We've been incredibly busy in the last week and the work hasn't slowed one bit. Thankfully Doug is back from the states to share the load. We have a team of students here from the states, all doing varying research on livestock and dogs in the areas that we are placing our Bankhar.

Besides their individual projects, they have helped do a general health check on our pups, implant identification microchips and will be analyzing intestinal parasites. Three of the students are vets and are taking blood, milk and fecal samples, from livestock and/or dogs to analyse and identify different parasites and compare them from region to region within Mongolia and to livestock in the states. And one engineering student is here to field test new technology, a 3D printed field microscope which can take pictures of cell samples in remote parts of the world and send them away to be evaluated. All rather intricate things I don't fully understand. Regardless we are having a great time in the countryside, the herders are interested in the results and tomorrow we leave for the Gobi. This time to place the remaining pups with host families...

Since I have not had the time to upload any recent photos, take a look at Soyolbolod's Flick'r for some better photos.

Here are a few from our more recent trips to the countryside...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/soyolbold/with/18884160550/

While Doug is back in the states for a few weeks, I have been preparing for our next trip to all three areas we are placing dogs. Later this month, students from UC Davis will arrive in Mongolia to do research and collect data on livestock and dogs in partnership with our NGO. So in the meantime I am finding vehicles and drivers, contacting local vets and making all other necessary arrangements for the trip. Otherwise it's just been trouble as usual with drunk guys harassing our dogs and our caretaker.

Visited the remaining pups in Terelj park today. Talking to the herders, we heard some good about the pups, and some not so good. 

But more importantly, after filling our stomachs with stomach, lung, liver, heart, kidney, intestine, fat, and blood (from sheep)...

We found the dog from the Neverending story,

I milked a cow,

Wrestled a Mongolian,

Lost.

Found this gal,

did a bunch of this,

And on our way back from the country, it was close to 11 at night and pouring rain, so we picked up an old man hitching a ride into the city. Turns out he was a professional hunter, who offered us Snowcock meat which is illegally traded for Chinese and Korean medicine. He assumed because we were foreigners we might be interested, and we were, but not for the same reason. So we picked his brain and found out a bit about the process of hunting and trading, how difficult it is to make the exchange and if he collaborates with other illegal hunters. He did not find out he was speaking with conservation workers, but it was very interesting insight into the life of an illegal hunter.

All in all, a great day. But there is still a lot persuading to do in order to get the herders to follow our instructions for training these puppies. It's proven difficult to make herders, stubborn in their ways, to understand why we wan't them to raise a dog in such a bizarre way.