Show cheating
Despite how much we try, there
seems to always be a few persons who just can't play by the rules when it comes
to showing petz. Here I will try to help you learn how to tell a cheater from
the rest of the bunch. Please bear in mind that I'm not trying to frame a
certain person here, I'm simply writing a help-page for judges.
This tutorial is mainly about dogz, but the basics works for catz as well.
Hopefully everyone will learn from it.
Stealers
There are people who won't even bother to try and edit show pics - they will
steal others' instead! Yep, it's true. I've seen it myself. How to tell? Well,
unless you've seen another person with the same pic, this might be very very
hard to tell. Perhaps if the owner isn't very good at taking show photos
normally, and suddenly has a perfect pic of one or several of his/her dogz, you
might suspect that the show pics have been stolen. I wouldn't recommend to try
and accuse someone without being 100 % sure, after all, someone might have
helped that person to get some photos. But feel free to be on your guard!
If you are sure that the show pic is stolen, then? This has happened to me. A friend of mine had a great dachshund, who became a SgCh in no time with his fantastic pose that could be seen as the winner on many sites. I had seen his pose, and had to agree - it was something you didn't see every day, especially when it comes to dachshunds, who you don't see winning shows very often. So guess if I was surprised when I suddenly saw the EXACT same pose winning a show on a site - but now under a different name! I instantly emailed the real owner, who has happy that I'd told her about the theft. She told me that this wasn't the first time that that had happened. If this happens to you, you could always tell the site owner as well as the petz' owner, so that they will know that the person who won their show was a thief. If other sites hear of this as well, the thief might think twice about stealing since he/she won't be trusted and most likely won't be able to enter shows anymore, and will hopefully ask for forgiveness, or at least start using his/her own pictures.
Edited show pics
You've probably heard of it, right? Many judges warn about this - some won't
judge the dogz/catz if they suspect editing. Editing show pics isn't fair, and
should never be tolerated. But how can you tell an edited pic from the real
thing? With the help of young Ch NB's Harpy, I will try to teach you what I
know.
First off, if you are lucky, you can get fantastic poses. This picture has not
been edited in any way (well, except for the name across the body - this is to
prevent *ahem* thieves) This is an example of the, if you ask me, perfect dane
pose.
But look at this one... Better? Well, let's just start by saying that you can't
get the feet more aligned than Harpy shows us above. If truly only two feet are
showing, I would be quite convinced that the picture has been edited. And
besides, the pic doesn't look as good as it did before anyway, don't you think?
Head switch
Now *this*, I'd like to believe, would be one the most common cheat when it
comes to normal dog poses! Head switch! When it comes to danes and other
"normal" posers, the head is generally the hardest part to get right.
If someone can't get it right, they might try to simply place a good head on a
good body. There can be several versions:
This cheater (he he... that would me be, I suppose, since I made this pic ^_~)
hasn't done a very good job, as the red circles show. The head has been placed
too high on the body, thus creating too much fuzz on the neck and throat. This
one shouldn't be too hard to tell, if you look closely. You can see it even
better if you zoom the picture.
This one is harder to tell. The cheater has placed the head right, but the
texture is wrong, because the shading on the dogz looked different when the
different pics were taken, so in other words, the textures are different. The
zoomed pic illustrates this. I have drawn a black line to show you where the
textures meet. This is very very hard to see, but you can see it if you really
try. If you see a distinct tone change on the dogz' pose, I would suspect
editing.
This cheater has done a darn good job, really, he/she has even changed the
texture! But, if you look closely (you don't even have to zoom) you can see that
the texture on the dogz neck keeps repeating itself, unlike anywhere else on the
dogz.
Fuzz removal
If the dogz look very fuzzy, a cheater might try to remove some of that annoying
fuzz, ending up with something like above... Quite meaningless and ugly, if you
ask me, but I'll put it up for reference. If a dane, bulldog, dali or most of
the other breedz looks very smooth, the pic is most likely edited, because these
breedz all have some "natural" fuzz. Chihuahuas and dachshund are less
fuzzy than other breedz, however.
Everything
If a not-so-good cheater tries everything above, he/she might end up with
something like above. Ugly, no? Personally, if I got a picture like this in my
show, I would delete that entry without notice, and be wary of any other petz
from that owner. Editing show pics is not only unfair to others, it will give
you a very bad name when you are found out. Believe me, there are many great
judges out there who can tell the difference between real and edited, and they
will find out sooner or later if a person is cheating.
If you find out a cheater, don't be rude and nasty to that person. Try to explain to them that editing is wrong and unfair. If they listen, say that they're sorry and promise not to do it again, try to give them a second chance. Remember, the Petz Community is supposed to be a fun place. If the cheater won't listen, there is little you can do but warn judges about this person, thus keeping them from competing until they change their mind.