JAK Rabbitry
Well-Known Member
What a trip. By day 3 I was tired and ready to come home.
We stayed at a Red Roof Inn about 10 minutes from the convention center. We got a room wit ha microwave and fridge and bought a bunch of soup and pizza rolls to save money on foodz. Mandi bought this box of like 200 pizza rolls which I had at the first night. Day one of convention was me plus the worst gas of my life.
We rented a Dodge Caliber so we'd have more room. But you shuold see how packed that thing was. We took apart the front seats so we could cram more junk in our car. She asked if I was bringing my grooming tabel and I said it'd be really handy and she said only because she thought about buying one and like we had NO room. So I told her if she planned on getting one then I won't bring mine and eventually she decided that she would get one later at another show. Keep this in mind.
We left for MI Saturday morning, had breakfast with Erron, and were off. We go to GR around 7PM. checked into hotel, ate din din, lounged a bit, then around 9 went to De Vos place to check the buns in. Mandi had 3 angoras she was showing, I had 5 dutch. Now i'm goign ot tell you why it took over 4 hours for us to check in.
Mandi had also just bought a cart, which we couldn't assemble or it wouldnt' fit int he car. So when we pulled into the parking garage, first order of duty was to bust out the wrenches and screwdrivers (Which we had just bought at the Target across from rEd Roof Inn) and put that puppy together.
We did my dutch first since they were on top of the cart and I had everyoen cooped, fed, and watered, within 30 minutes.
Mandi had 3 angoras. The risers she ordered specifically for this occasion....for some reason weren't made to collapse. So I had to help her lift up the cooping and then they wouldn't fit. So with some pounding and manuevering, eventually we got them in. She also had to track down two coops of rabbits she scratched. We also picked up our paperwork and discovered I had someone else's junk in my folder. so I had to go fix that. And they asked for my last name and they couldn't find it and everyone was getting frustrated and I'd been standing there like a moron for like 15 minutes and finaly they were like ''whats your ARBA number?'' and I proceeded to tell them ''KUBIJE00'' and they were like ''wait you said you last name was Flaherty'' and I was like '' I got married !'' and they were like '' That woudl have been helpful to know!'' and we all had one of those really tired not really funny fits of hysterical laughter. Then she had to call someone on the radio and be like ''look up this chicks paperwork and print a copy and then bring it down here''. So like another 15-20 minutes later I finally had a copy of my paperwork.
Then MAndi had to fiddle and fart around with her rabbits for another hour or two. And we finally started back to the hotel around 4AM. After disassembling the cart. again.
I passed the hey OUT. Mandi had also brought two other rabbits with us so she could take particular care of them. You may remember Albus and ''Big Bunny' who is recovering from wool block. So she fiddled around with them for a while int he hotel room. The sound of rabbit waterbottles = most annoying thing ever when you're tired.
The next day we went there all early and junk onyl to find out that like, the show didnt' actually start today and we didn'th ave to be there at 7 fricking AM. I could have flattened somebody. I got in touch with a friend and ended up blowing $150 on another french lop right ont he spot. She's pretty though. We didn't do much that day though.
But hte next two days we showed bunnies. And made a lot of friends. One of them being the kid who won BIS Youth with his English Angora. We accompanied him back to his hotel room the next day to help him carry his trophies and plaques. And people we didn't even know were like ''congratulations!'' ''Great Job!'' And he was all like ''thank you....thank you....thanks...''' all the way to his room. And the one time someone said ''hey did you win that?'' I was like '' no it's mine he's just carrying it for me''. And Mandi and the kid both looked at me and I told him he couldn't have ALL The fun, and he already got congratulated by like 80 people and would probably be congratulated by another 10 at least before we reached the elevator.
Mandi insisted I got o the Angora banquet with her. It was a hoot. And at Fire Mountain so I had lots of yummy food. Though it would have been cheaper to just...eat at the restaurant not as part of the banquet. But then we would not have won a candle. And a rock. With an angora stamped on it. I held the rock in my hand and the paint came off and I had hippie hands.
Tuesday was the ARBA Banquet and we had tickets but we were so beat we decided not to go. We ordered am ovie from our hotel room and ate more pizza rolls and watched Evan Almighty. Good movie. Though kind of a shame we blew $60 on tickets and then didn't go.
I stayed at the hotel for one day and I was walking around and some guy whistled at me and I turned around and he waved and I waved back and then hid inside the rest of the day. Its not easy being so good looking.
Someone had previously invited me as his guest to the Lop banquet so on Thursdya I hit that up and he even offered me a ride so he came and picked me up and I had a great time and his wife had one drink and was all giggly and happy and someone paid $225 for a fake tiara in the auction. The centerpieces for the tables were lighthouses, surrounded by brightly colored polished river stones. They were so shiny and pretty, it really made a bautiful center piece. My ''date'' Jeff looked bored like the whole time. So while someone was giving a speech, he's all staring at these rocks... and he picks one up and examines it, then puts it in his mouth. And Iw as like ''uhh....he must be really bored'' and then it didn't come back out. And he started chewing and I was like ''Jeff eats rocks?'' and then everyone at thet able noticed what he was doing and were very confused and then he's like ''its candy'' and we were like ''whhaaaaat?''. By this time Jeff had pretty much eaten all the blue ones, and everyone had been mad that we paid a good bit for banquet tickets and there was no dessert. So we ate rocks. And after the blue ones were gone they started eating the brown ones. And after that we all just kind of sat there staring at the rocks like ''who's going ot try an ew flavor?'' and Jeff's wife finally tried a red one and said they were ok. So then the red ones disappeared. And another woman volunteered to try and pink one....and apparently they were gross. And we were all lookin' around like '' who hasn't realized it's candy yet...ooh we can take their rocks...Oh wait that kid's eatin' one....but no one noticed him eat it so we can have their candy...''
Check out for bunnies was Friday by 4PM. We though we'd just go around like 1 and miss the huge crowd, since we were staying another night so we wouldn't have to drive all that way home and go through all the hassle of picking up bunnies and packing. So we get there and we brought all our carriers, Mandi had bought 2 angoras and I had my new lop so we needed every carrier hole we had. We walked in, got our bunnies and our stuff, and started to head out and cuoldn't find anyoen to check us out so we just started to leave when finally someone stopped us. And allt he checkout people had like left but they finally tracked one down for us. And as he was coming over I was like ''crap Mandi you didn't enter Albus and Big Bunny...you have no way of getting them out of here!'' and we like, crapped our pants right there just thinking about it. Because we hadn't really thought about it when we checked in. Well it proved to be a huge problem.
I got all my dutch and my new lop taken care of, Mandi checked out her 3 angora she originally bought and then we had vet records and ap edigree to prove Big Bunny belonged to her. But as for Albus, we were kind of SOL. I did have Albus's pedigree in my email account and we were trying to see if we could get internet access so I coudl show them the pedigree and they said that would work and then we had to talk to different people and they yelled at us all over again and we were like 'they said we could use the itnernet!'' and we got held up for like, another half hour. Mandi also had to show the release form for an angora she bought and she read the ear number off the release form and the guy looked at hte ear number and he was like ''no...''
"What?''
"Thats not hte tnumber."
So we checked her pedigree and it matched the release form. But like we were the last ones ot pick up rabbits, and she wsa in the cage of the rabbit she boght. Then Mandi shouted some expletives and was like '' He freakin' left me the wrong rabbit!!'' so she said she could call the guy and the check out dude was like ok but let me talk to him. So she calls and she's like ''hi.....i'm going to kill you. WHERE ARE YOU?!'' Turns out the guy was already half way through Ohio on his way to NEw York. Buth e got stuff straightened out with the man so we were at least able to tkae the foreign rabbit home. He said Mandi's rabbit she did buy was on his way to Tennessee. Lovely. And then there was still the matter of albus and they were tired of dealing with us by then so he was just like ''Mandi give me your hand'' and she stuck her arm out and he slapped her wrist and was like '' you know what you did, don't do it again, now get out of here!'' and we didn't need to be told twice.
Mandi made a million phoen calls that day and hours and hours later finally tracked down whoever supposedly had her rabbit. And they didn't have her rabbit. They had bought a FRENCH Angora. So no one knows where the bunny she bought is. We're kind of angry.
We got back tot he hotel and we were goign to pack up the car so we could just leave in the morning and then this really bad storm started mocing in while we were eating dinner. So we turned on the weather channel and after 5 tornado warnings for hte area popped up, we decided to get our backsides out of there. And we packed the car at lgithening speed. But here's the thing. We had NO room whatsoever when we left. And now we had 2 more angoras, a french lop, ANOTHER grooming table (yeah.....) and she also bought 2 18 X 36 metal cage pans. This is where all our years of playing nonstop tetris comes in handy.
We shimmied and shook and twisted and packed and smooshed and stuffed.... And the whistle guy comes out onto the balcony to watch. And I was like ''enjoyign the show?'' and he just kind of laughed at me. It got to the point where we had to take stuff out of bags and take individual items like hairbrushes and feeders and waterbottles and stuff them into little nooks and crannies and gaps in between the bigger pieces of luggage. We had to leave 2 containers behind but we somehow made it all fit.
I rode home with 2 blankets, 2 binders, and a coat on my lap and a big plastic bin between my ankles. Also my head rest was missing...replaced byt he legs of my grooming table. I had to sit kind of off center.
Mandi's mum monitored the storms that were pounding Michigan and we had to call her every 45 minutes or so and update her with our location, then she'd track the storm and figure out if we wre going to hit it or not. We ended up driving in between 2 storms. Lightening on our left and right. I think we actually got struck by lightening. We were just absolutely blindedw ith light, completely immersed in white light and we couldn't see and our car shook. The 90 mpg winds were blwoing us off the road. A tractor trailor flipped over somewhere in front of us. There were police, fire trucks, and ambulances everywhere.
About 2 hours from home we get a call from Ruth.....we HUGE freakin' storm is stretching towards OH/PA from Kentucky and its goign to cut us off and last for hours, and that we'd better stop at a hotel. So somewhere past Cleveland we stopped at a Days Inn. Which frustrated us further because our bunnies were PACKED into our car so we had to like, take a crapload of stuff out jsut to get their feed and water in order for the night. We went up to our room and passed out....didn't even bother to bring our luggage. It was 4:30AM. Mandi woke up at 8 to take advantage of the breakfast and made a friend with the frotn desk guy, who had come out into the parking lot at 3am last night tosee the bunnies. She tried to get me to come to breakfast but I was....dead. But we checked out and left by 11 and on our wiper blade was a note.... to Mandi from the front desk guy with his phone number. haha.
So we made the 2 hour trek home...in the daylight...storm free. And I got home and immediately cleaned the rabbitry, took care of the horses, and did like a crapload of other stuff. I don't know where the energy came from. Unpacking was somehow more difficult than packing.
And I took pictures of just how packed our car was. And A picture of Mandi in the back to show how big (or small) the space was and then a picture of ALL The stuff we had crammed in that car.
Note how the passenger has no head rest....just a table leg.
The rear view....3 of Mandi's angoras and 2 suitcses. WEdged.
Note all the junk in the passenger side...that was all the junk on my lap.
Side view
Same picture, but close up....there's a Dutch in there somewhere.
Mandi inthe car. And yes, it's considered a ''compact car''. Though we refferred to it as a ''compacted car''.
^ Everything we had in there. Absolutely everything minus Mandi and I. Which included Mandi's 2 36 X 18 X 20 custom carrier she had to have. And the cart which was 36 X 18. 2 grooming tables. 2 metal cage pans (18 X 36), 2 fold up chairs, (2) 3 hole Dutch carriers, and of course an assortment of luggage and bags and bun food and all kinds of junk. Note how like, all the little things aren't even in bags because we had to take them out and just find tiny spots for them. When I opened my grooming table.....5 candy bars, a phoen charger, and a can of soup fell out. (You can see the red can of soup perched on top of the white blanket there). We still haven't eaten it.
We got home Saturday evening and discovered 4 tornadoes had touched down now far from where we'd been staying. And then the next day we went to another bunny show....
-The End.
We stayed at a Red Roof Inn about 10 minutes from the convention center. We got a room wit ha microwave and fridge and bought a bunch of soup and pizza rolls to save money on foodz. Mandi bought this box of like 200 pizza rolls which I had at the first night. Day one of convention was me plus the worst gas of my life.
We rented a Dodge Caliber so we'd have more room. But you shuold see how packed that thing was. We took apart the front seats so we could cram more junk in our car. She asked if I was bringing my grooming tabel and I said it'd be really handy and she said only because she thought about buying one and like we had NO room. So I told her if she planned on getting one then I won't bring mine and eventually she decided that she would get one later at another show. Keep this in mind.
We left for MI Saturday morning, had breakfast with Erron, and were off. We go to GR around 7PM. checked into hotel, ate din din, lounged a bit, then around 9 went to De Vos place to check the buns in. Mandi had 3 angoras she was showing, I had 5 dutch. Now i'm goign ot tell you why it took over 4 hours for us to check in.
Mandi had also just bought a cart, which we couldn't assemble or it wouldnt' fit int he car. So when we pulled into the parking garage, first order of duty was to bust out the wrenches and screwdrivers (Which we had just bought at the Target across from rEd Roof Inn) and put that puppy together.
We did my dutch first since they were on top of the cart and I had everyoen cooped, fed, and watered, within 30 minutes.
Mandi had 3 angoras. The risers she ordered specifically for this occasion....for some reason weren't made to collapse. So I had to help her lift up the cooping and then they wouldn't fit. So with some pounding and manuevering, eventually we got them in. She also had to track down two coops of rabbits she scratched. We also picked up our paperwork and discovered I had someone else's junk in my folder. so I had to go fix that. And they asked for my last name and they couldn't find it and everyone was getting frustrated and I'd been standing there like a moron for like 15 minutes and finaly they were like ''whats your ARBA number?'' and I proceeded to tell them ''KUBIJE00'' and they were like ''wait you said you last name was Flaherty'' and I was like '' I got married !'' and they were like '' That woudl have been helpful to know!'' and we all had one of those really tired not really funny fits of hysterical laughter. Then she had to call someone on the radio and be like ''look up this chicks paperwork and print a copy and then bring it down here''. So like another 15-20 minutes later I finally had a copy of my paperwork.
Then MAndi had to fiddle and fart around with her rabbits for another hour or two. And we finally started back to the hotel around 4AM. After disassembling the cart. again.
I passed the hey OUT. Mandi had also brought two other rabbits with us so she could take particular care of them. You may remember Albus and ''Big Bunny' who is recovering from wool block. So she fiddled around with them for a while int he hotel room. The sound of rabbit waterbottles = most annoying thing ever when you're tired.
The next day we went there all early and junk onyl to find out that like, the show didnt' actually start today and we didn'th ave to be there at 7 fricking AM. I could have flattened somebody. I got in touch with a friend and ended up blowing $150 on another french lop right ont he spot. She's pretty though. We didn't do much that day though.
But hte next two days we showed bunnies. And made a lot of friends. One of them being the kid who won BIS Youth with his English Angora. We accompanied him back to his hotel room the next day to help him carry his trophies and plaques. And people we didn't even know were like ''congratulations!'' ''Great Job!'' And he was all like ''thank you....thank you....thanks...''' all the way to his room. And the one time someone said ''hey did you win that?'' I was like '' no it's mine he's just carrying it for me''. And Mandi and the kid both looked at me and I told him he couldn't have ALL The fun, and he already got congratulated by like 80 people and would probably be congratulated by another 10 at least before we reached the elevator.
Mandi insisted I got o the Angora banquet with her. It was a hoot. And at Fire Mountain so I had lots of yummy food. Though it would have been cheaper to just...eat at the restaurant not as part of the banquet. But then we would not have won a candle. And a rock. With an angora stamped on it. I held the rock in my hand and the paint came off and I had hippie hands.
Tuesday was the ARBA Banquet and we had tickets but we were so beat we decided not to go. We ordered am ovie from our hotel room and ate more pizza rolls and watched Evan Almighty. Good movie. Though kind of a shame we blew $60 on tickets and then didn't go.
I stayed at the hotel for one day and I was walking around and some guy whistled at me and I turned around and he waved and I waved back and then hid inside the rest of the day. Its not easy being so good looking.
Someone had previously invited me as his guest to the Lop banquet so on Thursdya I hit that up and he even offered me a ride so he came and picked me up and I had a great time and his wife had one drink and was all giggly and happy and someone paid $225 for a fake tiara in the auction. The centerpieces for the tables were lighthouses, surrounded by brightly colored polished river stones. They were so shiny and pretty, it really made a bautiful center piece. My ''date'' Jeff looked bored like the whole time. So while someone was giving a speech, he's all staring at these rocks... and he picks one up and examines it, then puts it in his mouth. And Iw as like ''uhh....he must be really bored'' and then it didn't come back out. And he started chewing and I was like ''Jeff eats rocks?'' and then everyone at thet able noticed what he was doing and were very confused and then he's like ''its candy'' and we were like ''whhaaaaat?''. By this time Jeff had pretty much eaten all the blue ones, and everyone had been mad that we paid a good bit for banquet tickets and there was no dessert. So we ate rocks. And after the blue ones were gone they started eating the brown ones. And after that we all just kind of sat there staring at the rocks like ''who's going ot try an ew flavor?'' and Jeff's wife finally tried a red one and said they were ok. So then the red ones disappeared. And another woman volunteered to try and pink one....and apparently they were gross. And we were all lookin' around like '' who hasn't realized it's candy yet...ooh we can take their rocks...Oh wait that kid's eatin' one....but no one noticed him eat it so we can have their candy...''
Check out for bunnies was Friday by 4PM. We though we'd just go around like 1 and miss the huge crowd, since we were staying another night so we wouldn't have to drive all that way home and go through all the hassle of picking up bunnies and packing. So we get there and we brought all our carriers, Mandi had bought 2 angoras and I had my new lop so we needed every carrier hole we had. We walked in, got our bunnies and our stuff, and started to head out and cuoldn't find anyoen to check us out so we just started to leave when finally someone stopped us. And allt he checkout people had like left but they finally tracked one down for us. And as he was coming over I was like ''crap Mandi you didn't enter Albus and Big Bunny...you have no way of getting them out of here!'' and we like, crapped our pants right there just thinking about it. Because we hadn't really thought about it when we checked in. Well it proved to be a huge problem.
I got all my dutch and my new lop taken care of, Mandi checked out her 3 angora she originally bought and then we had vet records and ap edigree to prove Big Bunny belonged to her. But as for Albus, we were kind of SOL. I did have Albus's pedigree in my email account and we were trying to see if we could get internet access so I coudl show them the pedigree and they said that would work and then we had to talk to different people and they yelled at us all over again and we were like 'they said we could use the itnernet!'' and we got held up for like, another half hour. Mandi also had to show the release form for an angora she bought and she read the ear number off the release form and the guy looked at hte ear number and he was like ''no...''
"What?''
"Thats not hte tnumber."
So we checked her pedigree and it matched the release form. But like we were the last ones ot pick up rabbits, and she wsa in the cage of the rabbit she boght. Then Mandi shouted some expletives and was like '' He freakin' left me the wrong rabbit!!'' so she said she could call the guy and the check out dude was like ok but let me talk to him. So she calls and she's like ''hi.....i'm going to kill you. WHERE ARE YOU?!'' Turns out the guy was already half way through Ohio on his way to NEw York. Buth e got stuff straightened out with the man so we were at least able to tkae the foreign rabbit home. He said Mandi's rabbit she did buy was on his way to Tennessee. Lovely. And then there was still the matter of albus and they were tired of dealing with us by then so he was just like ''Mandi give me your hand'' and she stuck her arm out and he slapped her wrist and was like '' you know what you did, don't do it again, now get out of here!'' and we didn't need to be told twice.
Mandi made a million phoen calls that day and hours and hours later finally tracked down whoever supposedly had her rabbit. And they didn't have her rabbit. They had bought a FRENCH Angora. So no one knows where the bunny she bought is. We're kind of angry.
We got back tot he hotel and we were goign to pack up the car so we could just leave in the morning and then this really bad storm started mocing in while we were eating dinner. So we turned on the weather channel and after 5 tornado warnings for hte area popped up, we decided to get our backsides out of there. And we packed the car at lgithening speed. But here's the thing. We had NO room whatsoever when we left. And now we had 2 more angoras, a french lop, ANOTHER grooming table (yeah.....) and she also bought 2 18 X 36 metal cage pans. This is where all our years of playing nonstop tetris comes in handy.
We shimmied and shook and twisted and packed and smooshed and stuffed.... And the whistle guy comes out onto the balcony to watch. And I was like ''enjoyign the show?'' and he just kind of laughed at me. It got to the point where we had to take stuff out of bags and take individual items like hairbrushes and feeders and waterbottles and stuff them into little nooks and crannies and gaps in between the bigger pieces of luggage. We had to leave 2 containers behind but we somehow made it all fit.
I rode home with 2 blankets, 2 binders, and a coat on my lap and a big plastic bin between my ankles. Also my head rest was missing...replaced byt he legs of my grooming table. I had to sit kind of off center.
Mandi's mum monitored the storms that were pounding Michigan and we had to call her every 45 minutes or so and update her with our location, then she'd track the storm and figure out if we wre going to hit it or not. We ended up driving in between 2 storms. Lightening on our left and right. I think we actually got struck by lightening. We were just absolutely blindedw ith light, completely immersed in white light and we couldn't see and our car shook. The 90 mpg winds were blwoing us off the road. A tractor trailor flipped over somewhere in front of us. There were police, fire trucks, and ambulances everywhere.
About 2 hours from home we get a call from Ruth.....we HUGE freakin' storm is stretching towards OH/PA from Kentucky and its goign to cut us off and last for hours, and that we'd better stop at a hotel. So somewhere past Cleveland we stopped at a Days Inn. Which frustrated us further because our bunnies were PACKED into our car so we had to like, take a crapload of stuff out jsut to get their feed and water in order for the night. We went up to our room and passed out....didn't even bother to bring our luggage. It was 4:30AM. Mandi woke up at 8 to take advantage of the breakfast and made a friend with the frotn desk guy, who had come out into the parking lot at 3am last night tosee the bunnies. She tried to get me to come to breakfast but I was....dead. But we checked out and left by 11 and on our wiper blade was a note.... to Mandi from the front desk guy with his phone number. haha.
So we made the 2 hour trek home...in the daylight...storm free. And I got home and immediately cleaned the rabbitry, took care of the horses, and did like a crapload of other stuff. I don't know where the energy came from. Unpacking was somehow more difficult than packing.
And I took pictures of just how packed our car was. And A picture of Mandi in the back to show how big (or small) the space was and then a picture of ALL The stuff we had crammed in that car.
Note how the passenger has no head rest....just a table leg.
The rear view....3 of Mandi's angoras and 2 suitcses. WEdged.
Note all the junk in the passenger side...that was all the junk on my lap.
Side view
Same picture, but close up....there's a Dutch in there somewhere.
Mandi inthe car. And yes, it's considered a ''compact car''. Though we refferred to it as a ''compacted car''.
^ Everything we had in there. Absolutely everything minus Mandi and I. Which included Mandi's 2 36 X 18 X 20 custom carrier she had to have. And the cart which was 36 X 18. 2 grooming tables. 2 metal cage pans (18 X 36), 2 fold up chairs, (2) 3 hole Dutch carriers, and of course an assortment of luggage and bags and bun food and all kinds of junk. Note how like, all the little things aren't even in bags because we had to take them out and just find tiny spots for them. When I opened my grooming table.....5 candy bars, a phoen charger, and a can of soup fell out. (You can see the red can of soup perched on top of the white blanket there). We still haven't eaten it.
We got home Saturday evening and discovered 4 tornadoes had touched down now far from where we'd been staying. And then the next day we went to another bunny show....
-The End.
nothing that ever happens to you goes easily huh!!
