Dog showing is not my strong point....
Today I had to go to a Canine Judging and Showmanship competition (for the FFA) and...let me tell you, it did NOT go well Dx. Before we got to the school it was all right, besides the fact Colleen missed the bus, AGAIN. Cmon colleen, when you've worked for MONTHS on one day of the year, how could you even think of possibly sleeping late? MOST people probably wouldnt get any sleep at all before a huge competition like this....but you missed the bus anyway =_=...
Besides that the car ride up was fun, Mr. Grace kept threatening to push me out the window, though xD and mehgan wouldnt be quiet with her singing EVERYSONGTHATCAMEUPONTHERADIO....*cough* Norfolk Aggie is pretty impressive though, its probably about 10x bigger than essex aggie...and everything looks much nicer xx; even the houses around there went for around what? 2 million a piece? but oh god were they pretty ;3; Anyway, the day started off with dog showmanship, which i signed up to participate in. Since we each needed a dog to start off with, they layed cards off a table with the dogs name, and its breed. I got Bodie (boat-y), a golden retriever, and I also got to be the second person to show my dog x_x;...
Bodie was alright, except he hated being stacked. My nerves didnt help either throughout the competition, i forgot to make a hand change on the "L" patter we needed to do, and i didnt know all the tips and tricks the other people knew T_T; Then. after going through the first round of One triangle patter, and an L pattern, we switched dogs. The people who had a bigger dog got a smaller dog, and vice versa. Well, i had the choice between a springer spaniel and a laborador retriever (who hadnt been used yet) and i picked the lab. WELL. my mistake. who would have known the goddamn dog had never been shown in its entire life. It didnt mind the stacking as much (it was better than the golden retriever) but...oh man, when it needed to move...lets just say it didnt like moving. There was nothing i could do about it either, since if you do anything rough to the dog (like pulling it) you lose points, if you try to correct the dog, you lose points. Oh yeah, and you cant walk ahead of the dog either. So, i was stuck walking....slowly...around the ring, with a fat, old drooling laborador retriever.
So i came in 6th place. woo. go me, second to last T_T; my team member meghan however, got last place >>; so you can probably assume what people were thinking about our team. Well, come to find out after the showmanship was over, the two people who got second and first place competed in the westminister dog show (one of the largest dog shows that exist) while me and meghan....had barely stacked a dog once. yeahsothatwaskindadissapointingtoo. then next up was the judging, where our other four team members came in (michaella, kathy, nick, and kat). The point of the competition was to judge 4 dogs in an obedience class, and place them depending on how well they do. The participants were handed a work sheet, with all the possible faults a handler/dog could make, and it was up to the judge to decide how many points to take off, depending on what they did. Then after scoring was done, you needed to place the dogs in a 1-4 order, 1 being first, 4 being last. Well, nick did alright. He got the first scoring dead on, while the second time around (when they used different dogs) he mixed up placings 1 and 2. Kathy mixed up some placings on both of them, michaella did good on the first 4 dogs, but did completely horrible on the second 4, and kat did good on the second one, but screwed up on the first >>; After the judging we were allowed to take a 1 minute break to relax. Well, it would have been a nice break, if the students from the other schools werent giving us aweful looks the entire time >>; That lasted about the entire break, until the 3rd part of the competition started. It was a multiple choice test, pretty much on random dog facts and dog ancestors. Me and meghan (we were on team "b" so to speak, since we werent suppose to take the test) did alright on it, but the judging team of 4...did not Dx i think they were confused on about 4 questions, and if they god those 4 plus some wrong, they're screwed, since its only a 24 question test. Next was the breed identification test. This....well not for me, michaella and meghan, was a complete faliure. We soon found out our other two team members, nick and kat, didnt study their breeds that well....and therefore got almost every one of them wrong. Well, this'll put us in first place, i can feel it!
So...im guessing we wont even place in the competition itself. theres only 3 places, and about 5 schools participated. Go essex aggie, we suck horribly at canine judging and showmanship!
I really want to go back to sleep D: i just took a 4 hour nap to drown out my misery, only to dream about dogshowing T_T;.....i dont want to go to school tomorrow ;3;
Besides that the car ride up was fun, Mr. Grace kept threatening to push me out the window, though xD and mehgan wouldnt be quiet with her singing EVERYSONGTHATCAMEUPONTHERADIO....*cough* Norfolk Aggie is pretty impressive though, its probably about 10x bigger than essex aggie...and everything looks much nicer xx; even the houses around there went for around what? 2 million a piece? but oh god were they pretty ;3; Anyway, the day started off with dog showmanship, which i signed up to participate in. Since we each needed a dog to start off with, they layed cards off a table with the dogs name, and its breed. I got Bodie (boat-y), a golden retriever, and I also got to be the second person to show my dog x_x;...
Bodie was alright, except he hated being stacked. My nerves didnt help either throughout the competition, i forgot to make a hand change on the "L" patter we needed to do, and i didnt know all the tips and tricks the other people knew T_T; Then. after going through the first round of One triangle patter, and an L pattern, we switched dogs. The people who had a bigger dog got a smaller dog, and vice versa. Well, i had the choice between a springer spaniel and a laborador retriever (who hadnt been used yet) and i picked the lab. WELL. my mistake. who would have known the goddamn dog had never been shown in its entire life. It didnt mind the stacking as much (it was better than the golden retriever) but...oh man, when it needed to move...lets just say it didnt like moving. There was nothing i could do about it either, since if you do anything rough to the dog (like pulling it) you lose points, if you try to correct the dog, you lose points. Oh yeah, and you cant walk ahead of the dog either. So, i was stuck walking....slowly...around the ring, with a fat, old drooling laborador retriever.
So i came in 6th place. woo. go me, second to last T_T; my team member meghan however, got last place >>; so you can probably assume what people were thinking about our team. Well, come to find out after the showmanship was over, the two people who got second and first place competed in the westminister dog show (one of the largest dog shows that exist) while me and meghan....had barely stacked a dog once. yeahsothatwaskindadissapointingtoo. then next up was the judging, where our other four team members came in (michaella, kathy, nick, and kat). The point of the competition was to judge 4 dogs in an obedience class, and place them depending on how well they do. The participants were handed a work sheet, with all the possible faults a handler/dog could make, and it was up to the judge to decide how many points to take off, depending on what they did. Then after scoring was done, you needed to place the dogs in a 1-4 order, 1 being first, 4 being last. Well, nick did alright. He got the first scoring dead on, while the second time around (when they used different dogs) he mixed up placings 1 and 2. Kathy mixed up some placings on both of them, michaella did good on the first 4 dogs, but did completely horrible on the second 4, and kat did good on the second one, but screwed up on the first >>; After the judging we were allowed to take a 1 minute break to relax. Well, it would have been a nice break, if the students from the other schools werent giving us aweful looks the entire time >>; That lasted about the entire break, until the 3rd part of the competition started. It was a multiple choice test, pretty much on random dog facts and dog ancestors. Me and meghan (we were on team "b" so to speak, since we werent suppose to take the test) did alright on it, but the judging team of 4...did not Dx i think they were confused on about 4 questions, and if they god those 4 plus some wrong, they're screwed, since its only a 24 question test. Next was the breed identification test. This....well not for me, michaella and meghan, was a complete faliure. We soon found out our other two team members, nick and kat, didnt study their breeds that well....and therefore got almost every one of them wrong. Well, this'll put us in first place, i can feel it!
So...im guessing we wont even place in the competition itself. theres only 3 places, and about 5 schools participated. Go essex aggie, we suck horribly at canine judging and showmanship!
I really want to go back to sleep D: i just took a 4 hour nap to drown out my misery, only to dream about dogshowing T_T;.....i dont want to go to school tomorrow ;3;