And out of the darkness has emerged Show Sleuth. Some of you will love me. Some will hate me. But I'm here out of pure intentions. I love a good ferret show. I go to as many as I can. Some are great, some aren't. But nobody puts on a show with the idea that it will stink. Sometimes things go wrong. And even really good shows sometimes do things that need improvement. Many show attendees don't feel comfortable about speaking up. Look at me, I'm not exactly giving out my name here either, I don't want to have them lock the doors when I show up at a show. So Show Sleuth was born. Show Sleuth will report on shows, and hopefully rather than create bad feelings or controversy, Show Sleuth will only create bigger, better shows with the feedback that is offered. And I welcome replies!! Something I saw or overheard may not be what someone else felt. And there will be no personal slamming. I'm not here for that junk. Just general observations about shows. So here s'the first report Columbus Ohio show this past weekend. Overheard at the show was a lot more negative comments than positive. It's a shame. Last year's show was great, maybe a little hot but overall the show was first rate. To go from that to having mostly complaints is disappointing. The layout and size of the show hall was the biggest problem, and honestly was the root of nearly all other problems. It was very difficult if not impossible to really enjoy wandering the vendor tables, the aisles were too narrow and if you stopped to browse, people behind you would run into you or growl that they couldn t get by. A number of vendors said that sales were not good and thought that it may be for that reason. The fact that the show hall was on the 2nd floor of the hotel was also not a good move, as general consensus had it. A cage company was there, and the workers for it had to carry all of their cages up the steps as the elevator was not working. Even small vendors were disappointed that they had to lug up the steps all of their things. People with multiple ferret cages had to lug up their cages. And then there was the issue of exhibitor space There were far too few exhibitor tables. Lines formed just after 6 am of determined people wanting to reserve space for their ferrets and belongings. Many people did not get a table and had to keep their ferrets in their hotel rooms, IF they had a room, and if it was close enough to the show hall that they could run back and forth for classes. That is crazy - there should never be too little room for the exhibitors that were paying for the show hall that was too small in the first place. The show was carrier style like other shows that are championship but that apparently had problems, I'm not sure exactly why this didn't work out the way other shows did, but I heard that one exhibitor sent his ferret up and after judging picked up his carrier and discovered that it was not his ferret. Apparently it all worked out but after that there were no more carriers, which when that announcement was made, everyone in the show hall cheered an amazing hooray. One other major problem with the show I can't really fault the Ohio folks for. They tried something new that if it had worked out as planned, it would have been an incredible first for shows. Rather than tabulate show scores by hand, they had computers set up so when judges finished their scoring sheets they gave it to data entry people and the scores were put into a database, and the idea was then that comments and scores would be printed out on stickers that exhibitors could pick up and see how they did. Well, the database had many problems, scores wound up being manually calculated anyway, and everyone complained. But I would say that this idea is worth revisiting again in the future for anyone willing to give it a shot, the bugs just need to be worked out. However if they are to try to print out the scores and comments, Show Sleuth has one big suggestion - do it by class, then sort the results by entry number, and print them all out at once. Don't try to print them out as they are done. The result was an eight foot long table with little stickers printed out in absolutely no order, and piles of people trying to look for their ferrets number to no avail. If they d been in order, by ring number, that would have been great. But as it was, it was awful. Show Sleuth is not evil and is not here to judge any show unfairly. There were good points as well as bad as there are in every show. Show Sleuth certainly does not want people to stop going to ANY show; the whole idea is to improve every show so that they re all so terrific that everyone wants to go. Among the good things about the Ohio show: The two people that it seemed that were putting on the show, Pam and Lori (don't know the last names) were amazing. Much more pleasant than most I ve seen at other shows. Also, if not for the fact that the show hall was too small, there was an amazing selection of vendors that many shows would only wish for. The hotel that the show was in was nice, and a major major big plus is that the show was held in the hotel that people stayed in. As mentioned above, Show Sleuth gives an A for effort for the database idea of scoring, it turned out badly but still is worthy of mention. Furthermore it must be said that this organization put on a terrific show last year and it was overheard that next year the show will be held in a hall the size of two soccer fields. If this is the case, then I sure think that this will be a show worth going to. Based on last year's show and the fact that most of the serious problems of this show were rooted to the size of the hall, then I expect to see a first-rate show next year in Columbus Ohio. Show Sleuth report: done! [Posted in FML issue 2789]