Funny Story - Best Dressed Pet!

Funny story about Carrie's pet duck winning first place for best dressed pet. Keep in mind this was 38-39 years ago! Carrie recently opened her new Trendy Tree brick and mortar store here in our hometown of Pontotoc, MS. It's a small town and we love it. The new store is a seasonal decorations store. Right now you will find fall, Halloween and several Christmas trees already decorated with products for sale in the store and on the Trendy Tree website. Getting back to the best dressed duck story....David Helms, managing editor of the local paper, stopped by the store the other day to visit and talk about an upcoming special Christmas issue in the paper. Carrie was busy at the time so Rachel and I talked with David about Trendy Tree participating in the special issue and so forth. Once we had finished talking about the planned images for the paper, I mentioned to David that he probably would not remember it, but when Carrie was a little girl he had taken her picture a couple of times and it wound up on the front page of the Pontotoc Progress. He would have been a twenty-something reporter at that time. I laughed and said one time, it was a picture of her astraddle her duck. The duck had won "best dressed pet" in the local fair that summer. He said....oh my goodness! I remember that! lol It was so funny, he couldn't believe that Carrie was the same person and I couldn't believe that he could remember it! This would have been 38-39 years ago for sure. She was around 2-3 maybe. David said that it hadn't been long that he had actually been talking with someone in the office about this kid that had a pet duck at the fair. He said they were talking about the county fair not having the pet show any more and said that he bet he knew one duck that was happy about that...lol He said this kid had a duck and it just followed her around. Sometimes she would grab it by the neck and drag it around with feet floundering. Well folks, that was her. That was her pet duck, Donald. He was an Easter duck. Don't know how that duck survived as long as it did! We lived in a neighborhood with close neighbors with dogs and cats for pets, but Donald held his own with them for probably close to two years. He roamed loose in the neighborhood and would come waddling in when we would step out on the patio and shake the feed sack. So for the pet show at the fair that hot, dusty, day our sweet neighbor and friend Candy, took Carrie and Donald to the pet show while Terry and I worked. She tied a red checked bow around his neck and entered him in the pet show. He won! First place for best dressed pet! Well, Donald finally succumbed to an altercation with another animal as best I remember, or maybe we released him to a nice pond))) David searched the archives of the Pontotoc Progress and sent this pic to Carrie the other day. Who knows, maybe she'll be on the front page of the paper again real soon but this times sans the duck!