Columnist Susan Snyder: Kids at fair battle sheep disorder

Monday, April 11, 2005 | 8:12 a.m.

Woe to a sheep named "Gravy."

A contestant in the Clark County Fair's junior livestock show, it was a pretty safe assumption Gravy's next stop wasn't to be Disneyland.

But in an age where we're to analyze every morsel we eat, where it came from and how it died, it's good to know we still have county fairs with blue ribbons for kids who work hard in the sunshine and open air.

An hour before Thursday's market lamb competition, Gravy stood on a platform for a last-minute grooming from 16-year-old Marissa Dolfin of Tonopah. She brushed the lamb's sheared, snowy sides and blacked its hooves with shoe polish.

Dolfin, who has been showing sheep since she was 9, has raised four lambs for competition at different fairs this year, including the Nevada State Fair.

"I like to show them. And I like to breed them," the teen said, giggling at how that last comment sounded.

The judge, she said, looks at how large the animals are and also at how much of their bulk is fat or lean muscle. But first, the handlers have to get the sheep into the ring.

"You have to train them. You put a halter on them and walk with them until they walk with you," Dolfin said.

"At first, it takes all day," said Kami Jasperson, a 13-year-old from Pahrump who showed her lamb, Bad Boy, Thursday.

Sheep aren't known for being the sharpest plow in the shed.

"Well ... most animals are a lot smarter," Dolfin said diplomatically.

Jasperson was more direct.

"I think they're just dumb."

Catelyn Sanders, 12, traveled from Alamo to show her lamb, Chippette. Sporting a green Lycra body suit to stay clean, the animal stood with one foot in its water bucket and calmly munched from a tub of hay as Sanders spoke of helping her family work the LDS Church farm on which they live.

"It's hard work, but it's fun. I can go out and work with my dad," she said, adding that she didn't care much for cities.

"Too much commotion."

As the contest drew closer, nervous lamb-handlers bustled about the barn, donned in boots and Wranglers, with numbers pinned to their white shirts beneath green 4-H neckties. Parents who remembered 4-H days and siblings still looking forward to theirs filled the stands.

Sanders and Chippette were second to enter as the judge called the first group into the ring. No halters or ropes were allowed. The handlers controlled their sheep with a firm hand under the chin.

In theory.

Chippette took three steps, balked and turned to stone. Sanders gripped the lamb's head with both hands and pulled until she almost sat down.

An official gave Chippette a shove from the rear, and the lamb walked. But the look on Sanders' face said the contest was over. And they did finish last. Dolfin fared slightly better in her class, and Jasperson won a fifth-place ribbon.

If Mary did have a little lamb, Mary was built like a linebacker.

"It's been tough out here today," Joel Judge, the California Polytechnic University professor who judged the contest, told the crowd. "There's been lambs eating kids' numbers off. Another one ate a little girl's belt buckle off. It's one of the most difficult animals to show." Dragging them into and out of the ring seemed work enough.

Earning a ribbon?

Well, that's just gravy.