From differing backgrounds, a mutual love of dogs brought Lucy Barclay and Cherie Baker together to organise The Animal Expo at the Waikato Show in April.
Cherie Baker, Kelly Wolfe, and Emma Bradley run DC Rescue - a charitable trust which rescues, rehabilitates and re-homes unwanted dogs.
They started from home and now use foster homes between Hamilton and Auckland.
They take in dogs from all over New Zealand, from dumped puppies, pound dogs on death row, owner surrenders, welfare cases and everything in between.
With the help of Facebook followers, DC Rescue re-homed more than 220 dogs in 2015 and has found families and owners for 240 last year.
'We get all sorts of dogs," said Lucy.
"We try to match them to the right home and people. Some dogs have come from situations where they have been abused and need a bit of confidence building, others are well trained gems sitting in pound cells waiting for their second chance."
Lucy trained and worked as a chef and worked on super yachts around the world before coming home and settling in Hamilton.
Knowing one day she would like to have her own business and thinking it would be in food, she set up a company called 'The House of Food', thinking this would give her the scope to do anything she wanted with it, never dreaming it would be petfood that would start it.
After being made redundant and finding feeding raw food to her dogs was expencive as her income had halved, she thought the time was right to set something up selling quality New Zealand-made raw food.
This then turned into premium dry food and all natural cat and dog treats.
Cherie and Lucy were approched by Waikato Event Centre to organise The Animal Expo as part of the Waikato Show.
They still have a few spaces left for stallholders with pet-related enterprises, businesses, and interest groups.
''Anything to do with animals. So far we have artists, photographers, pet insurance, dog apparel, pet health, pet minding and breeders. We are looking for further animal-related stallholders," Lucy said.
Show-goers will be able to bring their dogs on a lead to the pet section of the show. A dog parking area will allow owners to leave their pooch while they explore the show.
Anyone interested in being part of The Animal Expo can contact Lucy on lucy@houseoffood.com or Cherie at DC Rescue through Facebook.