Owner’s blog:

I never thought I would say this, but I just got back from a conference to which I took two plush animals. And I didn’t even feel like a fool. You can see Capycoppy and Super Gari perched on a sign at the Austin airport. If posing plush animals in public places doesn’t make you self-conscious, nothing will.

Okay, to be honest, I was self-conscious, at least at first, but I spent four days posing these little plushes in the craziest places and after a while you have to accept your own insanity and run with it. It helps when you share your insanity with others, and at the Blog Paws 2011 Conference, there were plenty of crazy/nice people who do the same kind of crazy/fun thing I was doing.

Two of my co-conferencers were Stacy Winnick of Dobby’s Day and Angela Mitchell of Whek.tv. They both brought plushies. Angela brought Decoy Piig, the little guinea pig plush in the photo above, and Stacy brought a nameless naked mole rat. Here we were out at a nice restaurant in the Washington, D.C. area and we all got up to pose our plushes having a drink.

You’re probably wondering who the bad influence is in our group. Well, it is all of us. And we’re not the only ones! Plushie posing is a common pastime among pet bloggers, or at least those who show up to Blog Paws conferences.

The above photo shows my two plushies, Capycoppy and Super Gari, with the world famous George the Duck. As you can see, George is a plushy. What you might not know is that he is a plushie with his very own blog! That’s taking it a step farther than I’m willing to go, although I do enjoy reading his blog which is not as crazy as it sounds.

I took over 400 photos during my trip to the conference so I hope you don’t mind if I take a few posts to cover everything that happened. You can be sure that there will be plenty of photos featuring Super Gari and Capycoppy!

I’ll leave you with a photo of Gari with the two plushies. Next year I hope to be able to take him to the conference. That’s going to involve a whole lot of training between now and then. Gari has come so far in the past seven months though that I think he will be able to face the long drive to Salt Lake City and all the dogs and other pets that will be at the conference. Wish us both luck with that, we’re going to need it.