can someone please advise me on what classes i should be entering. my dog is now 3 yrs but we didn't start showing til he was 20 months, therefore missing all the puppy, junior etc & the experience we would have got out of that. i do mostly open shows & the occasional champ shows when they are within reasonable travelling distance. i now find myself in a comfort zone of post graduate but have started to notice recently that he is one of the oldest in the classes & i don't whether i should embarrass myself by staying in the comfort zone until he is a wizened old man or would i embarrass myself by going up to limit where i think i would feel out of place, or should i just give up now

I'd be inclined to stick with Postgrad, and maybe the odd Mid Limit if your breed sometimes has one. In my breed Limit is usually an enormous class so I stay out of it and risk going up against the Champions littering the Open class!

On the other hand a friend of mine entered dog in the wrong class, open instead of post grad wasn't going to go in but was persuaded that it might be ok.  Dog got first CC :D :D :D from a breed specialist ;)

thank you

Wish that would happen to me Dill! :-D

AHH it was lovely :) a huge cheer went up all round the ring, they haven't been showing long so it was really special :) :)

Thing is, in the limit and post grad classes the judge has some idea of how well the dog has done, but in open there's no clue, it could have CC's or nothing at all so it's a much more level playing field ;)

I would say that most judges expect dogs in Open to be ones that are no longer eligible for the lower classes, that is why some exhibtiors put a dog in a higher class thinking a judge may not know the breed that well and tend to go for the Open or Limit winners for their top awards.

My latest CC winner hsas won ehrs out of {G and Limit though, and several recently crowned exhibits have won their crowns from Limit.

My boy won his CC out of Junior and Graduate wins - still wish I'd put him in one more class as that win would have got him his JW!! When the judge walked over with that wonderful card, there was a shriek you could probably hear round the showground as his breeder, who I'd virtually forced to come and watch us as she'd missed his last 2 shows, flung herself into the nearest persons' arms!! I have some great ringside photos and you can see people from neighbouring rings turning round to see what was going on! :-D Still one of the best memories of my life, 2 1/2 years on.

If you know what you are looking at then look at your boy and the limit and Open dogs, does he look like he should be in the classes with them.

Sometimes you can actually handicap your dog, especially when they ask his age when having a mature adult in a lower class, a judge may like him but assume that he can't be very good if he is stil in the lower class, especially some of the all rounders who may not have the confidence to put him over the dogs in Open and Limit in the challenge.

thanks for your help, thats kind of what i was getting worried about so i'll start to pay more attention to thelimit/open classes & see if i think we're up to it.