[Respone in next post. BIG]

I was at Buckeye Bash last weekend, and I feel compelled to share some
observations. First off, I was there as a guest. I was not showing,
and I was not vending. I was an outsider looking in, and I may not
understand a few things that happened, but if I saw them and I was
troubled by them, and this was my first visit, then I wonder about
the ability of this show to continue.

Observation #1: The judges.
First off, I saw specialty judges actually looking rules up while they
were judging. Imagine an NFL Referee whipping out his rule book after
each play. You think people complain about the length of games now,
imagine if that were to happen. In addition to this, there were long
period where there were no judges doing anything. No judges were at
ANY of the judging tables. Again, back to the football analogy. I
don't think that fans would appreciate all the officials taking off
for a smoke break together in the middle of a game. Buckeye Bash didn't
really end until almost 9:30pm. Most vendors and others broke down
starting at 5pm and were gone by 6. This is unacceptable in my view.
Vendors should be allowed to break down at 5, and judging and ribboning
should be done by 6pm. Anything later is just plain ridiculous. Oh, and
I was amazed at the number of judges who won ribbons, which were, oddly
enough mostly top three ribbons. Why oh why are judges allowed to enter
ferrets in a ferret show? Sure, they may not be judging their own
ferrets, but still, many of these judges know each other outside the
confines of the show, thus they know each other's animals. I really
don't need to say anything else on this one. Finally, there was one
category specialty, champagne, where the judge told the contestants
what they were looking for, and the ferret that won first clearly had
nothing in that list, even to me, a non-ferret person. She talked about
the color needing to be a nice buff color, while the ferret had an
almost mocha coloring. She talked about the ferret should not have
mitts, and you could clearly see little mitts on the winning ferret.

Observation #2: Feedback.
I was very interested in looking at the contestants feedback slips. I
was APPALLED! If you are judging according to standards, the feedback
slips should show those standards and show where the points are coming
from. I am a teacher and if I gave an essay back to a student with
feedback the way the judges at Buckeye Bash did, I would be given an
ultimatum: do it right or find another career. The standards by which
the ferrets are being judged should be on the feedback sheet, and a
breakdown of where the points come from should be there. This way,
noone can claim that they were unfairly judged and it might address
some of my concerns about judges entering ferrets in the show. Also,
in a couple of the specialty categories, I saw contestants openly
questioning and criticizing judges during the ribboning, and this may
help to keep this from happening.

Observation #3: The show hall.
I was told by MANY of the participants that the show used to be bigger
in years past. How that show hall handled the larger shows is a mystery
to me. It was barely adequate for the show as it was. Most of the
issues would probably be worked out with a better layout of the
vendors, but beyond that, I am not sure how the show would be able to
grow in that location. Also, I would take a serious look at cost
factors for vendors and contestants, as the economy doesn't look like
it will rebound any time soon. Look for local sponsorships that will
help pay for the event and make it more attractive to grow the show.

I am hoping that these observations will provoke a discussion of
improving this show, or it will dwindle and die. And if the organizers
of the show don't address these issues, then they don't have any
business alphabetizing a bag of M&M's, much less running a show like
this.

[Posted in FML 7174]