Midwest Dachshund Festival Photos and Recap

It was another great year at the Midwest Dachshund Festival in Danville, Illinois on Saturday. This was the 13th year for the event, which is now sponsored by Dachshund Rescue of North America.
We headed down Friday afternoon, it was about a 3-hour drive. We were restless in the car wondering if we were going to see grandma and grandpa, two of our favorite people in the world. But when we got to the hotel, we kinda remembered the smells, and knew that a big Dachshund event awaited us the next day. We could hardly sleep we were so excited.
We got up at about 6 AM to go outside and do our duties. Dad was busy packing all his stuff back up in the hotel room, (actually it was mostly OUR stuff), and then we argued with the hotel clerk when we were checking out for charging us a $25 pet fee on the room. Last year, it was $5/dog. He said "it's on the website, and it's supposed to be $25/dog, so we gave you a break." Yeah, right. We stood our ground, he called the manager, and they reduced it to $10 total. Don't mess with Dachshunds. We won't be staying there next year.
We finally got to the event, which started at 10 AM, and could hear all the dogs barking from inside a big metal building at the fairgrounds. There were over 300 Dachshunds in attendance. Joy! We sniffed more butts than we really care to mention.
There was plenty to do and see - wiener races, costume contests, multiple rescue groups (lots of available dogs), contests for oldest Dachshund, biggest Dachshund (not fattest!), parades for IVDD dogs, you name it.
There was also plenty of Dachshund paraphernalia to buy - some of the vendors included Dachshund Delights, the Greener Wiener, III Dachshunds Beer, meetup groups, and many of the rescue groups had lots of stuff to buy, as well as silent auctions and raffles.
We were getting exhausted. Maggie was tired of walking around, so she sat with our friends at the Dodgerslist booth for about an hour to relax.
Then it was all over at 3 PM! We weren't done yet though. We sat with our friends at our picnic table outside after the event for 3 more hours, enjoying food, wine, and song (Dad brought his boombox of course.)
Finally, it was time to go home, and we slept like logs the whole way back to Chicago. We're still exhausted. It was great to see all of our friends, and we really appreciate all the hard work that went into this event.
Enjoy the pics.