Fair is Fair

SUMMARY: TMH takes a break from the TMH dogs and visits the county fair.

Have cameras, will travel. To the really really scaled-down urban Santa Clara County Fair. A mere shadow of what it was 20 years ago, barely hanging on by its fingernails. County supervisors want to sell off the land for housing and/or business. We seem to be the only county in california that can't put on a successful Fair. This year, parking and admission were free, and STILL almost no one showed up. Sighhh--

Apparently dogs were allowed onsite, as we saw several on leash. But the chaos with Tika and the livestock would have been--uh--distracting. So they stayed home. But plenty of doggishness going on anyway!

We arrived at 11:30, to discover that "dog demos" occurred from 10-11:00. I had spent 20 minutes trying to find anything at all of use on their web site. They told me that (a) there is a fair, and the dates, and (b) the concert times. NOTHING else, NO...THING. I wonder why no one comes to the fair?? Had I known about the dog demos... well... So onward.

Most of the goats and sheepies looked like dogs in their x-pens: Snugged up against the side, keeled over, snoozing their little heads off. But this goat couldn't get enough attention. He liked his face and throat scritched exactly the same way that Tika does! And wouldn't let me go for hours! The beast!

It was kind of like agility--people walking around with handfuls of ribbons. Except in their pockets.

At the midway, dogs of diverse breeds hung around everywhere!




And there was dog food aplenty, too.



Whoaaaaaa! Now here's a probably non-dog-related unexpected dead celebrity encounter! Do you think that this helped them attract more kiddie customers?

In the building containing all the various student's submissions in zillions of categories, I particularly liked this prize-winning container garden:

And here we see that my sisters with their Very Large Dogs(tm) as reported in an earlier post do not in fact have a monopoly on riding in style.

Finally, last thing before we left, we met this gorgeous critter who, it turns out, is NOT in fact Boost. His mother was [something like] an Aussie/Border Collie mix and his father was [something like] a Kelpie/Cattle Dog mix. This would have been my PERFECT next dog, absolutely perfect!

Blue merle. Mixed breed. Smallish (a bit smaller than Boost). Short hair. Apparently extremely energetic and driven, based on how he was described (although here he just wanted to keel over and snooze his little head off, probably after worrying about all those unherded goats and cows and sheepies all day). What are the odds I'd find something like that if/when I'm ready for the next one?? But this gives me hope that he/she might be there--someday--

Meanwhile, if you'd like to peruse ALL the County Fair photos, including piggies and fun with photoshop, with captions, go here.