Animals in Translation
I grew up in the city of Chicago in proper city-kid fashion. My deepest connection to nature came walking my dog in the midst of midwestern thunderstorms or digging up worms and bits of scrap metal in the garden beds my mom crammed into our tiny backyard. A bird was a bird and a bug was a bug and while the lions at the Lincoln Park zoo where no doubt cool, my connection to animals ran deepest with dogs. A life long love of dogs shaped my path towards a career in wildlife biology. Dogs followed me as faithful companions throughout the early years of my life, where I was always most interested in their behavior and how I might be able to decipher it. I maintained a hobby interest in animal behavior through the first forays of my career, first as a professional athlete and then as a fundraising manager for an international non-profit, consuming a wide variety of literature of animal behavior and figuring out how to apply what I'd read to help ward off dogs chasing me on my bicycle (