The Art of Losing

Something important a show can teach us is the art of losing. Tim still needs to learn a little more about losing graciously- matter of fact, I know a few people that could learn to take it in to stride that need this lesson a WHOLE lot more than Tim! :)

We all think our rabbits are beautiful. Especially the ones that are GC'd already, or who are our promising juniors. Tim takes it to a new level- he assumes because one rabbit is good to one judge, all other judges should love it too. And, if one judge hates a rabbit, well, they aren't sure what they are talking about. This brings us to a very important thing that affects most of us: bias.

Where Tim has a step up on some folks, is he's aware of his bias. He knows that if that second judge had liked his rabbit, he'd have never said anything about him. You'd be surprise how long it can take some folks to come to that conclusion. This isn't to say every judge does know what they are doing with every breed- some are very obviously more of a meat breed judge rather than a dwarf judge- or vice versa.

Tim needs to get to the 3rd level of losing- the one where he listens intently to the judge, then when the rabbit comes off the table and reevaluating it with the comments in mind. IS that rabbit chopped off at the hindquarters? Does it really peak too soon? When we get him to that stage, the frustrations will lesson a little. Because yes, it's frustrating for all of us to have a bad show.

As you can guess, yesterday wasn't as great as it could have been- Tim and I have been spoiled a little by lots of success lately. In the grand scheme of things, we did well! Of the 4 junior mini lops, 2 were super promising, the 3rd promising, and the last one was kind of eh. The woolies did well with the promising comments also. An old mini lop of ours finally got his 3rd leg, winning his class.

Now we're off to cull. That 4th mini lop baby will probably be petted out, a young doe of ours who has a narrow head will be sold, probably has 4-H or as a pet- and various others probably won't stay. We've noticed we're having troubles with our mini lops does having narrow heads- so if they can't help the problem, they are part of it- and have to be treated accordingly.

Thanks for reading!
-Kristen
Keep's Rabbitry