If you didn’t know by know, dogs are the best thing to happen in this world. That’s just my opinion but it’s basically the truth, so just roll with it. No matter if you’re feeling awful or happy, puppers will be there to match your mood and make you feel good, no matter what.
Let’s talk about all the ways in the world that dogs help humans – not only do they comfort us in times of need, they also protect us when we feel threatened, or comfort us when we’re sick. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried on a dog or simply had my roommate’s dog hang out with me when I was sick in bed. They’re super empathetic and can tell what’s going on without you having to tell them a word. Super powers? Probably.
Dogs also have a keen sense of smell and can be trained to do almost anything (minus Lulu the CIA trainee dropout because she needed to live her own fabulous life and we can’t fault her for that). So, of course it wasn’t a surprise that a K-9 friend would help spot a despicable threat to a whole industry.
This dog helped sniff out a nasty bug that were threatening crops:
This is Chili, the goodest girl that was ever hired at Nature Fresh Farms in Leamington, Ont. Mysteriously, the green bell pepper crops were dying quickly and farmers couldn’t figure out what was wrong and who was the culprit. They were searching for answers but weren’t have any luck. This really affected North America’s green pepper industry and did $75 million in damages to Nature Farm Fresh last year. They were determined to find what was going wrong in their crops.
What they’ve come to find out is that there was a tiny insect, known as the pepper weevil, that smuggled its way into Canada from harvests that came in from Mexico. What’s even worse about this bugs is the fact that they weren’t detectable by human eye and they reproduced even more quickly when pesticides were used.
That’s where Chili and her trainer, Tina Heide, come in to save the day. Chili is a Belgian shepherd that was raised to be a working dog. Cam Lyons, IPM technician and research and development of Nature Fresh has said, ““Dogs are a very intelligent animal. Many worker dogs are trained to recognize and discover scents associated with drugs or bombs, so it seemed possible to train a dog to recognize pepper weevil.”
