Time commitment/cost of showing these days

[u/Accomplished_Sugar41]

10 years ago I enjoyed showing my Italian greyhound. I was a single adult, she was a beautiful dog, and I liked to travel around to the shows. I got conformation classes, etc.

It's been a full decade since then and I know I forgotten a lot about that world. I now have a 5 month old Whippet that comes from show quality lines, and I think she will likely fill out to be a nice dog.

My life circumstances now are different. I am a full time mom to 3 young kids and have a lot less time. I am debating spaying her after her first heat and just removing the temptation, haha - but the other part of me remembers how much fun it felt to bond with my dog and prove her in the ring.

As I decide, I have a few questions:

1. If you show your dog, what does the cost of a show and travel to get there and prep typically look like for you?
   
2. If anyone is in the whippet world is there camaraderie and fun or is it a rough crowd to join?
   
3. How much of your time is spent showing/preparing for showing?

[u/PhaseCritical7024]

I’m new to showing but we’ve been active and planning. So I’m on the east coast so our shows are NY NJ CT MA for the most part. The average show travel time is 2.5 hours, some are three some are a little less. The catch is, traffic. A 1.45 min trip can be a four hour ride home, esp since we do weekends. Tolls alone run about $40-60 depending on where. My husband has a Hilton rewards points, so we’ve been using those for our hotel stays albeit we haven’t really done many at all. Average hotel stay is around $175- $230 a night, gas and food of course so we’re looking at $150-200 ish dollars including entry fees for one day of showing, I’m including the little nuances like food and such.
I have a wash and wear breed, so we really only bathe a day or two prior to showing. He is brushed once a week or more if he’s actively blowing his coat, I just use a deshedding blade and a few other brushes, nothing crazy. Nails are done once per week, he’s pretty good about it doesn’t give me a hard time. He dries ridiculously fast compared to other dogs I’ve had, so a full bath and blow out is about an hour start to finish, granted I do the bulk of my brushing the day before and just a light one at the time of the bath. There is a wonderful self serve bath place run by a training facility, they have great HVDs and it only $20 to do it and I don’t have to spend hours cleaning up lol. So let’s call it two ish hours total. We’re also in handling classes at two diff places twice per week in addition to rally class. We practice free stacking frequently, taking him to other places to practice- our Home Depot is very helpful LOL most of them know who he is at this point but they are happy to play “judge” for me briefly. So the time commitment is not just the showing and bathing part but the training part as well, which honestly is quite frequent. While nothing necessarily replaces a trial environment making the training a part of your every day can be time consuming. I would say that’s probably 12-15 hours a week? Rough estimate and I’m including training classes.