South Florida Pet Expo

So I haven't posted anything in a while because I've been drained by the weekend's events and am still catching up on needed sleep/rest. On Saturday, I attended the South Florida Pet Expo as a vendor for Molly and Friends Cat Furniture. I used to manage the company, and now that I'm a stay at home mom I love that they still let me do events. It gives me a chance to get out of the house, meet new people, and maybe even make a little money. But at this expo, everything went wrong. First, my friend who was going to go with me hurt his back and had cancel last minute. I don't like driving, have never driven a box truck (we take a 24' truck to events), and the expo was 4 1/2 hours away. The manager at Molly's did end up finding someone to drive me, so while I would have had more fun going with a friend, that part wasn't a total disaster. But then when we got there we found out that the person who loaded the truck, didn't realize how much furniture I needed and loaded almost nothing. We ended up turning around, driving all the way back, loading our truck, and then driving there again. We got back at 3 am only to find that there were no open hotels within 30 miles of the event. We ended up sleeping for 2 1/2 hours in the truck in a Wal-Mart parking lot and then getting up and going to the show. After the show was done, we did some deliveries and headed home, but because we were sleep deprived, we didn't make it all the way. We ended up stopping at two different rest stops to sleep and didn't get home until around 10 am the following day. My husband let me sleep for about 4 hours while he watched our son, but after that I had to get to up and be Mom again. And Mom just doesn't get enough sleep.

I was planning to do a blog post on the expo, but sleep deprived and discombobulated as I was, I forgot to take any pictures, so the ones on this page were taken from The South Florida Pet Expo's Facebook page. (The picture above does actually have our booth in the background- That carpeted house next to the girl selling brightly-colored cupcakes is ours.) The expo's claim to fame is that Shorti Rossi, from the Animal Planet show "Pit Boss" always attends. Now, I don't have cable, have never seen Pit Boss, and in general pit-bull owners have no use for cat furniture, so I wasn't exactly expecting this to be the most exciting show ever. Financially, it was awful. And two dogs tried to mark our booth (luckily missing the cat furniture both times). And there was an unusually large number of semi-creepy men that wanted to strike up random conversations with me. BUT the  actual show was pretty interesting, especially considering that all I saw of it was the one isle I could view from our booth. I saw dogs in tutus, hats, jeans, one with a pink mohawk, and quite a few with interesting shave jobs, including one that really did look like a miniature lion. There was also a large variety of animals there: a saw a ball python, a macaw, a guinea pig, a skunk, an entire booth full of baby alligators, and apparently I missed an alpaca and at least one donkey. There were also dog agility shows, a pet dress-up contest, and a reptile show, none of which I got to see, but I got the impression that the people who attended were really enjoying the entertainment. If you live in the West Palm Beach area, I suggest you check it out next year. Admission is free, so what do you have to lose? Also, if you don't live nearby and decide to go anyway, I suggest you book your hotel in advance :-)

I didn't see this dog at the event, though I don't doubt he was there. I saw plenty of dogs dressed up in just as interesting of outfits. The thing I find most interesting about this one? ...The fact that they knitted him a tail.