Animals, art celebrated today on Warren's Courthouse Square

WARREN

Sydney Votino loves birds.

“I want to fly with them, and they are pretty,” explained Sydney, 10, of Howland.

She brought her green cheeked conure talking parrot to Saturday’s All About Animals Art Show and Celebration in Courthouse Square in downtown Warren.

Her parrot, Zoomie, wearing a harness and leash tether, has “night, night” and several other words in its vocabulary and jumps up and down on command – when it is in the mood. The bird, which Sydney said flies fast around the house, also lets her mom, Melissa Votino, who also brought her son, Dominic, 6, to the event, know when it is time to change its water and food by saying “eat.”

All About Animals, which ran from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, was sponsored by the Power of the Arts and the Fine Arts Council of Trumbull County and was organized by Kari Crawford of Champion.

“It was my idea to do something at which people could celebrate animals of all types,” said Crawford, who has a symbiotic relationship with her horse, Commander, an off-the-track thoroughbred, who seemed to sense Crawford’s brain cancer before it was diagnosed in December 2010.

Read more about them and the event in Sunday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.