I love to run my dogs and I love this game, Agility. I decided several years ago to become a FCI agiility judge. I love to make courses and to challenge others, so......... I do this with all my heart and passion, money is not the motive to do all this.
The last few years, I am beginning to feel a bit of restraint to the whole judging thing, because of several reasons, for example: Being asked to judge at an event and being asked to block the date in your callender, but being forgotten and never hear from the organisers again. Standing on a field with a 15 minute brake from 08.00 to 18.00 for 2 days and your reward is thank you and goodbye, The financial reward is €50,00 a day and a some travelexpence fee
In some country's the local judges even get less
And then there is the other side, I think all judges do their best to design good courses. You sit at your home designing 12 courses for 1 weekend, People and organisers expect you to design new courses for every tournament and not to use an old one. In the plnning thers is 15 minutes for rebuilding and you are being asked to change as less as possible, but if your outside you also have to consider the condition of the terrain with bad weather. Oh yeah and it all has to be safe for the dogs, that's the most important rule. So your family does not see for 4 all days, for € 100,00 and a lot of love. They feel neglected.
So in the end 12 courses takes about 2 working days if your lucky to design that amount of courses. If you make a mistake or have a different opinion on course design or even have 1 jump off, you are hang out to dry on the socal media and can be critised. Apparently the only responsability lies with the judges, not with the organisers and certainly not with the handlers. So they say.
Well, I don't think so. Let a person judge/work for more then 8 hours is not good for concentration. If you don't like a course, if yoou don't like the weather, it is your choice to run or not. If you want the ideal course and the ideal circumstances to run the ideal run. Keep on dreaming you have make that happen and noone else.
I can only speak for myself as I say I want the dogs and their handlers to walk of the course with a smile, even if they where not clear. I have no intention to create a bad day for people. I am lucky, people tend to like my courses and I know there will also be people who don't like them. Do I make mistakes yeah sure, so does everybody else