Smelly Hair & Pigs

Last Wednesday, at about 4:30 I found out that I was invited to go to Louisville, KY with Josh and his dad, Mr. Troy, until Saturday. They were leaving at 7 that night, so I packed super fast and went over to their house to help them load up the pig. Yep, the pig.

We went to the NJSA (National Junior Swine Association) Summer Show. Josh's family has gone for the past two years, but his sister didn't have a pig to show so she and Mrs. Phoebe held down the fort at home.
This show is a really big show... all the 'big' breeders and buyers are there and it's pretty hard to do really good at one of those shows if your name isn't known... it's all politics. I remember it being like that when I showed horses.

 One of the NJSA shows is actually very close to where we live and I think that Josh is really lucky about having that show so close! It's pretty pricey to travel, buy and feed pigs just for one show, but the show that is close to us is during our 'show season' and Josh can use the same pig more than once! Anyways, Josh took a boar up to Louisville this time, instead of a gilt. Boar-boy  Gilt-girl and a Barrow is a castrated boy. So, he took Boar!

We had a lot of fun up there! I was awake for more than 30 hours with two 30 minute cat naps. I was SO tired on Thursday when I finally got into a bed! I had gotten up really early on Wednesday to study for a test I had that day, so I was up from 7:15 am Wed to 1:00 PM on Thursday. I slept from 1 until 6:15 on Thursday and then went back to bed at 10 and slept all night until 8 the next morning. I must say... Hilton Garden Inn has some mighty comfortable beds.

We spent almost all our time at the barn. Have you ever been in a pig barn? Well, if you haven't, I don't recommend that you go! It smells. It smells bad. For some reason.... my hair just loves to soak up that smell and it stays in my hair all day!! That is the only think I can't stand about being around pigs! But I guess I'll deal with it! (:

Josh and Mr. Troy got the pig ready to show and Josh took him in the ring!
Before going into the show ring.

Getting looked at by the judge.

Then they Finally pinned him...

"Doofus", as I call him, placed 6th out of 12 pigs which put him in the sale at the end of the show. They take the top 60% of each class to put into the sale. Sadly, he didn't sale. So Doofus is back at the barn living up the boar life. That is the first time they have brought a pig home from the Lousiville show. They usually are able to sell their gilts up there... but like I said, it's hard to do well at that show! I think he did awesome getting 6th place. The pig that got 4th didn't look as good as Doofus did, but the pig had a 'big name breeder' behind it's back!

I did some research and found some statistics on how much money was spent in that sale that was held on Saturday after the show was over.... Sale Total • $894,075. 

I know that $205,000 of that was spent on ONE pig. Um... hello?! Why the HECK would you spend that much money on ONE pig? I have no idea. I saw it sell... it was ridiculous. It was a new record for the NJSA New Hampshire breed. It was this pig....

*photo taken from NJSA website*

Post coming soon on our trip to Chruchhill Downs!! :)