Instrumentation and measurement in the service of mankind - [from the editor's bench]

In mid-September, my family became the foster parents of one of the most advanced instrumentation and measurement systems in existence: a seeing-eye dog in training. As we learned, the majority of a seeing-eye dog's formal training takes place when the dog is about one year old. From the age of about two months, the dogs are given over to the care of a "foster family." The foster family is given some instruction about how to raise the dog. Most of the instructions are designed either to get the dog ready to learn how to help its end user or to make sure that the dog does not learn any behaviors that the end user may not appreciate. (You are not allowed to give the dog table scraps, for example.)