OC Pet Expo
OK, my semi-anticipated report.
I was hitching a ride with Furtech, who was going there to help out at the Border Collie Rescue booth, so I'd already been told I'd be there most of the day. I packed accordingly--lunch, my Kindle, soda, ect. (for those keeping track-- after finishing the Kindle dolphin new-age-y book, I am now reading a thriller about a WWII Japanese torture island that was never decommissioned after the war, and the hapless modern-day researchers who get stranded there.) The fairground food prices are obscene. But I forgot to bring water, and it was hot. So the little money I had went partially to bottled water.
The sun wasn't too bad, since a lot of the expo was in the various buildings that made up the fairgrounds. They also had lots of dog agility and training demos, but I didn't feel like sitting out in the sun so i didn't watch any of those. About 75% of the groups there were either breed groups or breed rescues. For the 'generic' dog adoptions, unless you wanted a pit bull or a Chihuahua, you were SOL. Virtually all the non-breed dogs up for adoption there seemed to be pit bulls or Chihuahuas. Lots, and lots and lots of Chihuahuas. Did I mention I don't like Chihuahuas? It was kind of cool looking at the different breed booths. I saw the Tosa dog booth, and the "silken windhounds." (I'm sorry, that is the gayest name for a dog breed on the planet.)
The cat adoptions were in a different area, but I didn't spend a lot of time there because I always feel sorry for the cats. The cat breed area was very small, and I find people who show purebred cats are usually really rude and won't talk to you. There was a woman who had a Savannah cat who was a liitle more talkative. The savannah was an F2 or 3, with tabby-cat coloring but serval size and markings.
They had another building set aside as a herp show and sales area. If I had any money I might've come home with another snake. Also lots of tarantulas and other bugs, and frogs and lizards.
The aquarium area was lame (very barren) and I only went there once. The general sales booths were overall not horribly interesting-- mostly dog stuff, cat litter and things like that. Curiously, there were a couple of booths selling pillows. Not pet pillows (they had those in other booths) but pillows for humans. The only thing I coveted there were some really complex cat trees, multi-story jobs with hollow trunks and neat shit like that. But those ran in the $3-400 range, so my guys will have to deal with their 20 and 15 year old cat trees for the time being.
As I mentioned previously, I'd been having a sciatica flare-up, which usually translates into bad pain in my left hip joint. Standing and walking for long periods makes it a lot worse, so by the end of my time there I was in quite a bit of pain. Sitting down for periods helped take the edge off, but by mid afternoon there were about a billion people there, and no place in the shade left to sit, unless I wanted to go to the doggy shit areas. But the farm/petting zoo was remarkably uncrowded, and they had benches in the shade! Score.
I'll say the farm animal petting zoo was the cleanest, best-smelling and fly-free place like that I've ever seen. Usually any place with farm animals stinks to high heaven and has a jillion flies. Here all the pens had fresh bedding, there weren't piles of shit around, and they apparently sprayed for flies daily. So I sat and then wandered around. They had a small flock of 3 sheep that would set themselves off 'baaa'-ing periodically.
On the fairgrounds you do see an unpleasant slice of humanity. Lots of tattoos, screaming kids, obese women in inappropriate clothing, people so fat they needed go-carts or wheelchairs. This thing did not seem to attract the Beverly Hill beautiful people crowd, let's put it that way. I also saw a woman with possibly the worse case of psoriasis that I've seen outside of a textbook. While mine could probably be classified as 'moderate,' this woman was 'way beyond 'severe.' I've stayed away from the systematic treatments myself because of possible nasty side effects, but if anyone was a candidate for them, this woman was. It was painful just to look at her.
I met up with Megan and Matt at the fair, and we spent a lot of time in the reptile area. We left the Expo about 4 and went to some sushi place that played loud rap music. Until the rapper started cursing, then they switched to a gentle ambiance mix.. Since I won't eat sushi, afterwards we stopped at a Pizza Hut so I could get one of the little 5 buck pizzas. I asked to stop at a park so we could hang out and I could eat in the picnic area, but instead Megan took us to a cemetery. I don't really mind cemeteries; I enjoy looking at the memorials and reading the inscriptions, but there was no place shady to eat. Megan suggested the mausoleum because that had benches, but I really didn't want to be stuffing my face if some grieving relatives happened wander by. Occasionally I'll have some vague sense of propriety. I ended up eating in the car, then we went to her place and fed mealyworms to the birds and lizards in the back yard until Furtech came to pick me up later that evening.
Thus endeth my trip to the Pet Expo.
I was hitching a ride with Furtech, who was going there to help out at the Border Collie Rescue booth, so I'd already been told I'd be there most of the day. I packed accordingly--lunch, my Kindle, soda, ect. (for those keeping track-- after finishing the Kindle dolphin new-age-y book, I am now reading a thriller about a WWII Japanese torture island that was never decommissioned after the war, and the hapless modern-day researchers who get stranded there.) The fairground food prices are obscene. But I forgot to bring water, and it was hot. So the little money I had went partially to bottled water.
The sun wasn't too bad, since a lot of the expo was in the various buildings that made up the fairgrounds. They also had lots of dog agility and training demos, but I didn't feel like sitting out in the sun so i didn't watch any of those. About 75% of the groups there were either breed groups or breed rescues. For the 'generic' dog adoptions, unless you wanted a pit bull or a Chihuahua, you were SOL. Virtually all the non-breed dogs up for adoption there seemed to be pit bulls or Chihuahuas. Lots, and lots and lots of Chihuahuas. Did I mention I don't like Chihuahuas? It was kind of cool looking at the different breed booths. I saw the Tosa dog booth, and the "silken windhounds." (I'm sorry, that is the gayest name for a dog breed on the planet.)
The cat adoptions were in a different area, but I didn't spend a lot of time there because I always feel sorry for the cats. The cat breed area was very small, and I find people who show purebred cats are usually really rude and won't talk to you. There was a woman who had a Savannah cat who was a liitle more talkative. The savannah was an F2 or 3, with tabby-cat coloring but serval size and markings.
They had another building set aside as a herp show and sales area. If I had any money I might've come home with another snake. Also lots of tarantulas and other bugs, and frogs and lizards.
The aquarium area was lame (very barren) and I only went there once. The general sales booths were overall not horribly interesting-- mostly dog stuff, cat litter and things like that. Curiously, there were a couple of booths selling pillows. Not pet pillows (they had those in other booths) but pillows for humans. The only thing I coveted there were some really complex cat trees, multi-story jobs with hollow trunks and neat shit like that. But those ran in the $3-400 range, so my guys will have to deal with their 20 and 15 year old cat trees for the time being.
As I mentioned previously, I'd been having a sciatica flare-up, which usually translates into bad pain in my left hip joint. Standing and walking for long periods makes it a lot worse, so by the end of my time there I was in quite a bit of pain. Sitting down for periods helped take the edge off, but by mid afternoon there were about a billion people there, and no place in the shade left to sit, unless I wanted to go to the doggy shit areas. But the farm/petting zoo was remarkably uncrowded, and they had benches in the shade! Score.
I'll say the farm animal petting zoo was the cleanest, best-smelling and fly-free place like that I've ever seen. Usually any place with farm animals stinks to high heaven and has a jillion flies. Here all the pens had fresh bedding, there weren't piles of shit around, and they apparently sprayed for flies daily. So I sat and then wandered around. They had a small flock of 3 sheep that would set themselves off 'baaa'-ing periodically.
On the fairgrounds you do see an unpleasant slice of humanity. Lots of tattoos, screaming kids, obese women in inappropriate clothing, people so fat they needed go-carts or wheelchairs. This thing did not seem to attract the Beverly Hill beautiful people crowd, let's put it that way. I also saw a woman with possibly the worse case of psoriasis that I've seen outside of a textbook. While mine could probably be classified as 'moderate,' this woman was 'way beyond 'severe.' I've stayed away from the systematic treatments myself because of possible nasty side effects, but if anyone was a candidate for them, this woman was. It was painful just to look at her.
I met up with Megan and Matt at the fair, and we spent a lot of time in the reptile area. We left the Expo about 4 and went to some sushi place that played loud rap music. Until the rapper started cursing, then they switched to a gentle ambiance mix.. Since I won't eat sushi, afterwards we stopped at a Pizza Hut so I could get one of the little 5 buck pizzas. I asked to stop at a park so we could hang out and I could eat in the picnic area, but instead Megan took us to a cemetery. I don't really mind cemeteries; I enjoy looking at the memorials and reading the inscriptions, but there was no place shady to eat. Megan suggested the mausoleum because that had benches, but I really didn't want to be stuffing my face if some grieving relatives happened wander by. Occasionally I'll have some vague sense of propriety. I ended up eating in the car, then we went to her place and fed mealyworms to the birds and lizards in the back yard until Furtech came to pick me up later that evening.
Thus endeth my trip to the Pet Expo.