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found Kelly and we arrived at the cavy judging tables just in time to see her
Abyssinians judged. I think there were 21 Abyssinians shown in Youth, so
Kelly had some nice competition. LaReau's Blaze, her roan boar she won
with at WI State Convention, took the award for best roan, and her senior
brindle boar, Twister, won Best of Breed! Wow, this was cool! One of
the best moments was getting to talk to Mike Ginder from Michigan, - he is the
one who bred Twister, and Blaze's parents are from his stock to. He was so
thrilled that cavies that came from his line, had won! He insisted on us
putting our Abyssinians up on the table so he could snap some pictures of them.
Local
youth cavy fancier, Tabbitha Poritz, could not attend this year's convention,
but wanted to exhibit her cavies, so we brought them along too. We tried to
watch her cavies being judged but missed two of her classes since the Holland
judging of the senior bucks was winding down to the top 20 or so, which of
course captivated us because our bucks were still up. Her
white intermediate boar won his class though and we were very happy for her!
 We
had high hopes of buying some Abyssinians at Convention, but we quickly found
out how cavy sales work and were disappointed to find that most cavies
entered in the show were not for sale and sale stock was not on location.
This made it very difficult for us, as we could not buy cavies and take them
back to our hotel, and the weather was way too blustery and cold to be
able to keep them in our van.
Boy, the cavy class numbers would have been high if everyone had entered their
sale cavies in the show! Oh well....we should have tried to find all this
out ahead of time, but instead, we just assumed.....
Although we talked to
several cavy breeders, we could not seem to find a workable time to meet with
them, partly due to our intense schedule and events we signed up for.
Certainly, we could have tried harder and could have found time to look at sale
cavies, but at that time, we could not imagine trying to make arrangements to
meet with someone on check-out day to pick up any purchases, and given how our
check out day went, I'm glad we didn't pursue this.
We ended up without new Abyssinians, but my other son, Tony, who
was at home caring for our animals, called us to report that Kelly's Abyssinian
sow just had her babies - 2 alive and 2 dead; of course we are going to have to
name them Indy and Appolis!
 By
the time the cavy judging was over, and all our Hollands had been judged, it was
nearing the end of the day. We realized that our French Lops were not
going to be judged until Tuesday so we did our chores and got ready to leave the
showroom.
This was, by far, the most exciting yet tiring day of convention
for me - my feet and legs were just killing me! I found the worst thing
you can do is to sit down for more than a few minutes because once you stand back up, nothing on your body
works again for awhile and you feel such intense stiffness. At one point I
figured I'd order Jody (who seemed to have plenty of energy!) around for things
I needed or wanted while I vegged out at our camp area, but he quickly wised up and made himself scarce for long
periods of time........
How impressive to see so many fellow Wisconsin rabbit breeders at Convention,
and to hear that so many of them did well at this show! Many came up to
me, just beaming with news of their successes - it was really neat to hear how
our midwest rabbits are so competitive at a national level!
 We finished chores and left the fairgrounds for another
fast food dinner. We finished out the night by swimming and sitting in the
hotel hot tub to relax.
We
got the fairgrounds early Tuesday so we could do chores before French Lop
judging began. Randy Schumaker and Chris Zemny both began judging- each
taking a different class.
Thunder, Kelly's solid senior buck did nicely with a 6th place finish under
Randy Schumaker, but Kelly was a little disappointed he didn't do better. Her
broken junior buck placed a high second, and her junior opal buck placed very
high in his larger class too, with some excellent comments from the judge.
Kelly's does did not do as well as she expected under judge Zemny - I think she
had some fairly high placings, in the classes I was able to watch though.
It was a very fast-paced event and Kelly was one of the runners so she didn't
get to watch as much as she wanted to!
 We were in such a hurry to get to the fairgrounds Tuesday
morning that we skipped breakfast, so around lunchtime we left for another
exciting fast food meal, one I would regret. In somewhat of a hurry, we
went to the first McDonalds we could find. This particular restaurant
seemed older and dirtier than the others we had visited, but we didn't give it
much thought as we wolfed down our food. Although I enjoy McDonald's
breakfast foods, I usually do not like to eat their lunch/dinner menu foods, but I relented and ordered a Big Mac. Later
that same afternoon, I began to feel queasy, but brushed it off as a
stress-induced reaction.
Back
at the fairgrounds, we discovered that Best In Show judging was already going on
and we ran over to the coliseum just to see the tail end of the youth cavy
judging. We spotted Twister up in a coop and regretted not arriving sooner
so we could watch the process! Since we arrived just as her cavy was up
there, we watched by cramming into the main isle along with many other
people-afraid we would miss it if we left to find seating. Just as they
were announcing the winner, a guard ushered us all out of the isle and we
quickly tried to find a seat, but had missed the cavy award presentation by that
time.
 We spent the rest of the afternoon talking to other breeders,
and wandering through all the isles to see where rabbits placed. We liked
how the club used the placement stickers on the cards - this made it very
interesting to walk through isles and see who did well. Kelly was very excited to find that
the French Lop does she had purchased, placed high! And I was just tickled
to find that my new Champagne does did equally well!
We didn't come with a plan to buy any Hollands since we have so
many nice foundation animals at home, and some at the show, but Jody insisted we
look around to see what was for sale. Of course, most of the Hollands had
been sold already but Jody found a young doe that Todd Naragon had
for sale. We liked the nice heavy bone she had - so Jody
tracked Todd down and bought that rabbit.
 We
visited breed booths, looked through all the commercial vendor booths and bought
shirts and various rabbit supplies - this was a lot of fun!
Greatimes Amusement Center was the plan for the evening, since
we prepaid for this event. We also prepaid for transportation to Greatimes
but no one at the show information booth could tell us when and where to catch
this bus - so the Keisers and us, ended up driving there in my van. We got
the grand tour of downtown Indianapolis due to a wrong turn off of the I system,
so we arrived in the middle of the pizza and soda meal. It very cold outside as we stood and watched the kids do some mini-golf and
ride the go-karts - it occurred to me that this would be a really fun place if
it was a warm summer night, but the bitter cold and wind made it into one of those
things
where you constantly check the time, hoping for the end to come.
The kids migrated inside the amusement center and at about that
time, the Big Mac horror came to visit me with a vengeance - I felt increasingly
ill and finally I had to have Brenda drive us all back to the hotel. I spent the
night tossing and turning with a terrible stomach ache, which finally eased up
at about 5 am, just as the rest of the world was waking up. The Big
Mac, no offense to McDonalds, is now permanently off my menu of acceptable
food items.
 Wednesday
was really nice in the fact that we were not under pressure to do anything at all - we
spent the morning browsing the commercial booths and entering many of the Breed
booth raffles - lots of nice stuff! The Breed booths were so interesting -
everything was decorated so nicely. Kelly spent more time in the
open French Lop area, and also brought in our exercise pen to let her French
Lops romp around-funny to watch those big French Lops bucking.
We did spend a fair amount of time tracking down our sales
releases for rabbits we had purchased - and were relieved when we finally had
the last one in our possession!
Midday found us all hungry, and instead of waiting in
the long line for
the fairgrounds food we decided to find a restaurant.
Immediately Jody starts in with the McDonald's little ditty - you know, the 'ba-ba-ba-ba-baaa....I'm
lovin' it' and upon seeing and being pleased with my reaction, decided to jab me
with this torturous song often throughout the rest of the convention.
Apparently he didn't feel it important to live to his next birthday.......
 The
Keisers and us all went over the The Cheesecake Factory, near our hotel.
Just the name alone had us all drooling....I haven't met a Wisconsinite yet, who
doesn't love cheesecake! We had about a 1/2 hours wait before we were
seated in this nice restaurant but it was worth the wait; most of us ordered a
salad or pasta dish and they were very good, tasty and very filling. The
others ordered cheesecake after finishing their lunches - thick heavenly slices garnished with chocolates and
whipped cream!
Late in the day, we brought our carriers in from the van and
piled them back in the cavy building, where we had our 'camp' set up.
If we hadn't bought that last rabbit, the Holland Lop, we would
have had enough money left to attend some of the banquets from the Lop Rabbit
Club and the Holland Lop Club, but as it was, we had to skip both. Next
time, these banquets will definitely be on our schedule though. Instead we all
decided to do some window shopping in the large mall connected to our hotel.
What a unique place - and we all felt a little out of place in this high-fashion
mall, with our plain, smelly rabbit clothes on, and I know we had to have had
shavings on us or in our hair!
We sure had a good time
browsing and stopping to eat Godiva chocolate! We went back to our rooms for a good night sleep before check
out day.
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