I’ve been holding back on you.  Something very exciting happened to me a while back and I wanted to wait to share it, and today was the day!

About a month ago my friend Ann called and said, “Jodi, you are either going to love me or hate me.”

Damn I hate when conversations start out like that.  I took a deep breath, laughed and said, “Why?”

Ann responded with her own laughter and said, “I volunteered you to steward a dog show with me.”

I was so excited, even though I had no idea what she was talking about!  I’ve watched the dog shows on television but never paid any mind to the folks behind the scenes.

The event was being held at my old high school.  It’s funny, I spent four very impressionable years of my life in that school, yet I didn’t even recognize the gymnasium!

We had to be at the event by 8:00 am, once we got there we were given pins that said, ‘Steward’ on them and shown to the ring we were stewarding.  As it happened we drew the Rally Ring.   Rally is a fairly new sport to the AKC, basically it’s a course set out in a ring, there can be anywhere from 10 to 20 stations, with each station having a specific command that must be completed.  The number of stations in the ring is determined by what level you are competing in.

There are two stewards, one scorer and one judge in the Rally Ring.   Before the competition begins the Stewards hand out armbands with team numbers on it, as well as maps of the course. If there is a jump in the course, the Steward will ask, “What is your height?”  That also gets registered on a sheet posted outside the Rally Ring.

The judge sets the course and before the match begins gives the handlers a walk-through.

Once the walk-thru is complete, there are a few minutes to make sure the course is in order and everyone knows what they are doing.  One of the Stewards stands at the entrance to escort teams into the ring.  The dogs must enter the ring on leash but in some of the advanced Rally classes the handling is done off leash.

The Judge will say, “Please hand the Steward your leash.”  Then the judge will ask the handler, “Are you ready?”  If the response is “Yes” the Judge will say “Begin.”  At this point one of the Stewards will begin timing the team, in the event of a tie score the time is used to determine position.  The Judge is watching the team perform the required steps and is scoring the team on a sheet of paper.  Each team has their own sheet, and then the information on the sheet is transferred to a book, which is turned in to the AKC.  Once the dog crosses the finish line, the Steward hits stop and hands the watch to the scorer.  Our Judge had two watches so there was always one in a Steward’s hand and always one on the scoring table.

As long as a team earns a 70 or better, they qualify.  The top four qualifiers receive ribbons.

In order to earn a title, you must qualify three times at one level with two different judges.

It is also the Steward’s job to make sure the jumps are at the correct height for each dog.  At one point early this morning Ann had to go run Obedience with her dog, and until someone came to help I was doing the entire ring alone, I had one little mistake when a Corgi had a 12″ jump instead of an 8″.  Ooops.

After the lunch break, the scorer for our ring had to go and run her dog in Obedience, so that meant I had to do the scoring!  After a couple of teams went, Ann and I had the new rhythm down.

Our Judge and our Scorer both said we did a great job. Our Scorer said if you can steward for Rally, you can steward for anything!  In fact, our Scorer asked if we would be interested in joining their rotation for next year, and said there might be the possibility of Stewarding the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

As we were leaving, the Judge said to one of the event organizers that she would love to have us again because we were the best Stewards she’d ever had.

Tomorrow I will try and post some more pictures that I took today.