Dog show: On Saturday, the opening day of Delhi’s Pet Fed festival, which made its capital comeback after a three-year absence, the NSIC Okhla grounds were transformed into an adorable chaotic battlefield of pets and their owners. Petfed is the ideal winter weekend picnic with your pet, with Shih Tzus pouncing and barking at each other, St Bernards slobbering all over food bowls, Labradors dragging their “pet parents” through a maze of grooming booths, squeaky toy racks, and playpens.
Let’s back it up a little, the festival first started in 2014 by Akshay Gupta who only wanted to have the pet-parents to have a happy day out with fun activities but little did he know that this pet festival will became a rage by 2016 with over thousands of visitors every year.
Akshay Gupta, Founder, Pet Fed mentions to Zee News Digital, “I’m overwhelmed after receiving such a positive response from Delhi. We had a lot of new pets and parents coming in, this time, who shared their experiences and engaged in
several activities at the festival. It left me in awe to see them making memories that they would cherish for life. I am amazed to look at people coming forward to create more love and encouragement toward pet adoption. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who supported us and made our 3rd Delhi edition a Superhit! Hoping to receive the same love in Mumbai too.”
There are multiple stalls in this festival with grooming stalls, treats and even adoption agency stalls and Zee News Digital got a chance to speak to the Director of Care and Compassion welfare organization, Sonakshi Rana who proudly remarked, “We are hosting an adoption drive for all of our ‘rescues’ (dogs) at PetFed. Right now we have 200 dogs which are in shelter and we hope they get the best home here.”
Pet parent Varsha Kv, whose 8 month old Lhasa apps participated in many events at the pet show on Sunday and she said, “This is a great opportunity for our pets to come together and play with each other and participate in all sorts of activities. So it is like a delight to us because it is exclusively for them which is a really good thing.”
On Sunday, the Delhi Police dog squad will present a unique exhibition of how police dogs are trained in explosive detection, command adherence, and attack. An international cat show sponsored by the Cat Club of India and the Global Feline Club, a grooming master class led by Andrea Cyrill Khurana, an internationally certified master groomer, as well as other attractions like Pet’s Got Talent and Pet Fashion Show are just a few of this year’s other exciting events.
Sanidhya Bharadwaj is elated seeing his Indie dog JOJO go up and down the slides and go through hoola-hoops. Sanidhya mentions, “JOJO is getting a chance to interact with other dogs and it is really amazing to come for an outing with your dog becasue every other weekend most of us go out with our friends and family for which you have to unfortunately have to leave your dog at home. But this event is like a complete family outing because JOJO is here with us. I am really glad PetFed has organized such an event for our best friends.”
So dogs or cats, the event is just too paw-some to miss! So get your leash on and set your destination to NSIC grounds, Okhla in Delhi.
