All About BarkWorld!

Hey everybuddy!

Remember how I won that trip to BarkWorld from Iams for my Mom?

Well, it’s been a coupla weeks and I finally made her sit down and show me her pictures and tell me ALL abouts the Most Fabulous time she had.

But first, for those of you who might not know, BarkWorld/MeowWorld is a place where humans in the pet industry — bloggers, writers, magazines, pet product manufacturers and other pet-related companies — can all come together to meet each other and learn great stuff. Mom said it was prolly one of the best times she’s ever had in her life!

So here’s how she spent her time at BarkWorld:

Meeting Peoples

Okay, so when mom very first got there, she was invited to this thing called “Speed Dating” where she gots to meet for like 6 minutes at a time with different companies. She got to talk to great peoples from the ASPCA, Life + Dog Magazine, Eukanuba, flexi and Chewy.com. Not only was it super fun but Miss Alison, the nice lady from flexi, gave us this pawsonalized leash with our picture on one side and mom’s logo on the other.

Photos courtesy flexi USA

How cool is THAT?

Pawtying

Then later that night, there was a HOWL-o-ween pawty and lots of humans and their dogs got all dressed up. This was the pair that won the grand prize. Aren’t they Most Adorable?

Mom said it was a very happy-making night – seeing all the costumes, making new furends and getting to meet blogging furends like Miss Kristine from Rescued Insanity in real life!

Learning New Stuff

The next couple of days, mom filled up her brain with all sorts of things that had to do with growing your blog and using social media like Twitter and Facebook for the greater good. Mom said it was great hearing from places like the ASPCA how they use social media to get their message out. For instance, they took some of the tweets from some human named Kim Car-dash-yon (who apparently tweets 87 million times a day) and put their own twist on it. Take a look!

Miss Kim’s Tweet:

ASPCA’s Tweet:

Smart, huh?

Learning About Cool Products and Ideas

Between sessions, mom got to go around to lots of different tables and learn about different products and ideas. One of her favorites was from these two nice ladies.

They’ve started a movement to get rid of the doubts that some people have about shelter/rescue pets. It’s called Project Blue Collar. The idea is that rescue doggies like me and Brudder Ranger wear these blue collars and then peoples will look at us and say, “Gosh, those doggies are so great AND they’re rescues so there’s obviously nothing wrong with rescues and I should go to a shelter the next time I adopt!”

And not only that, they have a “buy one, give one” program. So for every collar they sell, they donate one to a rescue or shelter. Pretty pawsome, if you asks me. Go check ’em out!

Making New Furry Furends

Even though I didn’t get to go, some peoples got to bring their doggies with them. So mom got to meet some pretty great 4 leggers like Piggie from Sleeps with Dogs…

and Preston from Preston Speaks…

And I promise, I wasn’t the tiniest bit jealous. (Okay, maybe just the tiniest bit.)

Pawtying Some More

One night there was something called a Block Pawty with all the major sponsors of BarkWorld. There were fun games and great music and the Rachel Ray Nutrish peoples had a Most Talented man there that was doing drawings. So mom gave him a picture of me and Brudder Ranger and asked if he’d draw a picture of all of us together and this is how it turned out…

Gosh, we’re cute!

Winning Green Papers

Okay, now THIS might be the MOST exciting thing that happened. See, Petco (who was one of the BarkWorld sponsors) promised to donate one green paper (up to 5,000!) to a shelter or rescue for every tweet that featured the hashtag #BTC4A (short for Be the Change for Animals).

Then…if you were at BarkWorld, you could nominate a shelter to win the green papers and so mom decided to nominate Second Chance, the rescue that saved me. And guess what? Second Chance was one of the three that won! That means they are gonna get 1,667 green papers! Can you believes it??

I just was so happy, I almost wiggled all my brindle furs off! Thank you, thank you to Petco, BarkWorld and Be the Change for Animals for making a humongous difference for rescue pets and the humans who save them! Click here to read more about this Most Amazing thing.

Those are three super great ladies! (Photo courtesy of BTC4A.com)

Collecting Swag

Have you ever heard of swag? Well, I hadn’t until mom explained it to me. This, my furends, is swag…

Yep, it’s a bunch of free, cool stuff that they just GIVE you at places like BarkWorld! There are cups and treats and blankies and t-shirts and toys and…well, the list just goes on and on.

Now, as you can imagine, I was SUPER excited about all that but then mom and I sat down and talked it over and we decided…

Well, I can’t tell you what we decided. But tune in on MONDAY and I’ll tell you what it is. Yippee! I can hardly wait!

Whew, I think that’s it. As you can see, mom had a very much wonderful and educational time at BarkWorld. She is oh-so-grateful to her furend Gail for going with her, Iams for sending her and of course, ME, for winning the contest for her in the first place! Heehee!