white) found the majority of our samples in his final year as lead dog on the Island Wolf Project.

Barley the detection dog has been having a fabulous final season on the Island Wolf Project. This week while on a remote coast in Alaska, he found several wolf scats just below high tide line. Next up: metabarcoding and genotyping the scats to learn more about Alexander Archipelago wolves.

Saying goodbye to the SS Soggy Spaniel for 2025! Our Island Wolf Project is moving to our road-based surveys for a few weeks before heading north to Kuiu and surrounding islands on a different research vessel. We’re at 400 wolf scats and counting!

This is the whole point. Yes, the next-generation sequencing is cool. Yes, detection training is my passion. Yes, I love reading and am learning to love data analysis. But this. This is what it’s about. My best guy and me searching the wilderness for scats.

We found a wolf canine last week in Alaska. Look at the size difference in compared to my 50 pound border collie’s canine!

Yesterday we did a 12km search on an island in the Tongass Nat’l Forest looking for wolf scat. Niffler the detection dog stepped near a wolf track, and look at the size difference! Niffler is about 50lb, border collie.

The weather has finally given us a window, and the wolf scat detection dog crew is pushing ahead with 6 days of back to back surveys across 5 islands in southeast Alaska. Pictured: Barley on Warren Island.

Iitooma is our newest K9 recruit. He’s with me in Alaska learning to sniff out wolf scat. His internship is going well!

We're thrilled to be offering our online LIVE handler course for aspiring K9 Conservationists. If you've ever wanted to learn to work in wildlife biology/conservation alongside detection dogs, now's your chance. Please share widely <3

Field gear for 3 people, 3 conservation detection dogs, and 3.5 months. Year 2 of Alaskan island wolf research kicks off this week. We’re stoked!

I'm a published scientist! Along with the teams at Action for Cheetahs in Kenya and K9 Conservationists, I've been working for about 4 years on a project to help cheetah scat detection dogs not alert to leopard and caracal scat. And now we're in Cognition! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Using differential reinforcement and extinction to increase specificity in cheetah scat detection dogs - Animal Cognition

Detection dogs are trained using limited samples and then expected to generalize this ability to recognize wild samples while maintaining specificity to a target category. Such specificity is critical...

link.springer.com

DOGE cuts are potentially hitting our biosecurity dog programs. These dogs are faster and more effective than any other available method, and are vital for protecting our native species and agriculture from pests and disease. Thanks @nbcnews.com for chatting with me about this!

One of my favorite talks at the African Canines in Conservation Conference explored training village dogs as trackers and detection dogs to aid antipoaching units. Importing a dog from Europe is the norm now, which can cost $5,000+. The pups performed well but they’re still refining the process!

It’s been amazing meeting everyone at the African Canines in Conservation Conference. I gave a keynote talk about troubleshooting training. Today’s conference closer is about the Conservation Dog Alliance, a knowledge-sharing group I co-founded. I have no voice and I’m exhausted but I’m so happy!

Last weekend we had a celebration of life for my dear friend and student Sade. The conservation dog community lost two gems when she and Simba left us. They’re sorely missed but it was so healing to get together to laugh, cry, and eat. Be kinder to queer people. Make good trouble. Love your dogs.

Niffler is my younger detection dog. He's on day 4 of learning to detect wolf scat so that he can come sniff out oodles of it for my PhD work and Alaska Department of Fish and Game's research on the Alexander Archipelago Wolves. He's doing so well <3 youtu.be/pL71_-MHyQI

Niffler Wolf Scat Training: Day 4

YouTube video by K9 Conservationists

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Not exaggerating when I say I would like a personal, handwritten apology from every pundit who barfed out a dozen "the left wants to change the way you talk!" op-eds based on non-mandatory guidelines in obscure PDFs.

Judd Legum@juddlegum.bsky.social · last yr.

2. A memo distributed by NSA leadership to its staff says that on February 10, all NSA websites and internal network pages that contain banned words will be deleted. This is the list of 27 banned words distributed to NSA staff:

Fieldwork is TOUGH. While we love detecting data alongside our dogs… it can get ugly. Today Barley got a horrible eyeful of seed ticks. He is treated with Bravecto, a Seresto collar, AND his work vest is covered in Permethrin.

Hello to all my new friends thanks to @ologies.bsky.social - please let me know if you have lingering Qs after the episode. I’m so excited to meet yall! Yes, we’re hiring - opportunities tab on k9conservationists.org

I am so incredibly excited and grateful to share information about dogs, conservation, and everything that connects the two on @ologies.bsky.social !! open.spotify.com/episode/3jpY...

Eco-Odorology (SCIENCE-SNIFFING DOGS) with Kayla Fratt

Ologies with Alie Ward · Episode

open.spotify.com

My cat (an orange demon I found in a ditch) just OPENED THE FRONT DOOR. Please pray for us. Single-event learning is going to ruin my life on this one.

King Barley is killing it in tough conditions searching for ocelot scat in Texas. He’s being handled by my coworker Heather as they help @lisannepetracca.bsky.social ‘s lab out.

Over the holidays my mom and I climbed the tallest mountain in North Africa/the Arabic world. I got serious frostbite and am wheelchair bound while my feet recover. But I’m keeping all my toes! 7/10 experience, will improve gear list next time. In all seriousness, I’ve spent a lot of my life…