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In this episode of K9 Conservationists, Kayla speaks with Lauren DeGreef about the upcoming Canine Olfaction and Detection Science Conference.
Science Highlight: None this week!
Where to find Lauren: Facebook | LinkedIn
Links Mentioned in the Episode:
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Summary
By Maddie L
Conference Overview:
The Canine SCI Con, an inaugural event, unites experts across various fields to delve into canine detection and olfaction. The conference, hosted at Florida International University’s Biscayne Bay campus from May 23 to 25, aims to become a biannual gathering. While live streaming isn’t an option due to time zone constraints, on-demand access will be available for global participants.
Organizers:
Lauren DeGreef, a canine detection specialist in chemistry, and Craig Schultz, an expert in the field, co-edited “Canines: The Original Biosensors,” serving as the inspiration for the conference. This collaboration brings together leading minds in the realm of canine science.
Conference Highlights:
The conference features a stellar lineup of speakers, offering insights into various aspects of canine detection. Notable presentations include:
- Dr. Powell A. Product-Tiedemann’s keynote address discussing the evolution of canine detection science.
- Dr. Kenneth Burton’s exploration of dogs versus machines.
- Dr. Melissa Singletary’s examination of dogs’ capabilities and limitations as sensors.
- In-depth discussions on specialized areas such as insect olfaction and dog fitness.
Conservation and Environmental Focus:
For those interested in conservation and environmental applications, the conference includes presentations on:
- Oil spill remediation with canines led by Paul Bunker and Michelle Karpinski.
Landmine remediation in Cambodia, featuring Dr. DE Schoon and the potential use of dogs and rats.
- These topics on discrimination and generalization in canine detection hold value across various disciplines.
Lauren’s Presentation:
Lauren DeGreef presents “What’s That Smell? Canine Detection Chemistry,” where she explores the fundamentals of canine detection chemistry. She shares recent research findings, including fentanyl detection and the importance of mixture training to enhance canine detection proficiency.
On-Demand Access:
In case you can’t attend the conference in person, look forward to on-demand access to recorded sessions, ensuring the valuable knowledge shared is accessible to all.
The Canine Detection and Olfaction Science Conference offers a unique opportunity to explore the intersection of science and canine detection, bringing together experts from different disciplines to share their knowledge and insights. Whether you’re a scientist, handler, or simply interested in the world of detection dogs, this conference promises a wealth of valuable information and networking opportunities.
Transcript (AI-Generated)
Kayla Fratt 00:09
Hello and welcome to the K9Conservationists podcast, where we’re positively obsessed with conservation detection dogs. Join us every week to discuss detection, training, canine welfare, conservation, biology and everything in between. I’m Kayla Fratt, one of the cofounders of K9conservationists, where we train dogs to detect data for land managers, researchers, agencies and NGOs. Today, I’m super excited to be talking to Lauren DeGreef about an upcoming conference later this year in May at Florida International University. So Lauren, welcome to the podcast. And why don’t you start out telling us a little bit about the conference. And then we’ll pivot into a little bit more about your recommend for anyone who’s not familiar with you?
Lauren DeGreef 00:43
Sure, thank you, Kayla, thank you so much for having me. And I’m really excited to talk about the conference. The conference is called the Canine Detection and Olfaction Science Conference, or Canine SCI Con, as we are calling it, we are really excited to have a large collection of scientists from a variety of different fields all come to talk to us about things related to Canine detection, and olfaction.
Kayla Fratt 01:15
Yeah, and I gotta tell everyone at home, if you can’t tell I have so much FOMO about not being able to make it to this conference, I spent a bit of time trying to figure out if I was going to be able to make it work. But I will be in Latin America, and it lands in this really unfortunate middle ground between two trips that I already have planned to the US. It just sounds so so so amazing. So Lauren, tell us a little bit about your background, and then how that kind of relates to where this conference actually got started. Because this is the first year it’s happening, right?
Lauren DeGreef 01:45
This is the first year we and we are very sad that you’re missing it, but we hope to make it biannual. So you should be able to make it maybe to us in two years. But a little bit about myself. I am a chemist by trade, technically a forensic chemist is what my PhD is in. But since grad school, I have been studying chemistry as it relates to Canine detection. I started in graduate school, and I loved it. And I went on to briefly work at the FBI with their Evidence Response Team, where I met Craig Schultz, and I bring this up because Greg Schultz is helping me host the conference this year. But after I did FBI, I spent almost 10 years at the Naval Research Laboratory, working with odor as it relates to mostly explosives, but also some as some narcotics, particularly fentanyl, as it relates to Canine detection, and also instrument detection. And then I recently finished at NRL and moved to back to Florida International University where I got my PhD, where I’m currently an associate professor of forensic chemistry. And I’m continuing my research in canine detection, except now I can broaden it. Now that I’m in academia, I can broaden it to detection of pretty much anything I want to study. So right now we’re studying human remains detection. Still, with looking at fentanyl, still looking at explosives, we’re also looking at crude oil detection from oil spills, all kinds of great stuff.
Kayla Fratt 03:12
Wow, your job is just so amazing. And I know as soon as I started getting into the world of detection dogs, I started kicking myself for not having taken biochemistry or anything beyond organic chemistry one and undergrad. Because it’s just this kind of It feels to me like a black box of my job right now that feels very inaccessible. And there’s so little research on the conservation side about the chemistry of so many of our target odors. But maybe one day we’ll we’ll manage to get get you in on one of our more interesting projects and learn more from you and your side of your side of academia, I guess on on this question. So that’s very, very neat. Thank you.
Lauren DeGreef 03:54
Now that I’m in academia, I do hope to be able to work with people like you would be great, because there’s so many areas of Canada detection that had been untouched by the chemistry side of the science.
Kayla Fratt 04:07
Yeah, definitely. And I know, it’s something we think about a lot in the conservation doc world, as far as you know, probably in a lot of ways similar to human remains. There’s a lot of unknowns about the variability that we have within our target odors. And it’s something we think about a lot when maybe we’re looking at species within the same genus, and, you know, really wondering, like how much overlap there may or may not be, which compounds are the most important for the dogs and, you know, yeah, just there’s just so much potential there to be explored. But to me, it hasn’t been very much yet. So where did the idea for this conference come about? How did this come up? I can’t imagine that this is something that’s easy to organize.
Lauren DeGreef 04:50
So in January 2022, I released a multi authored book along with Craig Schultz, who was my other editor, called Canines: The Original Biosensors. And there were chapters on all different things related to Canine detection. And it was considering, can we think of the canine like an instrument? If so, what do we need to consider? But a canine is not an instrument? And what does that mean, we need to consider in helping their detection, improving their detection proficiency. So it ended up being a small project that became a huge project, we ended up with over 800 pages in the book and a whole lot of wonderful authors. And Craig and I talked a lot amongst ourselves about wouldn’t it be great if we could get all of these wonderful authors in the same room, and lo and behold, with help of my university, Florida International University, we were able to do so and bring this conference together in support of the book. But going forward after this, we just hope that it would be a regular regularly occurring biannual conference.
Kayla Fratt 05:55
Gosh, yeah, well, that’s amazing. And that’s definitely one of the books that’s been sitting in my Amazon wishlist for quite a while now. I didn’t realize it was 800 pages that both makes me more and less excited to actually order it and get into it. So tell us a little bit about what let’s let’s start with some of the basic details, actually. When is this conference? Where is it are their virtual options? And where do people go to sign up?
Lauren DeGreef 06:19
So the conference is going to be held in Miami at Florida International University’s Biscayne Bay campus, which is right on the bay, the conference room actually overlooks the bay, and it’s it’s quite stunning. We’re very lucky to have such a great space. And it is going to be May 23. Through 25th, we still have registrations for sale, we’ll be selling them right up until about a week, maybe five days prior. So we are still confirming our virtual options. I have not actually announced this yet. So you guys will be the first place to announce. But I do think we’re going to be able to do on demand, which would come out probably the day or two after the conference. So no live streaming options. But we do hope to be able to sell it on demand. I know that there’s a lot of been a lot of requests from people in other countries that aren’t able to make it. And we just didn’t think that streaming would be helpful. If you’re in Australia or in Europe, you really don’t want to be listening to the conference in the middle of the night. So on demand seemed like a better and also a cheaper option for those who can’t make it.
Kayla Fratt 07:22
Oh, that makes perfect sense. And I know even my experience of you know, attending clicker Expo and a couple other big conferences, remotely throughout COVID. I very rarely actually attended a live even though it was an option. Generally it just fit better into my schedule to watch a talk what I kind of did for the months following clicker Expo last year was I watched one talk as I cooked and ate dinner every Monday. And that just works better for me. So that’s, that’s really great. I’m really excited to hear that I’m a we get to break the news and be that that’s going to be an option. Because I think I’m definitely personally going to be signing up for that I really, really don’t want to miss out on this. So tell us a little bit about I know we probably can’t go through every single speaker and what they’re going to be touching on but who are some of the ones that you’re most excited about. And the next I’m going to ask if there’s anyone who’s conservation specific that our audience is going to be most excited to hear about.
Lauren DeGreef 08:12
It’s going to be very hard for me to pick which ones are my favorite because an overwhelming number of people that I admire in the field. So I’m just going to hit on a few but I can’t necessarily say they’re my favorites. So our keynote speaker is Dr. Powell, a product Tiedemann who is going to be speaking to us about the direction that canine science canine detection science has been going over the last few decades from the late 90s ’til today. Then we’re going to also hear from Dr. Kenneth Burton, who’s going to talk about dogs versus machines. We have Dr. Melissa Singletary from Auburn University who’s going to be talking about capabilities and limitations as dogs as sensors. We also have some people from the Naval Research Laboratory that are going to be looking talking more about vapor as a something to detect. We have a really interesting talk on insect olfaction by Dr. Saha at Michigan State University. So just comparing how insects olfaction works compared to dogs. We have Dr. Cindy Otto talking about fitness of dogs. Dr. Aaron Perry talking about nutrition, so many things. And then Craig and I are both also giving talks. It just the list goes on that was just the first day.
Kayla Fratt 09:31
Oh my goodness. Yeah, I just pulled up the list. And yeah, we’ve got you’ve got people from really all over the world, all sorts of different disciplines. And I mean, almost every single one of them has a PhD, which you know fits with the theme of science. I am so excited to be able to attend to this virtually and learn from all of these people. So then pivoting obviously you know things like nutrition and sensing and fitness apply all over the detection dog world but do we have Anyone who’s specifically coming from more of like, agriculture conservation environmental lenses to this as speakers.
Lauren DeGreef 10:08
Alright, so we have two different speakers that are going to be talking about oil spill remediation. Using canines. For that we have Mr. Paul Bunker, and then also one of my wonderful PhD students, Michelle Karpinski are gonna be talking about that. I also have Dr. DE schoon, who’s going to be talking about landmine remediation in Cambodia minefields, which should be really interesting.
Kayla Fratt 10:31
Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s such an important work. And are they? Are they using dogs or rats? for that?
Lauren DeGreef 10:37
She will be talking about the use of dogs. And I know she’ll be touching on the use of rats as well.
Kayla Fratt 10:43
Oh, very exciting. Well, yeah. And we’re always at Paul Bunker is definitely a friend of the pod here. We’ve had him on a couple of times. And I’m always pestering him for for more episodes, so I’m really excited to hear he’ll be speaking. But there’s also, I mean, genuinely so many new names here that I don’t recognize, or maybe have a tickle of recognition, which is always really exciting when looking at a conference list to just know that you’re going to learn so much and have your mind really open and not necessarily hear from kind of the same folks that you, you know, maybe are always on the same podcast circuit or are already, you know, kind of within your network. So what are what are you doing you speaking about?
Lauren DeGreef 11:19
So I’m going to be speaking on the beginning of the day on Wednesday, the second day, and my talk is called What’s that smell canine detection chemistry. So I’m going to be going over the basics of Canada detection chemistry for all of the handlers in the room. And then I’m gonna be going a little bit into some of my ongoing research projects or recent research projects. I’m going to be talking about fentanyl detection, as well as some research that I’ve done recently, looking at the importance of mixture training, to improve canine detection proficiency.
Kayla Fratt 11:51
Ooh, interesting mixture training as in like the cocktail method, or what do you mean by mixture training?
Lauren DeGreef 11:58
That is a good question. No, I do not mean the duck cocktail method. Thank you for pointing that out. What I mean is yes, your dog can find the odor they’re supposed to find when it’s alone. But in reality, it’s probably not the only odor out there, it might be covered in something wrapped in something contaminated with something. And it improves your dog’s proficiency if your dog gets to experience their odor, when it is when the odor itself is mixed with other odors. So I just did some recent research on this that I’ve published. And so we’re going to talk about that as well.
Kayla Fratt 12:31
Oh, wow, that’s so neat. And certainly something we think about a lot in the conservation dog world, and sometimes for fur, because we want to ensure that the dogs can find something and sometimes actually, because we’re hoping that the dogs don’t find stuff that’s too mixed up. Or we need to think carefully about rewarding the dogs in some situations, I know, you know, we think about multispecies carnivore latrines, where, for example, the dog finds a puma scat that is in a tree. And that is also frequented by coyotes, or red fox or something. For some dogs that can be problematic to reward them in those situations. And then the dogs will also go on to start finding red fox on their own, or at least that’s the theory in some cases. And then there’s also always the question of, if one animal eats the scat of another animal and then poops it out. Do you want your dog to find that? Yes or no? Yeah, we’ve got all sorts of interesting little things within that. Yeah, go ahead.
Lauren DeGreef 13:25
That is a really that those are really, really interesting. And there’s going to be a handful of speakers that kind of are going to touch on discrimination and generalization. Because realistically, it’s a balance. And that’s a lot what you’re talking about is how broad do we want them to generalize? Or how specific do we want them to be? And we can tailor that through training. So I know one of the things that Paul bunker is going to be talking about is creating dogs that find can find a specific type of oil. And that’s very much like what you’re talking about is that they may, they may be trained to ignore older oil that’s been on the shore for a long time and find something specific related to a recent oil spill. But that comes across all kinds of different disciplines, where you need to make a decision about how specific or how general Do you want your dog to be? And then what training age should you use to get there?
Kayla Fratt 14:15
Yeah, oh, no. And that’s so perfect. And we’re actually right after this, maybe one episode after yours comes out. We’re kicking off a mini series on discrimination training, and, you know, with a bunch of case studies, and then some re-releases of some old episodes. So as a little teaser for our listeners, and perhaps after I watch your recordings, I’m going to be reaching out to some of the speakers and seeing if they want to come on and we this mini series might turn out to be a little bit more macro.
Lauren DeGreef 14:39
That sounds really interesting. I’ll definitely have to tune in for it.
Kayla Fratt 14:43
Yeah, well, and you know, this is this is not quite what we were supposed to be talking about today. But I think it’ll be really interesting to speak to some of the people or at least learn from the people coming to this conference on this topic because there are some kind of best practices shared within the conservation. Org world That seems to be quite different from what are considered best practices in other detection dog disciplines. And that has always been something that’s very curious to me as far as whether or not that is valid or just kind of a cultural fog that we have all seems to fall into and within the conservation dog industry, so it’ll be really, really cool to learn from folks who are not within that industry and see, yeah, whether or not it seems like it should be something that’s different, or if we’re a little bit off base by not following the trend of every every other detection dog person out there.
Lauren DeGreef 15:29
That is very interesting. And a fantastic question. It would be nice to get a definitive answer to that. That sounds like a research project on its own.
Kayla Fratt 15:39
Yeah, unfortunately. Well, fortunately for me, I’m starting my PhD in September, but I have chosen to go to more of an ecological genetics lab. So I don’t think it’s going to be a question that I get to investigate as part of my PhD, but it has been one that’s been knocking around my head for a long time. And I just chose to go the ecology route rather than more of kind of psychosomatic sensing, cognition, whatever sorts of routes. For my for my research.
Lauren DeGreef 16:04
Yes, I saw that online. And congratulations, by the way, on your big future endeavors.
Kayla Fratt 16:11
Thank you so much. I’m very excited. And we’re gonna one of these days, I’m going to actually get my ducks together to do a little episode about kind of some of the plans for the PhD, what it’ll mean for the podcast, and all that sort of stuff as well, because we’re hoping to continue, but it might have to shift things a little bit. This podcast is brought to you by our Patreon group. For as little as $3 a month, you get to ask questions for upcoming episodes, and you also get access to our Online Student Alumni Facebook group, at $10 a month, you can join monthly coaching calls and book club calls at $25 a month, you can submit video of you and your dog for kind, thoughtful discussion and feedback during each of those calls. And finally, at $50 a month, you get private coaching calls with me at each month. We also have exclusive merch for loyal patrons and occasional workshops, webinars and other secret goodies for the group. We appreciate your support. So yeah, what else do we need to know about the conference? Are there any other kind of different types of talks that people should be excited about trying to attend?
Lauren DeGreef 17:06
That’s a great question. So the base of our our conference is going to be these 30 minute talks given by the very well known people in the community. We then have breakout sessions with these 15 minute research topics where you’ll get to learn about current ongoing research from a whole variety of different people. And then we’re also going to do a few end of the day panel discussions, which will give the opportunity for the entire audience to get involved on the discussion. So we’re going to on the second day on Wednesday, we’re going to be talking about research topics and practices. Where does research need to go in this field? So there’s going to be a big group discussion about that. And then on the last day, we’re going to do two panel discussions in different rooms, one legal considerations, there’s a lot of legal issues behind canine detection, as well as we don’t want to forget the sport people. So there’s going to be a sport detection topics panel discussion as well.
Kayla Fratt 18:03
Oh, very cool. And definitely really, really interesting. I, again, I’m glad that I get to watch this on demand, because I don’t know which one of those rooms I’d rather be hitting. Those are both very interesting.
Lauren DeGreef 18:14
That is one of the reasons we are doing on demand, because I already heard people telling me that they didn’t know which breakout session to go to. So we are, but that will be the nice thing is that the attendees will also be given free access to the On Demand after for one year after the conference. And so anything that you missed, we have like a couple of breakout sessions, one where we have what I’m calling the hardcore science versus the hardcore dog session. So more fiddly science things versus more utilitarian fitness and nutrition items. And then we have other breakout sessions on a different day that are human odor related, and then a contraband related and those are going to be split up. But yeah, you’ll be able to go on demand and be able to watch both whenever you want.
Kayla Fratt 19:04
Oh, that’s amazing. And yeah, I know, I was even looking. I’m speaking at the IBC conference here in about a week. And I was looking at some of the talks that were scheduled while I was talking. And I was like, Gosh, darn it. I’m glad that they’re recorded because I’m missing some stuff because I’m giving a talk. So yeah, that’s definitely really, really exciting. So why don’t we kind of round out our discussion here with a little bit more about the keynote speaker Dr. Pamela Pratap danamon.
Lauren DeGreef 19:28
Happy to. So Dr. T. Demand comes from Texas Tech University. However, she and I actually go back really far the two of us went to grad school together. We were both in Dr. Kenneth Burton’s laboratory at Florida International University, a embarrassingly large number of years ago, but she has gone on to blaze, a trail of her own in canine science. So her keynote is a new era in canine science trailing the path from the nose to the lab bench. So she’s going to talk a lot about where canine science originally was. Back when she and I both started in this field, there was a lot of pushback against science in the canine field, there was a lot of we do this, because this is how we’ve always done this. But not necessarily because it was best practice. It was just how it’s always been done. And there was a lot of pushback about bringing science into the canine detection field. So basically, it was treated as more of an art form than a science. And then I don’t know how to say this nicely. But as people have aged out, and retired and new people have come in, there has been a movement towards the acceptance of science and in the canine field and the importance of the working together. It’s not just about the science occurring, but the science has to occur in a way that it works for the operational people. Sometimes you’ll read papers still today, where they did a very neat experiment, but for one way or another, it’s not applicable to actual operation, or it doesn’t take operational canines into account the way it was conducted. So we really want those two to work together. And so that’s what Dr. Tiedemann is going to be talking about in her plenary on the Tuesday the first day. She’s also we’re so lucky. She’s also an expert in human odor detection, and human odor trailing. And so she’s going to do a rapid overview of human scent on the Thursday, the last day as well.
Kayla Fratt 21:33
Wow, yeah, no, that first talk just sounds absolutely fascinating, something we’ve run into, we do, generally, we do a science highlight at the start of every episode. And we definitely have run into that where, you know, there’s always going to be limitations to any study, you know, maybe they only use five labs that were all from the same training center or something like that. But we’ve also run into some studies where, you know, they’re the first step. So it’s not as necessarily something that needs to be criticized. But, you know, one that I’m thinking of as a potential example of this, and I’m sure there are many, and I don’t, I don’t mean to be picking on this on this particular study at all, because I think it was a really good first step and entering answering an interesting question, what happens to a detection dogs performance, if their handler changes on them. And, you know, one of the things that I remember thinking as I was reading it was that they basically had set it up. So the dogs had always trained with the same person. And then as far as I could tell, from reading the methodology that they met that second handler on the day of testing, and about half the dogs in the study wouldn’t work at all for that second handler. And to me, that felt were pretty irrelevant to how we would ever hand off a dog to a second trainer or a second handler, or, you know, third or fourth or fifth handler. For example, when I handed my dog Barley off to my co founder, Rachel, for a season on the wind farm, you know, she shadowed me training him for a couple of weeks, I shadowed her while she was handling him for a couple of weeks. She was his normal dog sitter, he knew her, he worked really, really well for her. And I would imagine that’s probably a lot more common. For for some of these dogs are these dogs are kind of intentionally exposed to the idea of working to a lot for a lot of different people. So just one tiny example that I can see potentially really relating to that.
Lauren DeGreef 23:11
Yeah, I agree with you. I for one, I’ve never read that article. But now that you explain it, it does sound like they’re setting the dogs up to fail. And I do know, the you know, the Lisa lit study that is often talked about in our field is a similar thing, where they were really not setting something up realistic, and they were setting up for the dogs to fail. And that is a problem in our community. Not everybody trust canine detection, it is also legally a problematic to set dogs up to fail and then publish it in a peer reviewed journal.
Kayla Fratt 23:45
Yes, that was that was another paper that we’ve done as a science highlight. And that one for anyone who may or may not remember it was titled handler beliefs affect set dog outcomes. And this is the one where they have like, both a big piece of paper over blink hides. And in some cases, they also have like a full on hot dog hidden, right.
Lauren DeGreef 24:03
I don’t specifically remember I know that they had big like, they made it clear that there was something there when there wasn’t. But yeah, they made it. Yes, it did bring up issues in the canine community with having to do with handler expectations and queuing. But it wasn’t really fair the way it was done. And I would have to look at it again. I haven’t read it in probably a decade. So I’d have to look at it again to remember the specifics. Another thing that I tend to see because I obviously read a lot that have the chemistry in them, and sometimes you get chemists that maybe have never done a dog study before and they set it up as if the dog is an instrument and they forget to take into account learning. So if they rerun the same things repeatedly because they want to get a large enough sample, enough number of samples for good statistics. They forget that the dogs learn and that that will come into play and the dogs will get better at it as they go along. And so sometimes if you don’t work with, if you don’t take maybe the chemistry side and the behavior side and get all of those sides combined, you don’t necessarily get the strongest study. And I know that from personal experience. I know studies that I set up when I was in graduate school, where if I didn’t have the help of actual dog handlers and behaviorists, they would have been, oh, not very good.
Kayla Fratt 25:25
Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, there’s so there’s so much into it. And I’m really glad that we brought up you know, this idea of not just setting the dogs up to fail, which certainly can be a problem. Yeah, as you said, legally, you know, we run into it in the conservation world where researchers maybe just, you know, they’ve never heard of conservation dogs, and they’re kind of suspicious. They think that we’re just you know, girls out there out here who love our dogs, or, or guys, but a lot of us are girls. And, yeah, having papers out there like that can be potentially harmful, especially if they don’t really explain. Yeah, that they are pushing those limitations or trying to find that point of failure. Well, anyway, I’m very excited to hear more from Paola then. So tell us a little bit about some of the sponsors. Is there anyone that needs to be particularly thanks? Are you still looking for sponsors? Yeah, all that good stuff about our lovely sponsors.
Lauren DeGreef 26:14
I’m most happy to think canine census which is Robin grumbles group. They are our gold sponsor for this conference. So we are loving them. And they are all about canine science, so they are the perfect gold sponsor. We also have a handful of bronze sponsors, which include psi canine, get sent shear on canine maker, canine cats, canine pack track hits, and smart dog conferences gritty canine and redemption road canine, a lot of canines. We are all share out of sponsor spots. But we are happy to take more vendors, if anybody is interested in having a vendor booth.
Kayla Fratt 26:53
Well, excellent. That’s really good to hear. Well, thank you so much, Lauren, for coming on the show. This sounds like such an amazing opportunity. And just really exciting to have something that is not just specific to one discipline, but really highlights how science can be brought into the detection to world world more broadly, this is probably the conference that I’ve been most excited to see come up in the last couple of years, and I’m so excited we’ll be able to attend. Remind people one more time where they can go to find tickets and where they can go to learn more about you and your career and your lab if they’re so inclined.
Lauren DeGreef 27:24
Well, I’d like to thank you, Kayla, for inviting me on to let me talk about it. Because I am really excited about this conference. I feel like it’s all a dream coming true. I get all of my people in one room. I’m also some that I’ve never met before. So I think it’s going to be really exciting. At least in my little world or our little world, I should say. The website is a go.fiu.edu/k9scicon. And you can find me on Facebook or LinkedIn. And I would be happy to hook up and chat dogs with you.
Kayla Fratt 28:03
Yeah, definitely. Well, and I know I’ve found this a couple times by literally just Googling Florida science canine conference 2023. So if anyone is having a hard time remembering that ought to do it for you, as well, for everyone at home, I hope that you’re excited to join us at this conference. If you’re not in Patreon yet, or our course be sure to go ahead and join one of those two. We have discussions on our Facebook group and within Patreon all the time about stuff like this, and we will probably be doing some post conference discussions. So go ahead and pull out your wallet for both of those if you’re so inclined. And otherwise we’ll be back in your earbuds next week. Bye!