A Busy Day of Preparations and a Media Interview

Wow – I arrived in Denver, CO last night for a few days of preparations before the BIG June 21 kick-off and did we cram a whole mess of work in! I went to Jerry’s house (Jerry Means and his canine partner Sadie) first thing this morning and right away we had very important people to meet. He drove me to Willow Run Feed and Supply in nearby Broomfield, CO where I was honored to meet the two people who have played an instrumental role in the NFDM – Steve Porter and Georgia Holmes. Steve and Georgia have been supporters of Jerry’s first K-9 arson dog, Erin, and even have a gorgeous memorial at their business dedicated to her. It was also Steve and Georgia, along with Jerry, who came up with the idea of creating a national monument dedicated to arson dogs like Erin. As Georgia says, “it all started with Erin”.

After enjoying a cup of coffee with Steve and Georgia, it was time to get ready for Jerry and Sadie’s interview with Denver TV 9 News Reporter Anastasiya Bolton. Funny story. Jerry gave Sadie a bath at Willow Run just prior to Anastasiya arriving for the interview. As Jerry got Sadie out of the pet dryer, an old white cat run up to Sadie, smacked her on the nose a couple of times, and then ran away. It freaked Sadie out so much that she had performance anxiety and started shaking. Sadie hadn’t ever had a cat smack her on the nose and it upset her so much that shecouldn’t stop looking around, worried that the cat was going to come get her. Here is a dog that has been on more than 500 fire investigations throughout Colorado but her kryptonite is an old white cat! We ended up going to Jerry’s house for the interview and Sadie perked right up because she knew she was safe from that scary white cat. She did fantastic though and the interview aired on the 4 pm and 6 pm news. Here is the news piece:

National Monument Honors Fire Dogs

With the interview under our belts, we headed up to Bronze Services Fine Art Foundry in Loveland, CO. They took us on a fascinating tour of their facility and walked us through the bronzing process. I had no idea it was so extensive. Silly me thought that the artist made a clay scultpure and then it was dipped into bronze like you dip candy apples. I was way off and it actually take at least 8-10 weeks to go through the process of bronzing a life-size piece like the NFDM. When we finally went into the back of the foundry, we were STUNNED by the gorgeous monument. It had just been colored and Austin was beaming with pride. Of course I had to take a picture of Jerry, Sadie, and Austin standing proudly next to the monument.

 We finally headed back to Denver to pick up AV equipment from the freight company and were struck by the horrific haze of the wildfires burning in Colorado. The beautiful mountains of the Colorado Rockies was masked by the thick haze of wildfire smoke.