Champion Dorsets

Once the Champion Sheep are chosen - after much deliberation, I should add - then it's time to pose for photographs.  I should perhaps add that these sheep are not just any sheep - they are the best Dorsets in Ulster this year.

Champion Dorsets, Ballymoney Agricultural Show 2019.  HP5+ in ID-11, Adox paper in WT developer

Yup, I know what you're thinking.  Why are we looking at the wrong end of the sheep?  I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that - I failed to ask the obvious question.  All I can offer is that this seems to be the important end of the animal, as far as Showing and Judging goes, at any rate.  The judge there was flown in from Cornwall so it was a pretty big event. 

Some of the sheep decided they wanted individual shots - and why not, eh?

Posing the Champ

Now this was an interesting time.  Getting the sheep to stand still for a second or two, ideally showing it's best side and with head up - and without the support of its handlers - was no mean feat I can tell you.  With luck you might just get a couple of seconds before the sheep realised it was more or less a free agent and could run off - which it tried to do many, many times.  The impressive thing was how its handler (the girl above) could detect a few nano-seconds before the sheep broke position that it was going to do precisely that.  The signs were too subtle for me to detect but she could see what was about about to happen and most times - most times - was able to throw her arms around the sheep's neck and prevent it from making a bid for freedom.  A couple of times she was too slow and the sheep would get free and run buck mad around the pen.  Once it came a little too close to me for comfort - and a sturdy sheep in a mad panic takes some bringing down, I can tell you. But luckily I survived to tell the tale...