“Hundreds of people came from all over. There were so many people there that all the food vendors ran out of food."
“In 2019, I was only home in Wyoming for a month total. 2020 was supposed to be the same, doing Canine Stars all over North America, from Alaska to Mexico City. We were doing a show in Florida in February when COVID hit. After that, every single show for the rest of the year was cancelled except for one in October at White Post Animal Farm in Melville, New York.
So we’ve been home almost all year with nothing to do. Fortunately, our town of Pine Bluffs invited us to do a show at their annual summer Trail Days Rodeo. There were no other fairs or rodeos because Cheyenne was closed down and so was Colorado. We normally would not be able to perform a small, one-day event, so we were really excited to do it for our hometown.
We ended up doing this, you know, our huge show like the kind we normally do at state fairs. Some of our trainers came up from Colorado and Illinois because they were so excited to, you know, perform again. Hundreds of people came from all over. There were so many people there that all the food vendors ran out of food, which has never happened before. It was the biggest event Pine Bluffs has ever had. Afterward I thought well, we'll see if there's a big outbreak now. But I never heard of any cases. So it's been kind of frustrating that we haven't been able to do shows and, you know, that almost everything has been canceled.
We were absolutely thrilled when we heard that the White Post Animal Farm event was still going on in October. Even days before it was supposed to start, I was worrying that it would be canceled. We had driven our rigs all the way from Wyoming to New York to do it, so we were really hoping it wouldn’t be canceled. We did have to take COVID tests before we got here and there's a quarantine here for people from out of state. So once you get here, you have to not leave your area for two weeks.
The event, which is limiting the number of tickets it sells, is happening every weekend for a month and so far the weather has been beautiful and people are spread out and they're having fun. They're just happy to get out. When we first booked this show, I figured that Monday through Friday we would go to New York City, Martha's Vineyard, Maine, visit all these places during the week. But, uh, now we're pretty much stuck here. People even told us that it’s not safe to go to New York City right now, like it’s dangerous.
We've heard of a few shows in 2021 that have been cancelled already early in the year and I'm trying to just not even think about it." -- Keri, Canine Stars #Wyoming
