Judging

A new project that has been keeping me away from my blog has been judging an "Alpaca Spin Off" for the up coming AWE show in Reno on April 11th and 12th. Participants send in 2 ounces of their alpaca fiber from a raw fleece to the coordinator in January who in turn sends them to me with all the paper work and classes for each sample. It is my job to find a few ladies from our guild plus myself to look at each sample, spin a portion of the fiber and give comments and placings for each age and color group. Here is a class in the fawn division my favorite colors of alpaca.

It can take a few hours for each sample so each of us only had to judge a dozen or more entries. What with all the other things going on here it has taken me a few weeks to get my 10 fawn samples done. Now I will start working on the Suri Alpaca samples I have and write in all the final placings and comments. Maybe another week and I'll be done! Thank goodness the samples do not need to be shipped off again being that the show is here in Reno.

Speaking of judging. We are over another judging here as of last week. Jake our LGD is now on probation for "Dog at Large" not "Dangerous Dog". Back in October he ran out the gate and had a 5 second fight with the neighbor dog who was running at large. And since the other dog had a wound Jake was the bad guy. The original ticket was for dangerous dog because the neighbor said Jake was after her son as her dog provoked Jake threw our fence. And since Jake has never in his 9 years of life ever even growled at a human the accusation did not stand but he did bite their dog.
I found this cool sign at the Anatolian Shepard Dog International site to hang on the new fence. Hopefully it tells people that a LGD is not dangerous but also to leave him be so he doesn't think your dog is a threat to his home and the animals he is in charge of protecting.