Ted Katauskas is a Portland-based journalist who’s working on a book about his introduction to the upside-down world of peanut allergy via his experience as a volunteer puppy raiser for Angel Service Dogs, a Colorado Springs nonprofit that trains labradoodles and other non-shedding breeds as Allergy Alert service dogs for kids with life-threatening food allergies. From whelping box to hand-off, the cost to train one of these special dogs: $20,000. This blog, updated weekly, chronicles the author’s ongoing research, and often will take detours, exploring the world of these four-legged peanut detection machines and other working dogs, the tumultuous and sometimes tragic lives of the kids they’re born to save, the controversy swirling around peanut-free schools, and what physicians know, and don’t know, about the medical mystery of peanut allergy, and the quest for a cure.