Friday evening January 2, 2009 (Third travelogue of this trip).
We are at the Empire Polo Grounds (map). This is the site of the Kennel Club of Palm Springs Dog Show. Actually, that show starts tomorrow. For the past two days there was a smaller dog show here. The show tomorrow and Sunday will have over 3200 dogs entered each day. We obtained a list of the breeds being showed, and there are over 170 breeds. There are 32 “rings” where the judging takes place. This is said to be one of the biggest dog shows in this part of the country. We are in the RV area and it is almost full (room for 350 rigs, but some folks pay for two spaces. There is almost every imaginable type of RV here. Some of the rigs are owned by handlers who groom and show dogs for their owners. Several have large box type trucks pulling fairly large RV trailers. The truck is full of dog crates with dogs in them.
One medium sized motorhome pulled in yesterday and they have 15 small dogs they unload/load several times a day into small portable pens.
We are just amazed at the number and type of dogs at the show. Today was the first day of the show and people bring there dogs into vendor area. It is really fun to see all of the dogs (Pat even enjoys it, and she is not a big animal lover).
The booth next to us collects semen and freezes it for storage. Pat asked her how they collect the semen and she replied “just the way you think”.
OK, why a dog show. Last year at the FMCA RV show in Indio, the booth next to us sold all kinds of dog accessories. The owner convinced us that we should try this market. Many of the entrants at the shows travel in motorhomes. They often have several very expensive dogs that the owners/handlers are very fond of. In the event of a fire, the loss would be enormous. There have been several “close calls” in the recent past. This is a new market for us that does not have competition.
Today was the first day of the show and it was very quiet. However, we are told that the next two days are “the big days”. We hope so.
We will post more details after the show is over.
In other posts we have mentioned our service truck. We have created a fully equipped service truck that will allow us to install our systems, and carry our product/show equipment. It is a 2002 Dodge 2500 4X4 truck (V10 with 5 speed transmission). As you can see from the picture, we had it “wrapped” with our product/company information. The truck was silver, but it is fully wrapped with vinyl material. I really like the truck and have been working on getting it organized.
Thats all for now.
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