Ah-h-h the aroma of spring and the smell of sawdust beneath your feet, a barn full of hay, show animals and bleachers stacked with guys wearing baseball caps.

Cute sheep hold a pose on grooming stands with freshly sheared pink skin showing.

Big, grunting hogs with short legs and big bellies nestled in pens.

Giant steers with freshly back-combed and hair-sprayed tails stood in line and waited their turn to go into the show ring.

A pretty little preschool girl held the animal’s halter in one hand and a long show stick in the other.

That’s what I remember about walking in to my first livestock show sometime in the early 1980s.

This City Girl was there to take winner photos for the newspaper.

I took pictures of the sheep judging from outside the ring.

It seemed safer while a man in the ring felt the haunches of the little lambs. I later learned it was part of the judging.

I also watched children in green and dark blue jackets chase pigs with tiny flyswatters, then someone told me there was a staging area where I could take pictures of the winners.

In order to get to that area I had to walk behind the steer being held by a tiny girl.

All I knew about cows was from my aunt in Missouri who told me to never walk behind her milk cows.

I slowly made it past the steer and would have been more at ease if I’d known steers aren’t girl cows.

Then once the winning exhibitor and Grand Champion Pig were in place, I went to work.

Camera on.

Flash on.

Click. Click. Click.

The pig charged me!

I tried to get out of its way and could hear the guys in the crowd laughing as Porky or Petunia Pig went right between my legs. I ended up riding him (or her) bareback until a neighborly guy got the pig, and by then all I worried about was the camera.

Luckily, it was OK, and the championship photo made the front page that week.

I learned to never wear a wrap-around skirt to a stock show again.

Same goes for my matching green open-toe shoes, but that’s another story that involved cow pies.