The State 4-H and FFA Horse Judging Contest was held yesterday.  There were over 200 youth from across the state competing. 

 We had 8 classes (4 halter and 4 performance) and the seniors gave 4 sets of reasons.

 We actually had a team this time.  V's current boyfriend has done livestock judging and breaks horses and ropes so he agreed to go to the contest with us.   V had to go into his house at 6 am to wake him up.  He was able to get dressed and to the car before he fell asleep again.  He made a good effort at judging but he has never been to a horse show before.  I showed him some youtube videos on western pleasure and tried to explain to him that slow is better but he couldn't overcome his roping training and went for the fastest horse in the class saying that the others would just be no good to him.  He refused to understand that you cannot change the horse world by how you place a class in a 4-H competition. You have to play the game.  Consequently, he got a 26 and 27 out of 50 on the 2 western pleasure classes.

Not counting reasons scores (we don't know those yet) Allan score was 287 (at least he was a warm body), V was 369 and E's was 364.  We have no idea how anyone placed yet.  They used a new scoring system involving a scan tron which apparently didn't work.  The contest was over at 3:00 and we waited on the awards until 6:15 when we were told it would be at least another 45 minutes.  We still had a 2 1/2 hour ride home and hadn't had dinner so we left.  No word yet on when they will post the results.
On a side note, a girl passed Allen a note during the contest saying "I think you are cute, look me up on facebook."  There were several boys judging FFA but only 2 senior boys in 4-H.