Show Sleuth is back.  Forgive the absence for those fans I have out
there :-)
 
Show Sleuth was in attendance with the ghouls and witches at Baltimore.
Oh- I'm referring to the people in costume - I don't mean that the show
coordinators and judges were ghouls and witches!
 
For those who have never been to the Baltimore show, it is usually a good
one to attend overall.  The BFC (Baltimore Ferret Club) has been around for
long enough now that they put on pretty much the same show year after year
and it has become a standard for other shows to take example from.  I enjoy
going to Baltimore because I know what to expect - a good selection of
vendors, a good show hall location (but I still hate the traffic to get
there, same thing that I was saying about Ohio - but it's true, to have
good locations, you need to be near people!), and an overall professional
show.
 
This year was not much different than past years in most ways.  The vendor
selection was even greater than in past years, which is very important to
the success of a show.  This year there was a Halloween theme and a decent
number of people were in costume, and the coolest cages decorated for the
holiday.  Even most of the judges were in some way in costume, which I
thought was a nice touch.  Though, Show Sleuth has a problem with the name
of the show... it was Monster Mash I believe - but personally I thought
that Mustelid Mischief would have been cool... perhaps next year in honor
of Murray?  Okay I won't push it.
 
Other nice things: the raffle was excellent in size, very plentiful and
good selection.  Show Sleuth visited the raffle table a number of times
and every time I was there I heard oohhhs and ahhhs of things that people
wanted to win, and there was always a line for tickets so I belive it was
profitable for the Club.
 
The ribbons were very nice, as were the trophies.  Show Sleuth likes that
Baltimore gives ribbons to all entrants in the specialty rings, not just
top ten, although someone commented that in one ring they placed to 30th
place and they did not like that at all - they'd rather not take a ribbon
than take home an above-20th place.  I tend to agree but cannot fault the
BFC for giving the ribbon.  A cut-off at 20 though probably is acceptable.
 
The show hall is spacious, which now that Show Sleuth is paying attention
to these things, surprised me.  I would be curious to know the square
footage of this hall in comparison to other halls.  I don't think that
it is really that large of a hall but the BFC lays the place out very
efficiently as to keep the hall from not being cramped.  There is one
sidenote to that I will address below.
 
Another thing Show Sleuth likes about Baltimore is their set up for check
in.  The vet check is in a separate room from the show hall, and it is
large enough that nobody has to stand outdoors while waiting in line.
(Croydon, incidentally, does the same thing - they have a nice vet check
in which I probably forgot to mention in my Croydon post).  Baltimore then
later uses this room for their fun matches, which is nice because it's out
of the way from the foot traffic of the show.
 
As for the professionalism issue: I think that the BFC is very
professional.  They are about as organized as a ferret show can be (imagine
that, the word ferret and organized in the same sentence!), there is always
someone available to answer questions at their table, and in general things
flow very smoothly - no noticeable snags.  I did not notice anyone wearing
name tags or specific shirts, except I believe Wanda Larkin (who I am
assuming puts on the show, forgive Show Sleuth for not being certain) did
have a tag on.  Show Sleuth may just have not seen anyone else if they did
have tags or matching shirts.  The judges did not wear name tags, either,
so unless they were at the judging tables you did not know who was a judge.
I recommend that all shows do have judges ID'd by tags.
 
I noticed that all first place winners were asked to step up to the stage
and have a photograph taken of them with their winning ferret.  Nice idea!
Show Sleuth is curious to know what the photographs will be used for and if
the winners get a copy.
 
So you're thinking, Show Sleuth, you're losing it.  Nothing was wrong?
Well, I do have some suggestions for improvement.
 
While the raffle was plentiful with great selection, they tried something
new as far as where to put the tickets that did not work, though I suspect
that the BFC already figured that out.  For anyone who does not know the
raffle is really not a raffle but a chinese auction (all shows do this).
Every item is out on the table, and there are cups or bags next to every
item (at most shows) and you purchase your tickets then put tickets only in
the bags or cups that you want the item for.  At some shows, this becomes
a problem that you might mistake one cup or bag for the wrong item.  BFC
attempted to fix this problem by numbering every item, then attaching a
bag for every item to the front of the table on the table skirt, each bag
having the matching corresponding number.  Great idea BUT they did not have
the bags in order of number, so it was very difficult to find the bag you
were looking for.  There were at least 65 items for raffle (I think much
more actually) so if you were looking for the bag numbered 32, you had to
hunt for it, they were not in numerical order.  For Show Sleuth, it was
confusing and it took more time than I wanted to take.  But at the risk z
of sounding petty, I was at the table five separate times (hey, I like
raffles) and every time I was there, people were commenting about how it
was confusing or asking the raffle table attendant where a particular bag
was.  So- it needs improvement.  Simply putting items in numerical order
would be perfect.  But Show Sleuth still loved the raffle even though I
ended up spending tons of money just to win an item that cost about $5.
But it's for a good cause and the excitement is worth it!
 
Another problem that I heard someone strongly opposed to was the space
given to vendors.  The show hall was laid out very well with plenty of
space for exhibitors, but the vendors that had the "inner" tables had very
little space behind their table for their ferrets and belongings.  I wish
I could explain better but without the benefit of drawing a diagram I will
have to just let the BFC understand what I mean.  The vendors that were on
the perimeter of the room seemed to be fine, but after hearing the one
"inner" vendor remark that they did not have enough room for their stuff,
I did notice that other "inner" vendors were having difficulty as well.
This is the price to pay for having such a great turnout; there were more
vendors at this show than in previous years, and they had to go somewhere.
I like the show hall that BFC uses, so I hate to recommend that they search
for a new hall, but if the show continues to grow in popularity it may be
necessary.
 
Now, Show Sleuth's biggest gripe about the show is something that I have
been thinking about since leaving the show because I do not want to be
unfairly harsh and I will admit now that I do not understand why they did
this.  I'm going to state the problem and ask if any BFC people can explain
it I will be fair enough to listen before judging.
 
The show was billed as a two-ring championship show.  For those of you who
do not show, what that means is that your ferrets are judged in two "rings"
(table where judge sits) by two different judges.  After judging of all
ferrets in that class (alter, breeder, or kit) each judge then awards who
they felt the top ten ferrets were in that ring.  At the end, one ferret is
awarded best in class overall from those who won top tens.  Most shows are
actually three ring championship shows.  Show Sleuth prefers three rings.
Baltimore I believe has been two rings for some time.  But this year, they
changed it even more.  To be honest, I do not quite understand how they
did it but it ended up that there were two ribbonings as usual, but one
ribboning was for top ten males and one was for top ten females.
 
This may have been explained in the registration forms, I am not sure, I
tend not to read them as much anymore as I generally understand the show
procedure.  So for me, I was surprised to find that my ferrets would only
have one chance for a ribbon, whereas in a traditional three ring show,
they have a chance for three ribbons.  Before anyone thinks that I only
want ribbons, which is not the case, the reason I care is that with a three
ring traditional setup, I get the chance for three judges to tell me what
they think of my ferret.  If my ferret were to place in all three rings,
then I'd know that three judges agreed that there's something special about
this ferret.  I like having three opinions, whereas here I didn't even have
two opinions; either my male placed in the top ten males or it did not.
One person did say that she paid regular entry fees to other shows where
she was able to win three ribbons (in a 3 ring show) but this show she paid
the same but only had the potential for one ribbon.
 
I must add though that there is one benefit to splitting up the males and
females, which is that some judges will place males higher than females and
vice versa - it's just a preference of each judge and I would guess it's
not even a conscious thing.  So splitting up males and females isn't
necessarily a bad thing, but Show Sleuth would then want to have two
separate alter classes, breeder classes, and kit classes, and that I would
guess is a pretty difficult thing time-wise to do, I don't know.  It would
also mean twice the number of ribbons, which would drive prices up, but
still it would be a great thing to do.
 
I know that there was a good deal of confusion about this new judging
method, and I did hear others quietly say that they didn't like it.  But I
don't really want to say any more about it without understanding more fully
why they'd do this.  I tried to go over it in my mind for 4 days and I keep
coming back to I didn't like it and hope they change it back or try doing
the separate male/female classes I described above.  But I would very much
like someone from the BFC to explain it to me more fully so I can try to
decide in an educated manner whether this was a good thing or not.
 
Well folks, that's gonna be it for the Baltimore Report.  Overall, as
usual, a good show!  As always, I welcome comments, cricisims, and of
course, fan mail :-).  And a reminder - if you ever want YOUR voice heard
about any show you just attended, but don't want to speak up yourself,
send your comments to me and I'll put them in the Show Sleuth report
anonymously.
 
Murray Mustelid the Show Sleuth
[Posted in FML issue 2855]