Atlanta Pet Fair
My first APF show(Atlanta Pet Fair) and my first show in a couple of years. As usually coming to one of these shows is very refreshing. You meet new people, see old friends, see new stuff and learn new things. If you are a groomer and think you know everything there is to know you are definitely missing out and so aren’t your clients.
My first impression was not the best but it did get better. First for beginners don’t follow the web site for the best hotel. The hotel associated with the show is not the closest, I am not sure if it is the cheapest or the only one that allows pets. I do know that if you fly getting to the show is not easy or cheap. If you drive you have to pay to park every day. If I go again I will pay extra to stay near the Convention Center. Once we got the transportation thing figured out things went much smoother.
Classes as usual were great. I didn’t take a lot f courses so I would have time to shop and watch some of the competition. Actually that brings up another problem I had, if you wanted to watch the beginning of a competition in the morning you could not because you could not enter the trade show area till 10am. Sorry I got a little off track! My first class was CPR and first aid. I have taken it before but as with people things change and you really should take a refresher. I had not taken this with Mary and Beth before, they are awesome. I took it because I want to take their instructor class and thought this would be a good start. I was able to start the conversation with them about how and when to take it. They do a great job teaching this class and Spirit, Mary’s blind Samoyed was a great addition!
My next 2 classes were with Danelle German and Chubbs. I have taken a class with her in the past. The first class was on “Perfect groom for every cat”, this had a lot of useful tips. The second class was on”Cat grooming handling techniques”, this class offered some useful tips on getting some of those not so nice cats done. I will be implementing some of these real soon. I just hope they work as easy as she made it look. Danelle was also doing a demo at the Wahl booth which I watched and also picked up some useful tips.
My last class was “Plant Power, CBD how to use and sell it”. This class was very interesting because lately every time you open a trade magazine there is an article about CBD. Usually these articles just confuse me more, this class pretty much cleared most things up. I bought some stuff to try with my cats, for me, and I also had a couple of client pets in mind. Basically it appears to be 100% safe for humans and pets, and potentially helps many different ailments. The dosage is by weight, so if you have an ache, pain, or ailment you take the amount for your or your pets weight and it should work. My most burning question for on the human side was does this show up in your blood and the answer was “no it does not.” After returning home I read a non pet article about how CBD is still illegal in some states. I did some research and found this article was a bit behind and lacking in information. This article only talks about CBD from marijuana not CBD from Hemp. CBD from Hemp which has less than .3% THC is legal in all states, it is legal to use and legal to sell. So when looking at CBD be sure of where you get it and wether or not is from hemp, it has to have less that .3% THC.
