Craig Daily Press

Craig — Remmy Kohpay, 11, plucked nervously at the cuffs of his neatly pressed white shirt.

A few minutes before, Remmy had stepped out of the ring after showing his dog, Zoey, during the 4-H Dog Show on Tuesday afternoon at the Moffat County Fairgrounds.

It was his first year competing in the dog show.

In the ring, Remmy felt “kind of small,” he said. “You’ve got all those people looking at you.”

In the dog show, one of several competitive events scheduled this week for the 90th annual Moffat County Fair, Remmy had to show his dog in a tiebreaker for second place in a junior showmanship division.

After the second round, he plunked down with his aunt, Shirley Ely, on one of the bleachers flanking the ring while competitor’s scores were calculated. Zoey, a Staffordshire terrier, sat in his lap, her shedding black fur making his shirt progressively less white.

Together, they waited.

Remmy, a member of the local K-9 Kids 4-H group, wasn’t the only person who was nervous Tuesday. The club’s leader, Julie Hall, admitted to having a few butterflies on show day.

“I’m always very nervous,” she said.

She waited outside the barn at the fairgrounds, where the dog show took place, occasionally peeking inside to watch her daughter, Kayla Hall, show her dog.

At the dog show, youths can compete in showmanship or obedience divisions. The former requires competitors to exhibit their dogs’ best features, while in the latter, youths show how well their dogs listen to commands.

Hall’s anxiety doesn’t end when her daughter steps out of the ring, she said. Instead, she gets nervous when any of her club members show their dogs.

“At the end, when they get their ribbons, that’s when I get choked up,” she said.

Winning first place in an event is great, Hall said.

Still, she said, landing a title or winning a ribbon shouldn’t be the only reason youths should compete in the dog show.

Instead, competitors should “go out there and have fun with their dog,” Hall said.

Winning wasn’t far from Remmy’s mind during the show. He said one sentence kept running through his thoughts while he was in the ring: “I’m going to win.”

The idea kept repeating, he said, “because I really wanted to (win) … I guess.”

But, the show results came out contrary to Remmy’s expectation. In the showdown for second place, Remmy placed lower than his competitor, bumping him back to third.

He felt “a little discouraged,” Remmy said. “I was kind of going for second place,”

“He’s always been the one to expect the best from himself,” his mother, Jona Ely, said.

Although Remmy didn’t earn the place he had hoped, Ely said the event paid off in other ways.

For one thing, Zoey is more well behaved than before Remmy started training her, Ely said.

“I think he’s learned a lot about handling a dog,” she said.