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| Road trip to Vegas! |
Last week we hopped in the car and were on our way to Las Vegas for the 2014 BlogPaws conference! The conference lasted from Wednesday evening until Saturday evening. The whole conference was a whirlwind of continuous events! There were so many places to be, things to do, and people to meet!
If you don’t know what BlogPaws is, it is a “Social Media Company focused on teaching pet enthusiasts, pet bloggers and all pet parents how to use social media effectively and responsibly.” (Source: www.blogpaws.com) Can you believe that the community now has over 3,000 members!? Spectacular, right?
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| Going for a walk to get out some energy before the conference |
The event kicked off with a Dessert on the Terrace event sponsored by Bissell. It was wonderful to put faces to blogs and avatars who we’ve been following online for awhile and have only met online. Over the next few days we attended various learning sessions taught by experts, and we got to interact with so many different people. In between meeting dogs and people and listening in the sessions, we explored the exhibit hall where Bella and Terra thought they were in heaven because they were given so many treats from everyone.
Both girls were very well behaved, such troopers, and extremely patient. They were wonderful to sleep during the sessions, yet be awake for everything in between. The only downside was that Miss Bella got stepped on quite a few times. The running total on the last night was at least 10 times. Yep. After about the 7th time, it got harder to try to smile and shrug it off, when the thought of her poor tail enduring the weight of over 100 lbs coming down on it was incredibly painful to imagine (let alone experience). Some people didn’t seem to really be paying attention or keeping an eye out for the animals around the conference (littler dogs shrunk back multiple times from approaching feet for fear of being trampled or landed on).
Each night we came back to the hotel room, Bella and Terra were exhausted, but they didn’t complain at all the next morning when it came time to leave again. They were on the go from 8 a.m.-11 p.m. each day, which was a lot for them. When we would get home, we’d all want nothing more than to crawl into bed to prepare for the next big adventure. But since Kronos had been relaxing all day (besides getting a few potty breaks), he would first get outside to run in the grass to play a midnight bout of fetch before bedtime.
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| Some of the dogs we met including Tillman, Dexter, Cubby, Gander, Mort, Sophia Loren, and Sugar! We never did catch a glimpse of Manny the Frenchie, though we did meet a Capybara! |
The next evening was Pawject Runway where some pups dressed up and walked the runway to support shelters. The lucky pup who won $500 for a rescue was Mort, from Stylish Canine and Dogthusiast! It was incredibly exciting and fun to watch. After this, we went to a session to learn how to leverage social media and online marketing to help make a difference in the lives of animals mainly for rescue groups and organizations.
The final evening of the conference was an award ceremony. We were incredibly honored to have been one of the Finalists for the Nose-to-Nose Awards. Here is a list of all of the other Finalists. The last evening was the award ceremony which featured amazing people. Although we didn’t win in our category, we were happy to have been chosen as a Finalist at all, and are super happy for all of the people who won their awards! Congrats to all!
It felt like the conference flew by! It had only begun, and then as quickly, it was over. Our heads are still spinning with the invaluable information we acquired and the myriad of people we met. We made some wonderful friends who we will continue to stay in touch with online until the next conference, which is in Tennessee!
The last day we stopped by the Westin on our way out of town to take a few more pictures and go for a walk before our drive back to AZ.
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| There was this beautiful setting where we had to stop and get a picture |
You can see the picture of us with our loot we received from the conference here. Make sure to check back to find out about a giveaway we will be hosting with some of the extra items we received at the conference. We will also be putting together a Blog Post about some of our favorite items that we received from the conference (when we were unpacking the bags, some of the Jones chews which weren’t even unwrapped were an instant hit).
This was our first BlogPaws, and it will definitely not be our last! Hopefully we’ll get to meet some more of our online friends at future BlogPaws, and we are excited to catch up with old friends next time! You can see more photos from the trip in the album on Facebook, our Facebook fan page, Instagram, or Twitter.
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| Saying good-bye to BlogPaws 2014 |
After the conference, we have decided to do some serious soul searching and goal setting to apply what we learned. There are some big and fun changes coming! We will be re-vamping our Blog and also migrating to WordPress over the next few weeks. Until our Blog there is up and running, we will continue to be posting on Blogger, and we hope you will continue to join us on our journey.
Live Life to the Fullest,
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| Tiffany, Bella, Terra, Kronos |
