Allergies and all other factors aside, there's one big reason why I don't enter real life dog shows: time. I'd be the one that came running up just as my breed was being judged, dragging a reluctant puppy and screeching, "I'm here! I'm here!" :)

With sports, school, books to read, and other internet activities, where do you find time to enter petz shows these days? I've found a few things that you can do to save time...

First of all, get a calendar. A nice Microsoft calendar thing came with my computer, but a plain paper calendar works fine. Read the PKC list and write down all of the show closing dates, with some sort of indicator as to whether you've entered or not.

As you can see, I also have some DKC showz on here, and the "petals gathered..." note is about the timing of a craft project that I'm currently working on. It involves rose petals and power blenders... but that's another story...

For example, on my calendar, the showz that have "ENTER!" beside them are showz that I haven't entered yet. I also put major school projects on here, so that I can look for conflicts. For example, I should enter that show at AngelPetz soon because I won't have time during exams!

There's not much that can be done to speed up the process of taking the show pictures themselves, especially if your petz are being uncooperative. Remember that you can hit the spacebar to take pictures; I usually turn the "Auto Save Photos" option on and use the spacebar to capture to perfect pose.

Once you have the pictures then you should organize them so that you can find them quickly.

I put all of my show pictures in a series of folders, organized by PKC group.
Including the date in the file name will help you spot old pictures that need to be replaced.

This speeds things up a lot when using MSN's photo uploader to enter a show. In addition, I've found the photo uploader to be more reliable when it's not having to deal with fifty pictures in a folder.

Having a file of your petz' PKC numbers is a must. If you type out all of the show information for each petz, and all you need to do is copy and paste!

I also have my petz' show information organized by group. I use bold text to indicate that petz have earned all of the major points that they need for a championship, and italics to indicate that they have all of their minor points. This lets me quickly spot which petz to enter in minor and major shows.

Once you have all of these computer files set up, add shortcuts so that you can get to them quickly!

My Start Menu.

I have shortcuts to all of the files that I need to enter PKC shows only a few clicks away because I've added shortcuts to my Windows Start Menu. To add shortcuts, open the folder C:/Windows/Start Menu/ , right-click on an empty area, and select Add Shortcut. Now select the file that you want for it and a pretty icon.

And finally, remember that the world doesn't end if you miss a show... or two... or three...
there's always next month! :)