Take me out to the dog show! Thinking of going to the Sunflower Cluster Dog Show, but never been to a dog show before? Or you went to a dog show and could never figure out what was going on or what to do?

I thought I would share a couple of items you may be interested in. The first is the Judging Program for the Sunflower Cluster Dog Show http://www.onofrio.com/jp/KTDC1JP.pdf Here you will find when, where, and what will be going on. There are maps of the Collisium that will show you where vendors are, where the rings are and where agility, herding, and lure coursing will be going on.  Starting on page 10 they will list all the dogs by breed and show the ring they will be in and an approximate time they will be showing.

To figure a more exact time that they will be showing: Go to the day, ring number and time. For example: Friday, ring 6 at 9:00. You will see that 2 Staffodshire Terriers will be followed by 4 miniature bull terriers, followed by 13 toy fox terriers, followed by 6 silky terriers. It takes approximately 3 minutes for each dog to be judged. So if you wanted to show up just for the silkly terriers they should show at about 8:50 (assuming all dogs entered made it to the show). The number before the breed tells you how many dogs of that breed are entered. The number after splits the entries into: Male nonchampion (class dogs); Female nonchampions (class bitches); Male champions (Special dogs); female champions (Special bitches) (At dog shows...boys are dogs, girls are bitches so don't be upset to hear the B word being used properly all weekend long)

http://www.canismajor.com/dog/consho2.html There are some dog show ettiqutte things that you should know. Some are obvious such as do not pet someone's dog without asking. Others are not so obvious: Unentered dogs are NOT allowed to attend. Strollers are NOT allowed. Most people are happy to talk about their dogs and the breeds of dogs they are showing, however, remember that some people show multiple dogs (I will be showing 2 this weekend). Grooming can take HOURS. Many people are nervous before showing and they need to get their dogs to concentrate on them and they need to concentrate on their dogs. So ask if you would like to talk to them about a breed and see if you can't meet at a later time after the showing. Do also realize that this is one of the few sports that the novice/hobby person competes against professionals. So a professional handler may have many dogs to care for, groom and show, and a hobby person may only have 1 or 2 dogs and have more time available.

Group competition (what you see on the TV) starts around 2 PM. They will announce the order of the groups and than the groups will be done until completion followed by Best in Show which usually is around 4-5 PM

There are some speciality shows going on as well. There will be a golden retriever, australian shepherd, poodle, collie and Toy Dog Speciality Thursday and a Newfoundland Specialty on Saturday. All the information on times is in the above Judging Program.

Feel free to respond with questions, I will do my best to answer. I will be volunteering starting Wednesday night to get ready for the shows. Will let you know how we do in the shows by Monday, sooner if things are going well! *LOL*