Photo: Vlad TchompalovDAVAO — The mid-year Dog & Cat Pet Expo at SM Lanang Premier confirmed what Davao's pet owners already knew: the city's pet scene doesn't need Manila's scale to bring Manila's energy.
Across the weekend, the Fountain Court and event atrium hosted a steady crowd of families, stroller crews, and at least one gentleman with a cat on each shoulder. Local groomers, vet clinics, raw-food suppliers, and hobbyist clubs from across the Davao Region filled the booth rows, with partner clinics' discounted wellness checks drawing queues from opening bell both days.
The fastest-recall contest was, as expected, a triumph of hope over experience. Of the fourteen dogs entered, roughly half completed the recall, two recalled to the wrong owner, and one local dog named Biscoff conducted a full lap of the atrium to thunderous applause before returning precisely nowhere. He remains the people's champion.
The cat agility corner produced the weekend's most statistically improbable result: exactly one finisher, a local cat named Uling, who completed the course flawlessly and then refused to repeat the feat for the cameras. Cats.
Adoption row, organized with local rescue volunteers, logged strong traffic and multiple applications, with volunteers noting that local cat and dog interest in Davao keeps climbing year over year.
Organizers hinted the expo will return bigger — with the Philippine Pet Expo's SMX Davao edition landing in November, Mindanao's pet calendar now has real anchors at both ends of the semester. Biscoff, we assume, is already in training.