Dog Warts are not like Hogwarts

But if they were Lola would probably be a prefect of Gryffindor house.

Yep! After another trip to an emergency vet (let's pretend I just really want to socialize Lola with as many veterinarians as possible) we've discovered that Lola most likely has a form of canine papilloma virus. aka warts. Apparently in many dogs this manifests as warts in their mouth which can cause some problems if they get big enough that they interfere with the dog eating but Lola has a more unusual form where they are on their feet. On the plus side this is common in dogs under two years of age and she will hopefully grow out of it as her immune system strengthens. On the minus side she has a wart on each hind foot which we may or may not have 'traumatized' when we took her for a really long walk yesterday. oops. Also I learned that Pitbulls are known to be very 'stoic' dogs and can handle a lot of pain. This is consistent with Lola who has never yipped, squealed, or whined despite being stepped on, running through barbed wire fences, and having bleeding paws from these wart things after the walk. So I will have to keep an eye on her in the future for any very subtle signs of stress. The vet yesterday said he once saw a dog who had a broken femur for four days because the dog only had a slight limp so the owner didn't know to bring him in to the vet!

But it's ok. Mom knows how to make everything feel better:

The weekend on the whole has been excellent however. Mom was here until this morning which was wonderful as always and I'm so glad she was there to play with us all weekend. Yesterday morning we took Lola for her long walk (which eventually led to the vet visit... oops)  and then we got lattes and took Lola to Petco! Well I think we were the three happiest creatures in that building as Lola got THREE new toys and a lovely winter coat. It's starting to get really cold here (freezing actually) so much that Mount Hood opened this weekend! I've been worried about Lola being cold so she's got a new coat. And some excellent booties. You all know how much I love shoes and hopefully they will protect her little paws from the ice and snow. Also we got some great holiday clothing which you will definitely see in the coming weeks. The highlight of the visit however, was the 'migratory waterfowl' toy that Lola picked out. We think it may be a pheasant but the jury is still out as the thing has blue feet. It goes on the list with the green weiner as ugliest toys Lola has chosen and also makes a really great honking sound. And when I say 'great' I mean 'somewhat frightening'. Anyways except for the vet we all had a very wonderful day full of Lola and some of the most exciting regular season football I've seen all season! It's always great when Mom is in town.

The Update!

Well Hello Everyone! Yes - I find it appropriate to refer to the readership of this blog as 'everyone' because after homecoming I've established that it is more people than just Mom and occasionally Maddie that are following the illustrious life of Lola! So thank you everybody!

This past week was so much fun but both Lola and I are truly exhausted! If you don't believe me here's Lola on Monday:

Starting the Friday before last, Lola went to the Scooby Shack, Sarah's house, my house (where Mitchell was house/puppysitting), and then back to the Scooby Shack and Sarah's house! While she was doing this I went from PDX to Vancouver Canada for my layover on the way to New Zealand! Then drove around New Zealand, back through LAX and into EWR to go to Princeton for Homecoming! And then finally Lola and I were reunited Sunday night. Sarah and Mitchell did a great job with her and I am so thankful that she was so well taken care of when I was gone! I was equally well taken care of, however, and I'm so thankful to Jake and Mom and Dad for having such a wonderful time in New Zealand and to everyone at Cap and Gown for making it the best weekend ever.

New Zealand was a very beautiful country and I think we got to experience a lot of the really cool things about it. The first day Jake took me to Christchurch and the botanical gardens and then we drove to an extremely oddly decorated hotel in an industrial town. However we figured we were ok as there was a sign at the welcome desk that said "The Prince of Wales was Conceived Here". The next day we got up and had our first encounters with pies and then headed to the Moreaki Boulders (which I really wanted to go to). They eat pies there as a breakfast food and it's really quite genuis. They're handheld pies filled with everything from meat to apples and raisins. Needless to say they became a staple of my New Zealand diet and I think Mom and I will soon be making pies of all sorts for all occasions. Opening a pie bakery or rather a food truck that sells pies is quickly becoming a viable career choice. After the boulders we went to Dunedin and picked up Mom and Dad. Dunedin is where we started to see lots of creatures and the diversity of wildlife was pretty awesome. That is also where we began drinking copious amounts of beer. It's spring in New Zealand so not only did we see tons of baby lambs and cows (I wanted to steal one. Jake said no) but we also saw seals and all sorts of birds including wild parrots and Albatross and PENGUINS! The penguins were adorable. Click on the link for proof of the cuteness of the little blue penguins . And you must watch that video until you are at least 23 seconds in to hear the very cute little penguin noises. If anyone is interested I do an excellent impression. We also went to the Speight's brewery and went on a tour and drank a lot of beer. The beer was really good and the tour was really interesting! They grow a ton of hops in NZ that are shipped all over the world and they are very proud of their beer. Mom discovered that she likes dark beer, I discovered I like most all beer produced in NZ, and Jake and Dad discovered that they should probably not take Mom and I to another brewery anytime soon. Anyways we had a wonderful time and if Jake ever posts pictures (hint hint) hopefully those will show up online sometime soon. After Dunedin we went to Milford Sound which was truly incredible and fairly indescribable and then on to Queenstown where we went for a hike and ate one of the largest and most delicious burgers I've ever eaten in my life called a Furgburger. or Fergburger. either way it was unbelievably tasty. There are a ton of other things about New Zealand that were unique and interesting but this post is incredibly long and I haven't even made it to New Jersey yet! For more information on political correctness in NZ (nonexistent), the Occupy New Zealand protests (lame), the legalized prostitution (questionable), or Jake's Nissan Bluebird (Excellent) you're just going to have to give me a call!

On to New Jersey - where homecoming was also amazing. I missed everyone so much and it was great to be back at Cap and having fun with all of my friends who graduated with me, graduated before me, and are still at Princeton. It's a pretty magical place and I'm really lucky to be able to go back. Also I'm really sorry to everyone there because my only answer to when people asked the inevitable 'How are you doing?' was 'Good! I got a puppy! I love her. Want to see pictures?' and then I made the poor unsuspecting friend look at 5-10 pictures of Lola being adorable. Similarly, I'm just going to assume that if you all were seeing me in person right now you would ask, 'So Haley! How was your week? How was all of the travelling?' And I would reply 'Great! Seeing my family was amazing and New Zealand was so incredible and then going to Homecoming was the most fun I've had in a long time. I really missed my friends and it was great to see everyone. But I also really missed Lola. I love her. Want to see a picture?'

The Case for the Conventional Mousetrap

Lola and I are so sorry for the long hiatus from posting!

There is a ton to catch up on so instead of trying to do it in one post we're going to start from the beginning. Which takes us back to 10/27/2011 when Maddie and the Stanford Women's Soccer Team was visiting Oregon! It was so much fun to have the whole team at home and so I drove down after work to partake in the festivities! I also got to see both sets of grandparents and I left Lola for the weekend so that I could take the FE in peace on Saturday. Rachel Quon who is Maddie's year and on the soccer team made an extremely excellent video about their road trip and there's some great footage of my house and My llama! So check it out: http://www.ourgamemagazine.com/?p=2145

Fun fact - when Mom had to catch Icicle so that the soccer team could pet a llama, she managed to do so by outrunning him. We have a pretty big field and I think that this could be an excellent way to train for long distance running competitions.... Llama catching. I think this could really catch on!

It was so great to see Maddie as always but I had to leave after dinner to go back up to Vancouver so that I could take my exam. The exam was awful. It was very long and very boring and asked a lot of questions that I did not care very much about and found very irritating to answer. Very unpleasant Saturday. However! I drove back down to Corvallis to see Maddie's game against the Ducks on Sunday and to pick up my lovely puppy who spent the weekend at home!

Unfortunately while we were packing up, Lola got into some Decon which required an emergency trip to the puppy ER. Apparently the way Decon works is that it stops the production of vitamin K which is a clotting factor in the blood. Without this, creatures will die of internal bleeding. Lola had to go to the vet and they induced vomiting and now she's taking vitamin K supplements until December. On the plus side the people at the vet fell in LOVE with Lola and Lola seemed unaffected by the induced vomiting and was perfectly happy to have the full attention of the vets and lab techs. Also she had to be weighed when admitted so I can proudly report that Lola weighs 41 lbs! On the minus side... I think it's obvious. And once again Lola's tab this month is far longer than mine! Thankfully mom and I were both there and saw it happen so we got it away from her quickly and were able to take her to the vet with no harm done. This was a complete accident and Lola is totally fine but I know mom felt really bad that there was decon around and that for some reason Lola chose this time to stick her little face in it. Which is why I'm making the case for a conventional mousetrap. Or a cat. SO! If you are considering getting a puppy.... or a baby.... or really anything that indiscriminately sticks things in its mouth I would highly suggest considering an alternate form of rodent extermination because anything that kills you by causing serious internal bleeding is a little frightening!

The FE Exam.

So to become a licensed PE (Professional Engineer) one must take two nasty exams. The first of which should really be completed during the senior year of College but Princeton did a terrible job of relaying that information. As such I will be taking it Halloween weekend. It's an 8 hour multiple choice exam. I haven't really been too concerned about studying for it but today was the day I started to work through the practice questions. So far it's not too bad, but there is some stuff I don't remember because I haven't taken courses like Chemistry since High School... oops. There is also a section on what I can only describe as business ethics, and it's one of those sample questions I would like to share with you today:

You are a student and have an on-site job interview with Company A. Just before you fly to the interview, you get a call from Company B asking you to come for an on-site interview at their offices in the same city. When you inform them of your interview with Company A, they suggest you stop in after that. Company A has already paid for your airfare and, at the conclusion of your interview with them, issues you reimbursement forms for the balance of your trip expenses with instructions to file for all your trip expenses. When you inform them of the added interview stop at Company B, they tell you to go ahead and charge the entire cost of the trip to Company A. You interview with Company B, and at the conclusion, they give you travel reimbursement forms with instructions to file for all your trip expenses. When you inform them of the instructions of Company A, they tell you that the only expenses requiring receipts are airfare and hotel rooms, so you should still file for all the other expenses with them even if Company A is paying for it because students always need a little spending money. What should you do?

A) Try to divide the expenses between both firms as best you can
B) Do as both recruiting officers told you. It is their money and their travel policies.
C) File for travel expenses with only one firm.
D) Tell all your classmates to sign up to interview with these firms for the trips.

Um.... Excuse me? I need to answer these questions to determine whether or not I am qualified to assess mechanical engineering projects? Well.... Ok.... D it is!

(just kidding... as anyone with an ounce of common sense and integrity should guess - the answer is A)

DOGGELGANGER

CLICK HERE TO FIND YOUR DOGGELGANGER 

Ok. First things first. I want everyone to try this and then post their match in the comments section or send it to me via email because I am curious. And I think this is awesome.

As all of you know I have a somewhat short attention span and a fairly good sense of humor. In my illustrious pursuit of knowledge (and entertainment) I ran across a blog that discussed research that shows dog owners tend to look like their pets. They also tend to share personality characteristics and all sorts of other interesting stuff. Apparently because of this, the shelter system in NZ has a website where you can FIND YOUR DOG DOPPLEGANGER in the shelters and then go adopt it. Ten Points to New Zealand for coming up with the best system ever to encourage dog adoptions.  OR if you are like me you can find your dog Doppleganger and see how much it looks like Lola. NO JOKE THIS IS THE RESULT.  This is the picture of me and the dog it picked... and then a picture of Lola from a couple of weeks ago. NOTE that the dog has the exact same coloring and white markings on its chest. As well as a white dot on it's nose?! and floppy ears?!?! do I have a white dot on my nose? Anyways I thought this was really funny. So please, go try this at home and then share. Because we all want to know.

Lola = Leia?

Just saw this lovely set of images and as I'm still thinking about Haloween costumes I feel like we should throw a little star wars into the mix! I hope at least Jake appreicates these:

http://www.bestweekever.tv/2011-10-11/50-dogs-in-star-wars-costumes/

OOOOoooo SSSSSsssss UUUuuuuuu

Lola will fight for the Beavers! Or maybe fight the Beavers.... it's unclear. But we're excited for the game either way! Craig is coming to visit from Boston so we're going to come to Corvallis and experience the wonder that is OSU football. Can't wait to see mom and dad this weekend too!

Also while talking on the phone yesterday I realized that Lola and I have very similar tastes.... in food. I have heard of people starting to look like their pets but what about pets starting to eat like their humans? I suspect that Lola will eat pretty much anything so I may be projecting here... but we both do love pumpkin!