In May I was able to take advantage of another wonderful research training opportunity, which involved a quick trip to Boston, MA. Shortly after returning from Digestive Disease Week I was on a plane to Boston to take a short course on the software package I use for my decision analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis research. It's always a bit hard to travel when you have a toddler, dog, and a husband who's work schedule is not always predictable. Regardless, we lined up the appropriate childcare help like a mosaic of moving pieces and everything went well ...until there was a slight hiccup in the scheduling which required me to scramble a bit. I was sitting in our cramped classroom and got a text from Paul that he was going to be stuck at the hospital much later than anticipated... likely 9PM. Oh crap. My flight didn't get into Pittsburgh until mid-night. Luckily Drew was picked up by friends from daycare and they were gracious enough to let him stay until the late evening hours. That left our poor dog who was rapidly approaching his bladder limit. I did what working moms do... I got creative. I was googling and found a AWESOME, life saving dog walking service available in our area, called "Wag" (www.wagwalking.com). It is almost like Uber/Lyft for dog walking. You say your dog needs a walk and someone comes to your house to take your dog out for ether 30 minutes or 1 hour. You can then track your pooch and dog walker as they adventure around the area. The walk is complete with pictures and everything happens through your mobile phone and text messaging. It was seriously a LIFE SAVER. I couldn't believe it was possible to do such a thing on short notice, from Boston nonetheless, but it was! I highly recommend the Wag app if its available in your area. PS. If you do try it, sign up with my referral code: ALYCE1596 You'll get $20 free, essentially your first dog walk is free!

Over all it was a great trip to Boston. I learned a lot about the software and even more about how to juggle all the many needs and schedules our family from a distance! On the way home they bumped me to a different flight with a complementary voucher for future travel (which I love!)- so it was an overall #win.

Software training and virtual dog walking!

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