Exploring the Austin Pet Expo: Family Fun & Freebies – Part I

On Saturday afternoon, we visited the Austin Pet Expo at the Palmer Events Center in Austin, TX. I brought my mom and my oldest daughter. It was a great time and we met lots pawsome pets and animals, a few bloggers, and visited many of the expo booths.


My mom was totally into getting lots of freebies and she certainly got a lot of stuff. She's pretty proud of her pen collection. Me and Lily's bag of goodies was definitely not as full as hers.

My mom's goody collection.
There were lots and lots of dogs. Some were visiting the event and others were available for adoption. And some of the dogs were spokesdoggies for their humans' expo booths.

Clockwise: Irish Wolfhound, senior dog, Dachsund, mixed breed dog, and a Collie. 
The little dog pictured below was a remarkable 20 years old! I thought she was just adorable, and she allowed us to pet her a little bit. She lives at Bark-N-Rest Retirement Center, which is a place for senior dogs to live out the rest of their lives. I think it's a pretty cool idea, actually.

20 year old Chihuahua from Bark n Rest Retirement Center. 
The senior dogs who live at Bark-N-Rest Retirement Center are rescued from shelters. They are the dogs who were deemed unadoptable and were on death row. This non-profit also helps healthy senior dogs find forever homes.

Adorable kitties for adoption. 
There were also lots of very cute cats and kittens looking for homes at the Austin Pet Expo. I wish I could remember the name of the rescue these kitties were from, but I just can't. If anyone wants some more information on the ones pictured above, just let me know and I can try my best to track down their rescue organization for you.

One of the rescues I was super excited to visit at the expo was the Central Texas Rat Rescue. They had so many cute rats available for adoption. All of their rats come fully vetted and spayed/neutered for an extremely reasonable price.

Hairless rat babies! 
Oddly enough, the Austin Reptile Shows booth was placed right next to the rats. The reptile booth had lots of reptiles on exhibit including snakes, lizards, and turtles.

Reptiles!
We also met a goat who was visiting the expo. She was ready for the pet costume contest as you can see. We got to scratch her on the back for a few minutes. Her human said that's what she liked best. Two dogs came up to sniff Miss Goat and she let them know what she thought of that by giving them a nice head-butt. It was pretty funny, but the dogs seemed a little shocked.

Miss Goat dressed as a jester. 
We also saw a horse while we there - a beautiful little Shetland Pony.

A pony. 
As you can see, I took tons of pictures. And because I have so much to share, I'll break this post into two parts. Stop by tomorrow to see the other pet bloggers that I got to meet as well as some of the vendors that we checked out.