Dog and Pony fun

Most live model horse shows have a few fun classes. Karin Hullatti's Dog and Pony Show had an entire Fun Division.

The class list for this divsion was highly interpretative and had elements of both halter and performance. Of course, I leaned the performance aspects. This was clear right from the start when I put Big Dog, Winslow and a whole bunch of small scale ice chests on the table for the Coolest Horse in Your Collection class.

This place third behind some legitimately cool models.

I broke out my human/horse hybrid gang for class two, You Can't Show Centaurs at NAN. I've shown different variations of this entry multiple times, and it's always one of my favorites. I was delighted when it claimed the blue ribbon.

Art in Progress was next. I fielded two entries. The first was my still unfinished NaReViMo horse, Charmarie.

The second was a performance style scene with Bob Ross, Big Dog and Winslow. I'm not sure how this did. I thought it was cute, but there were some extremely nice pieces of unfinished art on the table. Get to work, people. Those things need to be finished!

Class four was Is it Cake?

This was an insanely competitive class.

I had three good entries.

But Nancy's...

and Alexey's entries were even better.

I'll share more pictures of this one in a future post. It was fantastic!

Cake was followed by Abomineighshuns. I certainly own a few, but I didn't bring them to the show.

After that, it was the essay class AKA What's in a Name? Big Dog placed third.

Class seven was Prehistoric. I meant to show my not-quite-finished, four toed horse ancestor, but I accidentally left her at home. Then I also forgot to take even a single picture of all the dinosaurs and other extinct creatures. Sometimes it's like that.

On a similar note, I had not planned to show anything in Birds, but after forgetting to put Pecans' on the table with my Kim Jacobs' birdwatching pack set for Donkey Hotee, I decided to show the dodo here. Second place!

Cats was next. I showed a couple, didn't take pictures and have no memory of how they placed. This one belongs to Fabian.

Class ten was HSO. The acronym HSO is generally a pejorative, but in this case, the class list specifically defined it as any non-model horse shaped object. I entered my very loved needle felted Shetland pony by Tomás Varela, and she placed first. Good girl, Poppy!

The canine equivalent class, DSO, was next. I won this one as well with Fat Piper. Her friend, Fat Tang, placed second.

On to Oh Deer, i.e. the Alexey class.

Not quite all of the entries belonged to Alexey, but so many of them did.

Here's one of the non-Alexey deer.

I love the eyelashes!

More deer!

The division closed with a Rodents and Lagomorphs class. This one was dominated by capybaras, which is how it should be.

Callbacks!

Reserve Champion of the Fun division went to Leslie's giant capybara.

Alexey's Persia claimed and all her cakes won the top prize.

But not really.

You may have noticed the green tickets in some of these photos. Every ribbon won in the Fun Division equaled one entry in a drawing for these Weird Dogs.

Although I did not win the Overall Fun Division Champ or Reserve, I did win the Weird Dogs. How lucky - and Fun - is that?!

Dog and Pony performance

There were twelve classes in the Dog and Pony Show's Ridiculous Performance division. I showed in ten of them, starting with Book or Movie Scene. This was low-effort but funny. It was also the only entry class so first place!

On to It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. I had three entries in this class. My first was Jennibray's boozey jumping set-up. I've shown this before, but photo shows not live. This time I added Big Dog and subtracted a saddle (I couldn't find it!).

Another blue ribbon!

My second entry featured model a disarticulated doll, model Olive and a bike.

Fourth place!

My third entry, which consisted Jolly Roger, a child rider doll and Allie Davidson's bridge diorama - was mostly there to set the stage for later happenings.

My records are sketchy, but I think this placed third.

Donkey Hotee was next. I'd prepared three entries: MN Bonnie, Jose and Jose's Dog in taco costumes,

Jackpot...

and a packing set-up with Pecans.

However, as I was unpacking my models, I realized I'd brought a fourth donkey. I asked Alexey what I could do to squeeze Goodnight Moon into the class. 

"Draw a picture of a windmill," he said. "He can be dreaming of that."

I didn't have the time or bandwidth for drawing, but Candy said she would. Here is the delightful result.

Alexey's band of miscreants won the class. Goodnight Moon was second, Bonnie was third and Jackpot was fourth.  

In all the excitement, I completely forgot to put Pecans on the show table. Sometimes it's like that.

I had the only entry in the fourth class, Meme Me. This is the first time I've ever put model Sage and model Olive next to each other. It made me cry, but not in a bad way.

Moving on! Class five, Dog and Pony Show, required every entry to include at least one dog and one equine. Fabian's winning entry went above and beyond with no less than five dogs.

Jolly Roger and Meeka placed second...

and Winslow and Big Dog were third.

The next class, Puppy Performance, only neccesitated dogs. Accordingly, all three of my entries were completely horse-free. This is Big Dog with her chihuahua friends,

Hollywood Lassie...

and Roz.

My big diorama made its second appearance in Where's Timmy?

Karin walked by as I was setting up. I asked her if she remembered how this seemed like a good idea at the time.

We both laughed and said simultaneously, "It wasn't."

Search and Rescue guy was still wearing his blind man glasses from the Puppy Performance class. It's a good thing Winslow and Big Dog were there to do the heavy lifting!

First place.

Fantasy Performance: Real Equines Doing Fantasy Things was next.

I had a unicorn horse and dog set-up planned for Winslow and Big Dog. Unfortunately in all the chaos - this show was moving so quickly - I couldn't find the bridle. I ended up sticky waxing an extra horn to Winslow's head. Whatever works, I guess.

Of course, almost immediately after the class was pinned, I looked down and the bridle was right there. Sometimes it's like that!

There were no entries for Fantasy Performance: Fantasy Equines Doing Real Things or Fantasy Performance: Fantasy Equines Doing Fantasy Things so we moved on to Extremely Silly. I set up a standard-for-me golf cart entry with Sage running alongside, Jose on the roof, all the dead and dismembered members of the Braymere crew in a pool floatie and all the miniatures I could reasonably and not so reasonably include. It placed third behind Alexey's exotic tea party and Colleen's puppet show.

The last class of the division was Halloween. Big Dog, Capy Halloween and Everything Bagel won this one.

Winslow and the three year hot dog costume were right behind them in second.

Time for callbacks! 

I had a lot of horses - and other animals! - on the table.

One head, too.

Karin making her decision.

Top honors go to Jennibray!

Yay and thank you! I had so much fun showing Ridiculous Performance. Can we please make the Dog and Pony Show an annual tradition?