Show 4 and the results are.......

Show 4 – The results are in. Well………….we collected a different color ribbon this time – red. Yes, that means we came in 2^nd in our class…….out of two dogs…….both days…….oh well. I guess you can’t win them all.

NO BAIT IN THE RING!

No bait or toys in the ring?????? Oh no what will we do. That’s what most of us thought when we saw the sign that said “no bait or toys”. Most of us will use a treat of some sort in order to get our dogs to stay still or perk up and look happy or just as a reward for being a good dog. Others will use toys with squeaker or a favorite toy for the same reason. But the judge has the right to make the choice as to whether or not he wants those to be allowed in the ring. Well that’s what Sunday’s judge decided. It turned out to be OK, but last minute change can be frustrating and let’s face everybody likes a reward.

The Judge speaks!

Normally when you enter into the dog show ring the only things that the judge says to you are: Please take your dog around the ring, down and back please and maybe he/she will tell you to go around again. He/she doesn’t even speak when you win, lose or come in 3^rd, he just points. So you walk out of the ring trying to figure out what was it that the judge liked about your dog or what he liked better about the other dogs. No feed back, no constructive criticism, just a ribbon or sometimes just empty handed.

Well, on Saturday, I had a judge that spoke. He said the usual things and then after my down and back, he said “do you know what pacing is?” I hemmed and hawed and said, maybe, I think so. So he explained what pacing was. It is when your dog runs with both right legs moving together and same with the left. Pacing is bad. What the dog should do is when her front right leg moves back so should her back left leg. He then said, “Sometimes if you go a little faster and pull on the lead a little bit that may correct the problem”, then he told me to go down and back again (not only did he tell me what to correct, he let me try it again – wow!) So we did, then he told me that I would get the feel of it and gave the blue ribbon to the other dog and we got the red. Oh well!

Signing up for dog shows

When you have a dog that you show, you of course have to enter your dog by the cut-off date, in the category/categories that you want. So far, we have done 3 shows and have just signed up for our 4^th show.

There are at least 3 different superintendents that run the shows that we have entered, BaRay, Onofrio, and Kevin Rogers. Now there are probably more, but these are the 3 that I have had experience with, so these are the 3 that I can talk about.

The technological age is so awesome in so many respects while at the same time it can be a major pain in the butt when people running the websites don’t make things “user friendly”. For example, BaRay Events has an awesome sign up form that you only need to fill it in once and it remembers you the next time. You only need to click on the events that you want and at the end of the form, you have fees so you know how much your paying and exactly what events you have signed up for, not so with Kevin Rogers.

Kevin Rogers has the most unfriendly sign up form I have yet to see. If I had never entered a show before, I’m sure I would have messed it up since, all they have are blanks and you have to know exactly what you are signing up for or you won’t be signed up. For example, Sienna is now 13 months old. I can sign her up in the 12-18 month class or the open bitch class, the reason I know this is because I have signed her up 3 previous times and have seen the different categories. On this site all they had was “Dog Show Class” and a blank place where you needed to fill it in. For the obedience class, it was the same thing; it says “Obedience Trial Class” and then a blank to fill it. Well Sienna has never been entered in obedience before and so I figured if I put down beginning, they would know what I meant. But no, they did not. So when I finally got my confirmation letter all she was signed up for was the show ring. So I tried calling but of course I just missed them. So I called the next day several times and all I got was a busy signal time and time again, so I also faxed them and sent an email. The next day, no response – NONE! So I called again. This time I got someone and she explained that I needed to write NOVICE A. Great, now I know and I would have figured it out had it been a multiple choice. She said they did get my fax and that by me writing “beginning” they just assumed that I started writing something but didn’t finish. I tried to tell her that the site was not easy to use but she just didn’t seem to understand that I found it difficult; I should have just filled in the right thing! I asked if there was somewhere on the site where it would at least list the different categories and so on. She told me to go to the AKC site, blah, blah, blah. I don’t want to have to go to different sites to fill in a dog show form, nor do I want to have to call people and bug them, I want to have all my choices listed for me and all I have to do is click or check the one I want.

My other complaint was that they didn’t list any of the fees so I blindly gave them my credit card and didn’t know how much I would be paying. Other sites list the fees and will give you a total at the end so you know how much to deduct from your account. I found out at the show just how much I was being charged for this show because I must have written down my number wrong and they had trouble processing it. Ironic that they couldn’t process my payment without all the information! Perhaps I should have made them guess my account number? How come she just didn’t know all the numbers of my account? Gee what do you want from me, all the information??????