Writers & Other Animals: Susan J. Kroupa

Showing posts with label Susan J. Kroupa. Show all posts

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Cooking Up Stories with Author Susan Kroupa

Like most dogs, Doodle, the canine narrator of the Doodlebugged Mysteries, not only loves food but has some strong opinions on the subject. He recently got a chance to share some of those in Cooking Up Stories: Favorite Recipes from the Oregon Writers Network.

The brainchild of Louisa Swann and Dayle Dermatis, Cooking Up Stories is a compilation of recipes and brief story excerpts from an extended group of writers who have taken one of the highly regarded Oregon coast workshops taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Writers who attend the workshops stay in the Historic Anchor Inn, http://www.historicanchorinn.com/, a time-capsule sort of place, full of intriguing corridors packed with memorabilia from the last half century. And the owners, Kit Ward and Kandi Hansen treat the visiting writers like family, providing gourmet breakfasts and evening snacks for the often exhausted participants.

Wondering what they could do to repay Kip and Kandi for going the extra mile for workshop guests, Louisa and Dayle came up with an idea: Writers need to eat. Dogs often need to be rescued. And there would be no better way to thank Kip and Kandi than to donate to one of the many animal rescue causes that the two support.

The result was Cooking Up Stories, a cookbook filled with (mostly) easy recipes—the kinds of foods writers might make while working head down on a book. Thanks to the donated efforts of Louisa and Dayle and Lucky Bat Books, all of the proceeds from book sales go to Bark Beach, an annual beach run that raises funds for emergency vet care.

For his part, Doodle was happy to contribute some of his musings on food and eating. Here they are:

From Bed-Bugged

*I’ve never eaten much chocolate because the bosses insist it’s harmful to dogs. But the tiny bites I’ve had makes me wonder, once again, if they just say that so they can keep it all for themselves. Because it’s really, really tasty.

*Never have understood one word of Chinese which I gather is hard to learn, but it turns out I like the food. My second boss (the bad one) used to bring it home all the time, one of the few good things about living with him.

From Out-Sniffed

*Piece of cake, as the boss often says. A curious expression, since, although cake is great — love it! —for a dog, at least, getting a piece is not always easy.

*Never understood the human fascination with ice. Cold drinks aren’t my thing, unless it’s water, of course, and then not as cold as ice makes it. And hot drinks — don’t get me started. Room temperature’s the way to go as far as I’m concerned, especially when the cold drinks are things like beer and diet ginger ale.

*I don’t understand why humans like to take forever to eat. Well, actually I do. It’s because they eat a bite, talk, talk some more, eat another bite, talk and talk some more. Really, if they’d just keep quiet and focus they could get through a meal in a reasonable amount of time. Look at us dogs. We don’t take a bite, bark, bark some more, then take another bite. We get the job done. Humans could learn from our example.

From Dog-Nabbed

*Salsa is always a little tricky. It can be good, but sometimes it can really burn your mouth, so you need to smell it carefully before eating it. Chips are always good, of course.

*As Miguel used to say when he’d give us treats, “hunger makes the best sauce,” which I think means food tastes better if you’ve had to miss breakfast.

Cooking Up Stories can be found in paper and ebook formats on Amazon.com as well as from most online book retailers.

Susan J. Kroupa is a dog lover currently owned by a 70 pound labradoodle whose superpower is bringing home dead possums and raccoons and who happens to be the inspiration for her Doodlebugged books. She’s also an award-winning author whose fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, and in a variety of professional anthologies, including Bruce Coville's Shapeshifters. Her non-fiction publications include features about environmental issues and Hopi Indian culture for The Arizona Republic, High Country News, and American Forests.

Susan now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Southwestern Virginia, where she’s busy writing the next Doodlebugged mystery. You can find her books and read her blog at http://www.susankroupa.com and visit her Amazon Author page at http://amazon.com/author/susankroupa.

Sunday, July 26, 2015

Food for Thought

by Susan J. Kroupa

Recently, a reviewer who otherwise liked Bed-Bugged, gently chided me for that fact that Molly often slips Doodle some of her food. The reviewer stated she didn’t agree with the author that human food was good for dogs.

I smiled because the author was just allowing the characters to act naturally.

The quickest way to turn potentially engaging characters into cardboard is to have them become puppets to mouth all the author’s pet (no pun intended) ideas.

In the Doodlebugged books, the three main characters have three different ideas about what foods should be in a dog’s diet. The boss, Molly’s father, thinks Doodle should only eat dog food. Molly acts as most ten-year-old girls might—she slips Doodle scraps and extra treats when she gets the opportunity. And Doodle, well, he views the whole dogs-shouldn’t-eat-human-food idea as selfish behavior on the part of humans. Early in Bed-Bugged, when Doodle is still getting used to his new job, the boss picks up some hamburgers on the way home from work. Doodle notes,

“I can’t help but drool for the rest of the drive back, the scent of those burgers filling the van.

Of course, it’s the same old dry dog food in my dish when we get home . . . But I’ve known since I was a pup that the bosses are stingy with their own food, which they like to say is bad for us. I wonder if they say that so they can keep it all for themselves.”

Three different characters and three different views on the issue.

That said, since the books are aimed both at middle-grade kids and readers of all ages who enjoy gentle mysteries, I wouldn’t want to promote, through a sympathetic character, anything that could be actively harmful to dogs. It is totally within character for Molly and the boss, as reasonably well-educated dog owners, never to give Doodle chocolate. Doodle, on the other hand, notes that chocolate smells wonderful, and views the fact that humans won’t share as more proof they want to keep it all for themselves.

He’s wrong, of course. We all know chocolate is bad for dogs, just as we know we have to be careful to keep it out of reach, since many dogs will eat it given the chance.

But this got me wondering about dogs and food and I innocently wandered over to the Internet to read about what dogs should or shouldn’t eat. Image

As Doodle would say, Whoa! I’ll leave the often rancorous dog-diet wars (Omnivore or carnivore? Higher protein or lower protein? Raw food or cooked food? Grains or no grains?) to more hardy souls.

While I don’t subscribe to the idea that dogs should never be given any human food, I believe all dog owners should know which foods can be dangerous for their pets. Most sites agree that along with chocolate, forbidden foods should include grapes, macadamia nuts, coffee, anything with caffeine or alcohol, onions and garlic, xylitol (a sugar alcohol used in gums and some candies), and yeast dough. Some add dairy products because, like humans, some dogs can have lactose intolerance. And most advise to avoid or limit very fatty foods, as too much fat in a dog’s diet can lead to pancreatitis. Finally, never give a dog any human medicine unless it has been prescribed by a vet. Aspirin, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen lead the list of human meds that can be toxic to dogs.

The website http://hounddogsdrule.com/k9-classroom/dangerous-foods-toxic-substances/ has a colorful chart of foods that are both good and bad for dogs. Other sites might have some differences in their lists.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue slipping Shadow the occasional bite of cheese or banana.

Doodle would approve.

She now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Southwestern Virginia, where she’s busy writing the next Doodlebugged mystery. You can find her books and read her blog at http://www.susankroupa.com and visit her Amazon Author page at http://amazon.com/author/susankroupa.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Skunked by Susan J. Kroupa

A beautiful day with a bright sun shining and the promise of spring in the air. The prospect of a long leisurely walk through fields and woods.

What could possibly go wrong?

Photo by Brian Garrett, Flickr

Skunk.

Normally, when we start out on a walk, I have Shadow on leash. But on this day I decide to work on reinforcing his off-leash “heel”, because the previous week’s snow has melted and the mud has dried to the point that we will be able to walk over to our favorite field rather than keep to the road.

So we set off down our driveway, Shadow cheerfully vacuuming up treats for being at my side (I really need to learn how to fade rewards), when suddenly he raises his head and takes off across our dirt road to the neighbor’s yard. Seconds later, he’s frantically rolling in the grass, pawing at his face. Too late, I see a skunk smack in the middle of the neighbor’s yard, trotting away, tail high. In broad daylight.

What? Skunks are supposed to be nocturnal. Later, I will read that, while normally nocturnal, skunks sometimes will come out in during the day to look for food, especially in the early spring.

Now the day’s plan changes from walking the dog to bathing the dog, itself a form of aerobic workout.

Shadow soaking in tomato juice.

In the last Skunked episode, the year before, as soon as I got home from our walk with a very stinky dog, I jumped online and learned about a peroxide formula that chemically changes the oil that causes the skunk’s punishing odor. But at the time, we had only a tiny amount of peroxide in the house and it was too late to get supplies at the nearest store, five miles away. It would have been an hour’s round trip to get it.

So instead, we foolishly bathed Shadow with dish detergent. That set the smell so effectively that multiple baths later, alternating shampoo, tomato juice and detergent (poor pup!), we realized that the only solution would be a haircut. A very short haircut.

Extra short, please!

Fortunately, we learned from our mistake. This time, we have quarts of peroxide in stock. I make up a few gallons of the solution and a couple of treatments later, my spouse, a man with a sense of smell to rival a dog’s, declares Shadow to be odor free.

If Shadow were only like Doodle, the fictional narrator of the Doodlebugged Mysteries. Like Shadow, Doodle manages to get into a lot of trouble, and in this scene from Dog-Nabbed, he is lost in the woods.

“I awake several times in the night, once to the haunting sound of coyotes. I can’t tell if it’s the same pack I heard earlier or not, but I snuggle down in my hole, glad they’re too far away to be a danger. Another time, the stench—there’s really no other word—of a skunk assaults my nose. I lift my head to see one waddling to the creek. I cornered a skunk once in my service dog days. Not a good experience. Let’s just say, Lesson Learned. I watch it from my hiding place without moving.”

Okay, maybe I was indulging in authorial wishful thinking when I wrote that. I suspect for Shadow, and for most dogs, the lesson will never be learned. So we’ve once again restocked our supplies of peroxide and baking soda.

In case any of you have a calamitous skunk encounter—and, really, is there any other kind?—here’s the formula.

It works. And it’s cheaper than the commercial skunk deodorizers on the market, which can be a good thing if you happen to have a big dog with a long coat.

Especially one who, unlike Doodle, happens to be Lesson Impaired when it comes to skunks.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

On Dogs and Mother’s Day

by Susan J. Kroupa

I don't need a national holiday in order to miss my mother, who passed away five years ago, or to miss my children and grandchildren, who live too far away.

When my children were still at home, I had a love-hate relationship with Mother's Day. Sure, there was the chance for a dinner I didn't have to cook, but it often came packaged with depressingly exalted visions of mothers and motherhood that made me cringe. Or cry.

But now that my kids are out of the house, I'm less ambivalent and more hopeful about Mother's Day. Because it can mean phone calls. The kind where you hear your child's voice on the other end rather than see words from them in a text message box.

Doodle, the labradoodle narrator of the Doodlebugged mysteries, wouldn't understand.

In fact, in Bed-Bugged, the first book of the series, he's baffled by ten-year-old Molly's obsession with her mother, who disappeared when Molly was only three. Molly keeps a book of photographs of the important events from her life, hoping that one day she'll be able to give it to her mother. Hoping, really, that one day her mother will want the book, will want to be back in her life.

In the scene below, Molly digs out some treasures she's hidden in a trunk and shows them to Doodle. explaining why she keeps them secret from her father, the man Doodle calls “the boss.”

"I can’t tell Dad, because he says she’s probably gone back to Mexico to be with her family and is never coming back and the sooner I accept that the happier I’ll be.”

Still lost here. What are we talking about?

“I don’t even know what part of Mexico her family is from.” Molly points to a bright paper that hangs on the wall near her computer. “She could be in any of the cities on that map. Or maybe in a town too small to even make it on the map.”

She sighs and shuts the book and buries it again deep in the chest, and I’m thinking maybe it’s time to resume my nap. But she brings out something else. Another paper, this one looking like what the boss calls mail, the source of many of the bills he complains about.

She pulls a smaller paper out from the covering one and carefully opens it. Inside is a photo of a woman and a lock of hair. “My mom,” Molly whispers. “She called me María. That’s what Dad told me. María Maureen Hunter. Spanish, Irish, English. A blend. Kind of like a labradoodle, I guess.”

Again, no clue what she means, but I thoroughly sniff the photo. Paper and Molly, of course, like before, but the hair holds the faintest scent of another human. I linger over it, letting it fix in my memory even though I’m not sure why this makes Molly sad. Some type of human thing, I guess. I haven’t given my mother a second thought since I left her as a pup.

Doodle doesn't worry about the future the way humans do. "Live for the now is my motto," he likes to say. Probably a healthy philosophy, but for humans, to be a parent is to live in the past, the present, and the future all at once. I can't help but remember, when I look at my grown children, how they once fit in the crook of my arm, how they wobbled with their first step. I can't help but imagine what evils might befall them if I, as their mother, failed to ward off dangers with preemptive worrying.

My mother used to joke about birds tossing the fledglings out of the nest. "Just you wait," she'd say, smiling. "When it comes time to leave the nest, if you don't do it on your own, we'll help." For all the smiles, she meant it, because she believed that good parenting meant raising children to be happy, independent adults.

But it didn't mean that she quit caring or worrying over her children, just as I can't keep from doing the same with mine. Independence, it seems, can be a one-way road.

I've often wondered if one of the things that charms us so much about dogs (and other pets) is that they are like children who never grow up. No good parent would ever wish that for a child. But no good pet owner hopes to see the family dog get a job and move to another state.

Still, pets or not, most mothers miss their children, and children, young and old, miss their mothers living and dead. Hallmark understands this.

Doodle wouldn't. But then he's a dog.

*Bed-Bugged is on sale May 10-12 for only $0.99! Read the book bestselling author Virginia Smith calls, “A triumphant beginning to a series that I hope will have many, many stories to come.” Amazon ◊ Barnes & Noble ◊ Kobo ◊ iTunes

**This originally ran on May 10, 2014 at www.susankroupa.com.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Safe, Sound, & Up-to-Date by Susan Kroupa

When my phone rang, I was up in the mountains near Kingman, Arizona at the memorial service for my mother. It was snowing, seven inches on the ground and the air clotted with fat snowflakes.

I peered at the screen, not recognizing the number. “Hello,” I said.

“Do y’all have a dog named Shadow?” the voice asked.

“Yes.” My heart started to pound.

The lady was calling from Virginia. Shadow, my very independent labradoodle, had followed the woman’s daughters to her home, about a mile and a half from where we lived.

Fortunately, the story had a happy ending, mostly because Shadow had an ID tag. The very kind lady offered to return Shadow, and my adult son, who’d been (ostensibly) watching him, promised to keep better tabs on him. And we learned our lesson: always kennel Shadow when we travel.

Another happy ending story: a friend recently posted on Facebook the escapades of two dogs, hers and her neighbor’s, who broke out of their yards in pursuit of some deer and vanished. Neither dog was wearing any ID tags or had a microchip, something both owners have since remedied. She and her neighbor finally found the escape artists a few days later at the local animal shelter.

Most stories about dogs landing in shelters don’t have these kinds of endings.

Just within this last year, three friends in our small rural area have lost dogs. None of the dogs was wearing an ID tag or had a microchip. Only one of the three was recovered.

In Dog-Nabbed, the third book in the Doodlebugged mystery series, Doodle, the trouble-prone labradoodle narrator, ends up in several different shelters. As part of my research, I visited our local animal shelter and interviewed the animal control officer, a compassionate woman with a difficult job. The visit to the place was sobering enough. Long rows of sad and desperate canine faces peered out at me from behind their cages. And during the interview, I learned some alarming statistics. A dog who ends up in a shelter with no ID has half of the allotted time in a shelter as one with identification. That time frame can be very short, sometimes only a few days if the dog is deemed unadoptable and the shelter is crowded.

An unsurprising headline from http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/shelterchip.htm states “Microchips Result in High Rate of Return of Shelter Animals to Owners.” How high? According to the article, based on researched published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 20 times higher for cats, and 2.5 times higher for dogs. Even so, the study found that “no animal identification is more effective than a tag on a collar that includes the pet’s name and the owner’s phone number.”

An ID tag with a phone number costs about $7 at our local PetSense. It’s inexpensive enough that I buy several to put on spare collars, so that if Shadow’s collar gets wet or, say, skunked, (it can happen!) he’s always has ID.

But here’s the thing about microchips and ID tags: the contact information needs to be current. If your microchip registration lists an address you moved away from three years ago, or the number on an ID tag has since been disconnected, it won’t help your pet at all.

“Often we scan the microchip, but the address has changed and we have no way of contacting the owner,” said the control officer.

As soon as I finished my interview, I rushed home to double-check that all the information listed on my dog’s license and microchip were up to date. They were, but I decided it was worth my peace of mind to schedule a call to Avid every year and make sure. Because I don’t want Shadow to have the experiences Doodle has in Dog-Nabbed. Or worse.

In the excerpt below, Doodle has been taken from one shelter only to land in another.

So, all in all, this new shelter is a much better place. Still, when I burrow down into the sweet-smelling wood shavings at the end of the day, my nose filled with the scents of new people, new dogs, new surroundings, I wish I were back with Molly and the boss.

Suddenly that longing for Molly, for the boss, for home, cannot be contained. I sit up and let out a long, mournful howl. Which might have been a mistake because some of the other dogs respond with howls of their own. And of course I have to answer them. And they have to answer back. Pretty soon we’re howling up a storm, almost sounding like a pack of coyotes, except instead of howling at the moon on a frosty night, free to roam at will, we’re stuck in our cages.

The side door opens and yellow light floods the barn. “Hey guys, take it easy,” Henry grumbles. “It’ll get better for y’all. I promise. Go to sleep.”

And then it’s dark again, and we all curl down into our bedding for the night.

Doodle, of course, has the author on his side, and I don’t think it’s too much a spoiler to say things work out for him in the end.

But a dog without ID? That story rarely has a happy ending.

~~~

Sunday, February 8, 2015

The Times They Are A Changin’...by Author Susan Kroupa

Shadow’s barks, urgent in their “this is important” tone, made me look outside with curiosity. Outside, the air was a chilly seven degrees and the wind made the “feels like” temperature well below zero. What could he be barking at? He was at the end of the driveway, edging forward and then darting back as if something might be after him.

In warmer weather, I might have worried about a bear. We saw one from our dining room window the October before, and once in early summer down by the creek. And Shadow’s voice those times had the same urgent quality.

“What could he be barking at?” I asked my husband.

“Maybe it’s a toad,” he replied.

Okay. It’s true that bears haven’t been the only thing to render Shadow nearly hysterical. There was the time (he was still a pup) he sounded so hysterical we were sure Something Was Seriously Wrong. We rushed outside to find the object of his attentions: a small toad, blinking impassively while Shadow, his nose six inches from the little critter, rang the air with his alarms. And then there was the turtle. Actually there were several turtles.

So, given that history and the fact that seven degrees isn’t the kind of weather I’m dying to be outside in, I let him bark for a while. Finally, I pulled on my boots and suited up and trudged down to the end of the drive to see what was up.

Sitting along the edge of the road, across the street from our neighbor’s home (which Shadow feels is his to protect as well as our own) were two large dark green garbage bags. It looked like our neighbors had signed up for a trash service.

“Seriously?” I asked Shadow. “Garbage bags?”

I could see in a second what they were, but all Shadow saw was that something in his world was different. An awareness of change, of something new or different in the environment is generally considered a sign of intelligence in animals, humans included. Shadow was once again proving he’s no dummy. He didn’t recognize the bags for what they were, and he was doing his best to alert us the Something Has Changed.

I laughed at him, because I could see how benign the change was. But, thinking about it, I realized I often react to change in much the same way: with fear and apprehension, imagination magnifying the possible negative effects with no idea how benign a certain change may or may not be.

And, to give him credit, the next week when the bags appeared, he didn’t even give them a second glance, ignoring them as if to say, “I’m so over that.” He quickly adapted and that made me wonder just who really had the last laugh between us.

Because when I think about all the fear, worry, and negative thoughts I’ve expended just because something has changed—or worse, worrying about the fact that something might change—I wish I had his ability to quickly adapt.

Doodle, the narrator of the Doodlebugged mysteries, is a catalyst for and often a creator of change in the lives of the humans he lives with. In Bed-Bugged, the first in the series, “the boss” Josh Hunter has the courage to give up a dead-end job in the Appalachian mountains and move with his ten-year-old daughter, Molly, to Arlington to start a new business. It’s a big change, and only the first of many, because Doodle’s nose and Molly’s independence lead the two of them into all sorts of trouble. Doodle is the kind of dog that embodies or perhaps generates the Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times.”

But Doodle, like his real-life counterpart Shadow, recognizes change and moves on. “Live for the now,” is his motto. He doesn’t spend time worrying about the future or obsessing about the past.

Good advice for all of us. Every day we are barraged with shouts that the sky is falling: in politics, in our laws, in the weather, in the publishing world . . . the list goes on and on. And while some of these changes might be the equivalent of a bear, they’re more often the toads along the highway of life. We can save a lot of energy if we don’t over-react, if we, like our canine friends, learn to acknowledge change and move on.

~~~

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Advertising Gone Native

by Susan Kroupa

Native advertising. Ever heard of the term? I hadn’t until recently when I clicked on a link about native advertising thinking it was going to be about Native Americans. I wasn’t even close. The term means a blending of news and advertising in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish one from the other. Click on any “news” site today, and you’ll be flooded with lists: ten foods you must eat to be healthy, seven foods to avoid at all cost, eight ways to look younger, etc. It can be difficult to determine whether or not a list happens to be funded by one or more of the things it promotes, but the chances are high that it is.

Between native advertising and social media’s racing from one cause to another—just click on your favorite site to see today’s candidates for admiration and for condemnation—we’re flooded with information. Careers are made; careers are destroyed and straining truth from the silt in the flood waters is pretty much a hopeless proposition. As Theodore Roszak famously wrote, “Data data everywhere but not a thought to think.”

Of course, Doodle, the labradoodle narrator of the Doodlebugged mysteries, doesn’t know and certainly doesn’t care much about social media. Doodle works as a bed bug detection dog for the “boss”, Josh Hunter, but his independence, mirrored in the boss’s ten-year-old daughter, Molly, often gets the two of them in trouble. Being a dog, he takes things literally. Truth is to be found in scents, in body language, in tone of voice. But mostly in scents. If false news had an odor, Doodle would be all over it. For example, Bad-Mouthed, the fourth book in the series opens with Doodle onstage in a Christmas pageant, when his nose tells him something:

“I smell a rat. That's a phrase that humans use to mean something isn't right, at least that's what I gather from the TV shows Molly watches, but I mean that I smell a rat, a live one, and he's not very far away.” Doodle never doubts his nose. But when he takes definitive action against the rat, he throws the boss and Molly into a spotlight, a place where the videos of a popular blogger might end up destroying the boss’s business. Native news rears its ugly head.

And then there’s all this Christmas stuff, something Doodle finds baffling. He understands gifts—they’re the human equivalent of dog treats—but why does everyone want a “white” Christmas? Does the day come in colors? And how come dogs never get mentioned in any of the Christmas carols but sheep—such silly creatures--are talked about all the time?

Add in a lonely boy, who wishes to go live with his out-of-state father, a devastating fire, and some lost dogs, and Doodle has his work cut out for him. But it takes Molly’s computer sleuthing and courageous actions in addition to Doodle’s nose to distinguish fact from fiction and set things right.

Bad-Mouthed will be available in paperback and ebook formats in early December from most retailers. Visit me on my webpage, or sign up for my newsletter (no spam or address sharing ever, I promise) and be the first to know when it comes out. Meanwhile, Laurel Fork Press is currently running a promotion of Bed-Bugged, the first Doodlebugged mystery. For a limited time, you can get a copy for free on almost any site—(here’s the Amazon one) and learn just how Doodle got himself into the bed bug detection business, and, more importantly, how he met the boss and Molly.

Is this native advertising? Nah, it’s straight promotion. But keep an eye out for the next MSN news article, Six Books About Labradoodles That Will Help You Lose Weight and Find Romance. Bad-Mouthed just might be mentioned! J

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Making Sure "The Nose Never Lies"

by Susan Kroupa

"The nose never lies" is a favorite phrase of Doodle, the narrator of the Doodlebugged mysteries. Doodle trusts his nose completely, but, in Out-Sniffed, he fails an odor recognition test and the humans around him wonder just how good a nose he has.

Odor recognition tests? Probably not a familiar term unless you're in a business or organization using sniffer dogs. Then they're crucial, because a dog/handler team that can obtain a certification from a reliable organization has proven skills. Or, as Josh Hunter, Doodle's "boss" puts it, certification for a dog/handler team means "I'm not just a guy with a dog and a business license."

The tests are designed to make sure that dogs properly alert on the target scent. Whether a team searches for narcotics, mold, explosives, dead bodies, food or contraband (for US Customs), or, yes, bed bugs, the team must take odor recognition tests to verify that the dog finds the target scent. And—just as important—that the dog alerts on nothing else.

The trick in the certification tests is to make sure that there are protocols to ensure the accuracy of what is being tested. For example, the World Detector Dog Organization (WDDO), and the National Entomology Scent Detection Canine Association (NESDCA) require the targets or "hides" be placed in the exam area for at least 30 minutes before the test, to allow time for the scent to pool enough that it can be detected.

The test must be double blind, with neither the handler nor the proctor knowing where the hides are placed. Remember Clever Hans, the horse who seemed to be a math whiz but actually was adept at reading his owner's body language? The double blind test seeks to prevent that. In addition, the handler is not allowed to touch or move anything in the room, or indicate to the dog through body language where to look other than to make sure a dog thoroughly clears a room. A sure sign of an improperly trained dog is one that does not independently search but keeps looking to the handler for guidance.

Some of the hides must contain distracters, often termites or other insects, sometimes food, to make sure the dog isn't alerting on anything but the target. A dog must only find live bugs. Dead bugs don't count. The find has to indicate a current infestation, not the residual scents from a past one. And pseudo scents—commercial products that mimic a scent and are used for training—are not allowed. Finally, the test proctors, or judges, must be experienced in scent detection and have no financial or other interest in the outcome.

Of course, all these rules make a mystery writer immediately wonder how one could get around them. Because any organization can have members who are crooks.

"So how can you fake a test?" was one of the first questions I asked Doug Summers when I interviewed him as part of the research for Out-Sniffed.

Summers, along with Bill Whistine, helped train one of the first bed bug detection dogs in the U.S. (in 2005) and has first-hand knowledge of the protocols, issues, and controversies surrounding odor recognition tests for bed bug dogs.

I wanted to know how a test could be manipulated either to pass or fail a team. In a highly entertaining interview, Summers told me funny and sometimes hair-raising anecdotes about the life of a scent-detection dog handler. And he gave me several ingenious suggestions that made their way into the book.

You can watch a video of a dog/handler certification test on http://www.wddo.org/certification/.

And, if you'd like to find out just how such tests might be compromised, read Out-Sniffed, on sale this week. You can find links to copies in most formats at http://susankroupa.com/books/ or on http://www.laurelforkpress.com, or on my Amazon Author Page at http://amazon.com/author/susankroupa.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Excerpt from Scapegoat by Susan J. Kroupa

A haunting retelling of a rainmaker myth, Scapegoat is set in the barren mesas of northern Arizona, after a brutal war has destroyed modern civilization. The story originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy. (Oct 1996).

Scapegoat

(Excerpt)

The night Nuva was born was like too many other nights that autumn. The wind raged across the land shrieking like a spirit come face to face with Masau, God of Death, himself. But it was barren, as all the winds that season had been. It brought the cold, but no snow, not even a cloud to shadow the mesas. A barren, old-woman wind.

Tiyo huddled against a juniper trunk where he could keep a wary eye out for coyotes and cursed. The wind meant a miserable night and most likely his uncle's wrath the next day. Mana, fat as a cow though she was only a goat, had been restless and crying all afternoon, and Tiyo was sure she was ready to kid, goats always picking the worst weather for birthing. Her babies would have rough going in this cold. And if they died, his uncle would probably blame him, as if it were his fault that Mana had bred late and had to kid in the fall when the wind blew endlessly, sucking the life from the land.

He caught a motion among the goats bedded down in the hollow. His hand tightened around his bow. But it wasn't a coyote. Mana bleated and struggled to her feet then sank back to the ground, as if Tiyo's very fears of her kidding had brought it to pass. Grabbing his bundle of rags, he ran to her side.

Now his uncle's best goat--she usually had triplets--would probably lose her kids and maybe even her own life to the cold. If he had been closer to home, he could have sheltered her in the goat pen that sat below Second Mesa. He could have run up the twisting, rocky trail to the village on top, to his uncle's house on the plaza, and sought help. But there hadn't been any grass or forage within a day's journey of the mesa since the snows stopped coming, and it seemed that every day Tiyo took the goats farther from home.

Still, his uncle expected miracles and Tiyo wished with all his heart that he could provide one. He didn't want to see the anger twist his uncle's face or hear the words spat out like rattlesnake venom. Hear him ask, to anyone within earshot, why he had to be burdened with such a clumsy child, too young to be any use, why Tiyo's mother couldn't have raised her son before she died.

Mana heaved, breaking her water, and the first kid came sliding out. Tiyo rubbed at it furiously with a rag. A second kid followed and then a third. He dumped the bundle of rags over one while he dried the other, racing against the wind's deadly bite. Finally, they were dry. He tried to coax Mana to her feet so that the babies could nurse. But Mana wouldn't budge.

"Get up!" he said angrily. Couldn't she hear her babies crying as they shivered in the cold?

Then he saw it. Another kid, a fourth, slid to the ground, bloody and still. Dead, he thought, but instinctively picked it up, wiped its face and blew gently into its nostrils. With a snort and a shudder, it began to breathe.

Mana struggled to her feet and nuzzled her babies, calling to them in urgent, throaty tones while they bobbed underneath her thrusting for milk.

Tiyo held the last born in his arms. A doe, so tiny that with her long Nubian ears she looked more like a rabbit than a goat. He knew what his uncle would want. He'd want her dressed out and in a pot of boiled corn before midday.

"Puny," he'd say. "She'll only rob the milk from the strong ones.

And there was no milk to spare. Not while the Cloud People ignored their prayers and the land lay gasping for water.

The doe trembled in his arms as he fingered the handle of the knife at his side. But then she suddenly cried out and nuzzled him, and he was undone; the cry was too close to a human infant's. Releasing the knife, he rooted through the pile of rags for a clean one and rubbed her dry. He pulled away one of the other kids and gave her a turn at Mana's teat.

Finally, Mana lay down heavily and the other three kids crowded against her. Tiyo tucked the little doe inside his shirt and eased to the ground, bending over Mana and her kids to use his back as a windbreak. Suddenly tired, he forgot about coyotes and wind and even about his mother, and fell asleep.

The silence woke him, the silence and the sun on his back. He sat up, stiff and disorientated, jolting the little doe awake so that she cried out in a high, plaintive voice.

He put the little doe on the ground to try her legs. She was pure white and her coat glowed in the light of the rising sun. Watching her stagger about, the only white against the dull browns and greens of the desert, he named her. To the west, he could see the sacred mountains that his people called Nuvatukya'ovi--snow-covered peaks--but they had not been white once in the last three winters.

So he named the little doe for his heart's desire, for his people's desperate need. He called her Nuva, snow, and plotted to hide her from his uncle.

Read more from Susan J. Kroupa on Writers & Other Animals ~

Susan J. Kroupa is an award-winning author whose fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, and in a variety of professional anthologies, including Bruce Coville's Shapeshifters.

She has lived and worked on both the Hopi and Navajo reservations. Her non-fiction publications include features about environmental issues and Hopi Indian culture for The Arizona Republic, High Country News, American Forests, and the Bristol Herald-Courier.

She now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Southwestern Virginia with her husband, two cats, and a trouble-prone labradoodle who's the inspiration for her Doodlebugged mysteries.

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