Hi, I'm Hong Kwon, one of the senior QA leads at Plaxo. I'm not going to write much about how we do QA at Plaxo, other than there are currently 5 of us here in Mountain View sitting in a desk pod near the center of the office, and yes, we do test our products a lot. No, what I'm going to write about is somewhat more momentous: dog poop.

Let me preface by saying (because first, Plaxo loves dogs, and second I'm sure many of our dear readers do as well) that I really like dogs. I've just never owned one, which may explain my discomfort at the experience which I will now relate.

We were on our way to one of our quarterly team lunches. We'd split into two cars and were headed to the Country Gourmet on El Camino and Rengstorff. Mohamed and Ramesh were in one car, and Wendy, Ana and I were in the other. Suddenly, a little reddish-brown dog shot across the street, barely avoiding getting flattened by a Hummer H2 (no joke).

I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the dog running in zigzags across the street, like a neverending game of Frogger. Wendy (my manager) and I looked at each other, and I said, "We should stop, or that dog is gonna get killed." Indeed, cars were swerving and screeching to halts, and it seemed only a matter of time before the dog became pavement paste.

So we pulled a U-turn a few intersections down (illegally, sorry Mt. View police!) and headed back towards a parking lot where the dog was now leading a guy wearing glasses on a chase. Ana and I got out of the car and jogged over, planning on trying to head the dog off. Just as I was starting to meet up w/ the guy, the dog did a U-turn and streaked by me, back into the street (nearly getting flattened by a Pontiac) and into the Google parking lot. Damn, that dog was fast.

To make a long story short, eventually the 3 of us cornered the dog underneath an SUV in the Google parking lot, and the guy with the glasses was able to pull the dog out from under the car, but not without getting bitten under his fingernail. All of us were panting, and smiling at each other somewhat sheepishly, in that "We're strangers who met performing a good deed" kinda way.

I felt bad for the guy so I offered to hold the dog while he washed his bleeding cut. Since the dog had all her tags (I think her name was "Tessie") and looked like a reasonably cared-for lap dog, I assured him that he was probably safe from rabies.

I was holding Tessie, while we were calling the owner and the animal control respectively, and I gradually became aware of the a) smell and b) liquid warmth of Tessie's dog slobber, which was dripping down my arm. Well, what are you gonna do, dogs slobber. But this seemed to be particularly stinky dog slobber.

Ana got the owner's answering machine. Doh! But I was able to get through to the Palo Alto Animal Control and had the dispatcher send out an officer to pick up the dog. At this point, our friend with the glasses Dave (who happened to be wearing a Google visitor badge, that's why I know his name) came back. I handed the dog over to Ana.

That's when I noticed the dog poop on my hand and shirt.

I really do like dogs. However, since I've never had dog poop on my hand and shirt, I was pretty grossed out. At this point, Wendy brought the owner over, who turned out to be an elderly woman. She explained that her dog had jumped out of the car window ("She must've opened it herself, it was just open a crack!") and had proceeded to run down Amphitheater Parkway through the slalom of cars.

The owner looked at my shirt and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, is there anything I can do?" I was about to say, "Yeah, I'll send you a bill for the dry cleaning, lady" but instead I just smiled in my best Good Samaritan way and assured her that it was quite all right, all in a day's work, you know. I called the dispatcher and told him that all was well.

The owner went off with her dog (according to Wendy, the owner told her that she was on her way to bring the dog to get shots... sorry Dave), Dave the Google Visitor went to go catch a flight (which he was on his way to when the dog cut across his path), and Wendy, Ana and I went off to Country Gourmet for lunch, I holding my hand out at a distance, careful not to touch myself or anything else in the car. Once we got to Country Gourmet, I spent some quality time in the rest room trying to disinfect and deodorize myself. Then we had to explain to Ramesh and Mohamed what happened. They were quite amused.

All for a QA team lunch. Yep, QA and saving dogs is a dirty job, but someone's got to do it.