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| Show program |
For each individual class, the rats are brought to the show table in identical carriers. Labels on the top identify their show number, age, and type, but omit any information regarding owner. This helps keep things anonymous (although with a small show, I'm not sure how much this helps.)
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| Rats lined up in carriers |
Each rat is handled individually (and the judges apply hand sanitizer between rats) and assessed for various traits, such as shape, condition, quality of coat, length/thickness of tail, and head structure.
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| Assessing overall shape |
It was cool to see such a wide variety of rat breeds - we saw some beautiful colorations.It was also neat to see how different rats behaved while getting handled by complete strangers.
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| Attempting to assess head shape. |
Similar to some types of horse showing, a scribe was present to note down the judge's comments on each individual rat.
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| This scribe had an awesome Portal (with rat) shirt. |
Overall, while the people involved in the show seemed to have fun, it was disappointing to me. There is usually a high degree of subjectiveness in competition, especially when assessing against breed standards. At this show, it really seemed to depend on the individual judge. The judge in the above pictures did a good job of explaining what she liked about one rat over another. But we watched another judge who assessed nearly every feature of every rat as "very good", which then made her final results seem arbitrary.
That said, the show itself was fun - we saw a lot of beautiful rats and awesome rat t-shirts.
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