New England Splendor Tour - Day 1

Hello - I'm back!

What a great group of people to travel with and wonderful sights to see. My New England Splendor tour began on Wednesday, September 23rd and ended Saturday, October 3rd. In the next few days, I will highlight some of the places we visited and things we did. Keep your eyes
tuned to this spot!


Day 1, Wdnesday, Sept. 23rd

Left Appleton at 6:30 AM and drove move of the day. Drove through Chicago. Saw the Willis Tower (Sears Tower) in the distance. It’s the world’s tallest building with 110 stories with 6,500 to 7,000 occupants, 1.5 million tourists visit the Sears Tower sky deck annually. There are 22 TV and radio broadcast services in the Willis Tower, 25,000 miles of plumbing, 796 lavatory faucets, 43,000 miles of telephone cables, 2,000 miles of electric wires and the building is 12 stories below ground or 48 feet down. Nine separate buildings make up the Sears Tower. It has 16,100 bronze-tinted windows. They have 6 roof-mounted window washing machines to clean the windows 6 to 8 times a year. You can see 4 states from the top and there are 2,232 steps from the ground floor to the top. It’s 253 feet tall and cost in excess of $150 million to build. It opened in 1973.

Chicago also has the largest population of Polish people. They held the 1893 World’s Fair and from that we got the Ferris Wheel. Chicago is home to baseball, jazz, the revolving credit card and the name “the loop” came from the “L” train that goes around the city.

We spent the night in Fremont, Ohio. Fremont is the Tree City of the World and President Rutherford B. Hayes came from Fremont. Before heading to our hotel, we stopped at Lynnwood Kennels for a catered meal served in dog dishes and a presentation on "Jaws with Paws Enforcing Laws". This was the most interesting part of the trip. A master trainer as well as being a retired police officer, Brian Woods showed us how they train dogs to sniff out drugs.

How long do you think it takes to train a dog to sniff out drugs? The answer is 4 to 5 days! How do they train them to find the drugs? What is the one thing dogs love to do???? Play fetch. They put marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines in a PVC pipe, seal up the ends so nothing can leak out. The object has to be something the dog cannot bite through because if he does get any of the drugs on his body or in his mouth, it will kill him. That's why they use the PVC pipe. They begin by throwing the pipe and have the dog fetch it over and over until he loves doing nothing but fetching. A dog can detect the odors of each individual drug because their nose is 200 to 2,000 times more powerful than a humans. It is thought that dogs get just as much information from scent as we humans do from vision.

Once the dog is comfortable with the smells of the different drugs, the handler plants them in various places. How does the dog let you know when he has made a "strike"? Does he bark? No. Does he run back to you and bark? No. Does he run around in circles? No. He does one of two things.....he sits and stares when he finds the drugs or some dogs will start digging in the area where they sniff the drug. Once you get the drugs, you play fetch with the dog because that's what makes him happiest. Gets his mind off the drugs. Dogs are started at 1 or 2 years of age and will work 8 to 10 years. Most of the dogs are purchased in Europe from a dog broker. They must herd and hunt before being registered as working dogs. The American Kennel Club has destroyed most breeds of dogs so they are not good drug sniffing candidates. The breeds are not kept pure. Poodles are water fowl hunters, beagles chase rabbits, retrievers retrieve and border collies are herders. The Kennel Club does not award these breeds for what they can do but has dummy downed the breeds. The dogs they get from Europe cost between $4500 and $5500 each. They usually are Belgian Malinois. They look like a German Shepherd, only smaller in size. Did you know the dogs are not trained in English?? If the dog comes from Poland, the commands are in Polish, if from Holland, then commands are in Dutch and if they come from Germany, naturally they learn the commands in German. The reason?? Because any criminal can give a command to the dogs in English. I would definitely go back, it was most interesting.

Stay tuned for day 2 on Monday.