We would like to welcome all of our new readers. Our blogs are about the daily happenings at our shelter, important horse events, and other timely information. We are catching up from the horse expo, so please enjoy the blog.
Thursday afternoon Jason and Tawnee hit the road to Sacramento to set up the Horse Expo booth.
They arrived at the expo, signed in and found their booth space in the long list of vendors.
Everyone was busy getting set up at the expo. It is absolutely amazing how fast empty buildings can become full of attractive displays. Take notice of the little dog sitting in the chair while the owner is busy setting up their booth. How cute!
Our booth spot was found in the maze of booths. It definitely needed some help to look attractive!
Soon they got to work setting up the booth.
Finally Jason and Tawnee had it all set up, but something was missing. The booth just wasn’t quite what they were hoping it would be.
They posted on our Facebook (facebook.com/horsehumane) asking for advice on making it look better. The response was awesome! So many great ideas and suggestions within a few minutes for making it all look better.
They left the expo and headed out to find the suggested items for enhancing the visual appeal of the booth.
After the suggestions were followed, the booth was finished and ready for visitors. What a difference following a few good suggestions can do!
We would like to thank Red Lion at Arden Village for donating a nights stay for our staff and volunteers. If you are in the area and needing a good nights rest, give them a visit. Click here.
The rooms are quite comfortable and very clean.
The outside is very attractive too. Our staff and volunteers were refreshed and ready for a busy day at the expo Friday morning.
Soon the crowds of people were thronging through the expo. There were a lot of people, but it didn’t seem that the attendance was as high as last year.
As far as horses go, Macho Man was safe far far away from the adoring crowds. We wanted to keep him safe from a possible EHV-1 infection. This picture is from last year at the expo. Macho Man is a great little ambassador who helps educate and bring in donations, but safety first! There weren’t a lot of horses at the expo period, one of the big barns that is usually full of stalls and horses was closed and locked. It was pretty much the sale barn and a few performers.
Since we didn’t have Macho Man we had to be creative on our fundraising ideas. We took our donations cans to many of the vendors and asked if we could put the can next to their cash register. Most said “Yes” and that helped bring in some extra funds.
The booth stayed busy pretty much the whole time. There were a few slow spots, but people wanted to know about our programs and check out our adoptable horses in our binder.
We were also doing a raffle for a $100 Wal-Mart gift card. One person got 50 tickets, which left volunteer Brianna filling out her name and phone number over and over again.
Brianna was rewarded for her hard work and diligence when Miss Grand National Rodeo queen stopped by and posed for a picture with her, making her day.
Tawnee and Jason left the others in charge of the booth and talked to various vendors about becoming a 2011 sponsor. Lots of great contacts were made and we will be following up on them.
We would like to thank Well-Horse for donating some Well-Horse and Thrush-Off that they were not able to sell. We really appreciate it! They donated last year and their products work great. To visit their website, click here.
Finally Sunday evening came, the last day of the expo, and it was time to collect the donation cans from the vendors. There was over $30 collected in the donation cans, which doesn’t seem like much, but that feeds a horse for a couple weeks.
After the crowds disappeared it was time to tear down the booth. We generally go around to the various feed company’s and get their open display bags, but with the threat of EHV-1, and everyone touching open bags of feed, we decided not to this year.
The latest update on EHV-1 from the California Department of Food and Ag reports that the last confirmed case was on the 3rd, hopefully the outbreak has been contained. If there are no new cases in California we will be opening for all visitors Monday through Thursday, 1:00 – 4:00 pm June 27th. Let’s keep our fingers crossed! We are currently showing horses to people that are approved to adopt, or have a hold on the horse, and we are accepting surrenders at our SAFE Surrender Site at our vet office, 1451 Clark Rd, Oroville CA. We will bring the adoptable surrenders into our shelter once the vet gives the OK.
Thanks to everyone for their generous support! We will start listing the donors at the end of the blog again starting with the next blog. To see your name here, click here.