ARBA History Booth At Indy

ARBA history booth displayed old material at the convention.

A box of four wooden New Zealand models with a sheet explaining the weakness of each model.

ARBA officials in the old days.

Youth contest Queen in the old days.

A framed photo of cooped rabbits in a national convention.

Happy English Lop Winners At Indy

Judge Paul of New York and judge Carol of California judged English Lop in the convention at Indianapolis. There are 33 points allocated to the ears of English Lop, judges have to measure their ears to make sure that from tip to tip the length is at least 21 inches. In general, it takes more time to judge English Lop than most of other breeds. At Indy, it took the two judges 10 hours to complete the judging. The happy Best of Breed winners are David and Trina from California. David and Trina's English Lop had won the Group in the 2006 ARBA convention in Dallas/Fort Worth, their rabbits are regularly in the winners' circle.

Rabbit Jumping Contest At Indy

On November 1, 2011, at the youth building of the ARBA convention in Indianapolis, two rows of hurdles were set up for rabbit jumping contest.

Here comes a contestant with his little rabbit.

Little guy is doing OK, running and jumping. The two adults on the right side of the photo are judge Mike, ARBA president and judge Susie from MN. They are taking on the task of judging the rabbit jumping contest.

Little rabbit decided that he did not want to go any farther. There is a very noisy heating unit on the right side, just next to the two judges.

The owner decided to help his rabbit to jump over the last hurdle at this end of the course.

The young lady seemed to have a little better luck to get the rabbit to the end of the hurdles. The noisy heating unit is inside the chain link fence at the very right side of this photo.

Rabbit jumping is a very popular activity in Europe. On October 30, 2011, the first European Rabbit Jumping championship was held in Wollerau, Switzerland, see

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/g/a/2011/11/04/rabbit_hopping_championship.DTL&object=%2Fc%2Fpictures%2F2011%2F11%2F04%2Fba-67089288_0504489324.jpg

In the next episode of the CBS program Amazing Race, rabbit jumping is one of the "Road Blocks", Road Block is a task that the contestants have to perform before they can get the clue to move to the next destination. If you are interested, make sure to turn on CBS on Sunday night at 8 pm, 7 pm central to see that episode.

Stacy And Joey Expecting

Judge Stacy of OH flew to Reno to judge during the WCC weekend in April, she was a new bride of one week then. In the convention we heard good news: Stacy and husband Joey are expecting a son in March 2012. Stacy has baby sickness but glowing, her baby bump is very visible.

We send our best wishes to the expecting parents.

Broken Presentation Is Not Easy

Lynn, the broken English Angora presenter, is talking to Christine and daughter Nichole concerning her presentation.

It's a very stressful process, Lynn and bunny needed a little eye-closing time.

Brenda drove all the way from New York to help grooming and to support Lynn's presentation. Most of Lynn's broken English Angora stock originated from Brenda's herd.

Lynn said, "Doesn't this broken English Angora look great?"

Lynn and daughter Nichole are getting ready to put the presentation rabbits on the table, Brenda's husband Dean is holding the next rabbit to be placed on the table.

We know the final results: the presentation did not pass. However, Lynn is a very tenacious person. She is going to continue the process by starting over. It's a 5-7 year project, and we definitely appreciate Lynn's dedication.

Katelyn And Katelyn

Here are two Katelyns at play, at left is Katelyn from MN and at right is Katelyn also from MN.

How much coincidence can it be? Both name Katelyn with the same spelling, both are from MN, both are from three generations of Angora breeding and showing families.

Here are Katelyn with her mom Lori. Lori was a youth English Angora exhibitor in WI in the 1980s, later moved to MN. Now she has a doctor degree, is married and with one daughter Katelyn. Lori and mom Audrey traveled to a lot of places, as far as in Oregon, to show their English Angora; now Audrey, Lori and Katelyn are traveling together to show their English Angora. It's truly a three-generation English Angora family.

Here is the younger Katelyn with grandma Deb. Deb shows English Angora, Katelyn's mom Alicia shows French Angora and Katelyn is not yet showing Angora but will start with a Himalayan then advance to Angora later on. She is very interested in Angora but her mommy and grandma wanted her to start with a normal fur breed. Showing is a family tradition that will be continued.

Betty Walking

One of the major activities of an ARBA convention is walking. Yes, walking. You better have very comfortable shoes on or your will be in pain. Grooming rabbits means getting one out of the coop then walk a long stretch passing all the booth and people to the grooming area, groom, then walk the long stretch back to the rabbit coop to put it back. Then repeat with the next rabbit, and the next and the next and ....

Betty says, "I received this picture from Sandra, the art illustrator of Domestic Rabbits, this morning. She said she loved this picture. I thought it pretty much sums up what I did over and over during the convention: brisk walking holding the rabbit to the grooming area to groom it then brisk walking with the rabbit back to the cooping area. If you look at the wool, it shows how fast I was walking to have caused a wind-blown effect on the rabbit. When I walked back and forth between the cooping area and the grooming area, I saw so many people who I knew or knew me. I kept a smiling face to make sure that even if I missed the person's eye contact or greetings, I was still trying to be pleasant."