The last few days prior to a show, especially the first show of the season, find us hauling out our “show box” – dirty from a winter in the barn – and scrambling around for all the show essentials: banners, tables, fans, water buckets, halters and leads, tool kit, cable ties, duct tape, etc… And we put together our marketing materials: business cards, promotional fliers, stall signs and more. The most important thing we need is to have our papers in order: copies of the show registration, ARI certificates, health papers and BVDV test reports.
We also need to have our show string trained to walk calmly (more or less) on a lead, stand in place for a period of time and allow the judge to check their fiber, teeth, etc. For the males, the etc part is the tough one… This spring we are showing one adult male, our champion, Snowshoe Aristides, who is well practiced at being in the show ring. We also have three juvenile males who have never been off the farm. We’ve been training these boys for a while now on snow and ice and mud. Today they’ll practice loading into the trailer. It should be interesting. Fortunately, they’re small and it’s not difficult to control them if they have a melt down in the ring.
The really good news is that there’s a winter storm watch for all day Friday. If this storm tracks the way they think it might, we have one heck of a mess headed our way just in time for everyone traveling to the show. At this point, we’re just watching the weather to see how things develop and keeping our fingers crossed that it goes out to sea.
