I survived SuperZoo 2007!

I survived SuperZoo, but just barely.  Over two days, Flippy and I walked the convention floor for a total of 12 hours.  That’s more exercise than we normally get in months smile On the final day, we were able to pick up some amazing deals and freebies, and we ended up needing to carry about 300 lbs. of stuff back to our car.  I’m not kidding… we brought home 160 lbs. of raw, frozen, dog and cat food, plus about six full cases of dog and cat canned food, plus about 20 lbs. of cat litter, plus a ton of other stuff I’ll eventually write about.  Our car was filled to the max, without a nook or cranny left for any more free cases of Dog-Wa or Back to Naturenow organic cat litter.  It’s sad to turn down those sorts of things, especially the cat litter… I could have had enough free litter to keep our cats smiling until sometime next summer.

We met many wonderful people and saw many new and exciting products, and I’ll write an entry listing them all soon.  For me, my two best memories will be of finally meeting the wonderful people from Wild Kitty Cat Food, and of being given carte blanche to take any books I wanted from the Bowtie Press display at the end of the show.  W00t!  Guess who now finally has her own copies of Herbs for Pets and Hobby Farm: Living Your Rural Dream for Pleasure and Profit?!  The former book has been on my Amazon wishlist for months, but I’d never purchased it because it was too expensive.  I never imagined I’d be given a brand new copy at no cost, and the book has already been helpful.  Dante, our Anatolian, has a chronic irritation with one of his ears.  It clears up, it comes back, and it just never goes completely away.  My new book suggested that I clean the ear with Witch Hazel, so I gave it a try, and there’s already been noticable improvement.  Speaking of Dante, one of the other books we were given was from a collection of books about rare breed dogs, and it was specifically about Anatolian Shepherd dogs.  The exact title was Anatolian Shepherd Dog: A Comprehensive Owner’s Guide (Kennel Club Dog Breed Series).  At first browsing, I liked the book because it had photos of a variety of Anatolians, not just the staple fawn colour.

Not only did SuperZoo give me tons of potential blog content, the generous vendors at the end of the show really helped us with our pet food bills for the next couple of months.  The folks who sell frozen pet food can’t really keep packing the same bags up and shipping them back and forth, so they’d just dump the food in the trash if no one came by offering to take it from them.  With almost all the show attendees being from out of town (there were tons of Canadians there), Flippy and I were two of the few folks who really could safely take a crate of frozen food and get it home in under an hour.  We received donations of so much frozen pet food I had to toss out frozen people food just to make room in our freezer.  Thanks to Wild Kitty Cat Food, Primal Pet Food, and Stella and Chewy’s for all the wonderful goodies for our dogs and cats.  I know the pets will love it all, and I’ll love not having to grind any chicken for the next few weeks.  Oh, a special thank you must go out to Doug from Stella and Chewy’s, as he helped us carry a lot of our heavy packages to the parking lot.  I think he did it just because he’s a nice guy, but there’s a chance he was just trying to make sure we didn’t start crying.  We’d just about reached our limits by 3pm on Thursday afternoon.

Over the next few days I’ll write about the cool new products we saw, tell you which vendors were naughty and which ones were nice, and do some reviews of the new pet foods and treats on display.  One is a cheese treat which is made for dogs, but humans can eat it, and mmmmm… the dogs can rip it out of my cold, dead hands.  The new trend in treats is single ingredients, for example, freeze-dried salmon, salmon jerky, freeze-dried liver, liver jerky, etc.  The fanciest treats feature chicken wrapped around a piece of apple, or a piece of sweet potato.  If there was any wheat gluten at the convention, it was pretty invisible.  The Chinese were almost invisible, too.  There were three or four booths from China featuring dog beds, dog furniture, dog bowls, etc., and just one booth selling dried chicken-based dog snacks.  The same kind of Chinese-made snacks which were recalled by Petsmart last week.  I didn’t ever see any buyers at the latter booth, and on the final day, Flippy wondered if that booth was gone because she tried to look for it and couldn’t find it.  Even the booths just selling dog beds seemed pretty empty… there’s obviously some lingering resentment.

And speaking of lingering resentment, I’m proud to announce that the Fromm Family won my “unfriendliest vendor award” for the second year in a row!  Merrick is making a run for that position, though, so next year should be a close and unpleasant race.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 09/23 at 01:28 AM

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  1. I am sad to report that I’ve had another run-in with the Merrick customer service people, and I have to agree with you that they are not terribly friendly. I reserve judgment on how helpful they are until we see if the package with the rest of my order actually contains the stuff I was supposed to receive in the first place. :p

    Did you get the e-mail I sent you earlier this week? Our newest addition, Rocky the Papillon, is arriving this afternoon. Wish me luck! smile

    Posted by Helena  on  09/23  at  05:42 AM

  2. Wow, great post!  I love the Insider’s View.  Looking forward to your reports on products (especially the kitty ones!)
    Really glad you got and were able to keep all the raw food swag you were able to grab.

    Posted by Ryssee  on  09/24  at  03:20 PM

  3. Leigh-Ann, what kind of natural litter do you feel works best for multiple cats? I’m probably harming the environment with this “crystal” stuff that I’m using, but so far it’s the best product I’ve tried for suppressing the smell. I’d love your advice.

    Posted by Calamity Jen  on  09/24  at  05:02 PM
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