Stress and apprehension are the two most common emotions a judge feels when faced for the first time with the prospect of judging a class with two or four of your colleagues.

You simply cannot help wonder how your work will compare with the rest of the group. And when the announcer gets ready to reveal the scores, your mouth goes dry.

The demands each of us judges put on ourselves to assess accurately and fairly is usually enough to keep our adrenaline level up. So when you step into the box in symphony with your associates, your blood pressure can really rise.

The more we do it, though, most of us grow to prefer the team variety of judging for several reasons.

First of all, it becomes a relief to not always be the only opinion. Honestly, you get pretty tired of having to be “right” all the time.

Second, the opportunity to view the test from different angles makes for a far more interesting show.

Third, you’re not always in charge of navigation. While the judge at C is keeping track of the test’s road map, the rest of us can concentrate fully on the performance.

And, finally, you grow to enjoy the teamwork and the comparison of the scores.

Those scores from a panel of judges will—and should—differ to some degree, since a horse viewed from the front and from the sides at E and B can, in certain movements, look like two different animals.

But when the difference between two judges on the same jury is more than 20 points for the same horse, it’s a source of irritation for the rider and should be of concern to the judges. In such cases, I like to confer with my fellow jury members and try to figure out what we’re seeing so differently. More than 30 points of disagreement on a ride is a bit of a disaster, and now it’s really time to talk.

It’s dangerous to assume, though, that the judge who is furthest from the norm is always the one who’s incorrect. I’ve sometimes watched classes from the sidelines—when I didn’t have a student or friend riding and could be objective—and found that I agreed with the judge who was the “odd man out.” Judges need a great deal of courage and conviction to call even a “famous” spade a spade or to give top marks to an unknown and therefore unexpected horse who’s giving the performance of a lifetime.

When this occurs, you have to be ready to jump in and acknowledge what really happened. And, sometimes, only one or two of the judges in a jury are on the ball.

It’s human to transform expectation into reality, and this is a real trap for us judges. Another trap is when you start off by marking the first horse on too high or too low a scale. When this happens—and it does to all judges on occasion—you have to be careful not to try to “compensate” for being too low on the first horse by giving the next horse too high a mark. It takes a lot of self-discipline to stay on the low end and look like a sour judge, but by doing so you make sure the placings come out right in the end.

One odd thing about scores is that, although the announcements may sound as if all the judges are pretty much in agreement, the placings can still be very mixed. This occurs especially with a close field of riders and a few outstanding performances. When only 1 or 2 points separate the horses, the individual placings can be all over the map, and as a competitor I know how riders feel about that. It also makes the judges cringe, so nobody is really happy!

Every now and then we run into the mathematical phenomenon when a horse wins a class even though none of the five judges has placed it first. That’s when the whole jury stands around and helplessly shrugs.

In the final analysis, though, usually the top four to six horses are the best-placed on every judge’s list. Even if you felt (as did every one of your colleagues) that you had your horses in the correct order, you can normally live with the final results, even if your champion didn’t finish first. It means we’ve achieved a “melting ” of opinions, which more often than not puts the results in their proper order.

Most judges have a favorite position from which to judge. Mine is to see the test from E or B, since you have a much clearer view of most movements from the side.

Some people love to be the head of the ground jury at C, so they can worry about where riders are going, decide on errors and eliminations, and generally preside over operations. Not me. I much prefer to hang on each horses’ every motion and muscle movement and to have no rules or other distractions to interfere with the picture.

Nobody I know likes to judge from M. We call it the “blind man’s seat” because in most tests the only thing you see is the rear end of the horse. You usually have to make an educated guess about what’s going on at the front end, which isn’t ideal from any point of view.

Adding to the attraction of working on a panel is the socializing it affords, a welcome feature after a day’s work. You might be surprised to discover that, off the show grounds, we judges rarely discuss the rides or even talk about dressage at all. And even on the rare occasion that there is a strong disagreement on a score, the differences normally don’t get in the way of loyalty within the group.

The most fun is when you’re working on a jury that really “clicks” and is able to sort out even a difficult and unpredictable class by getting the final order right. That’s a true feeling of satisfaction that the judges can share with the competitors.

The advantages to a competitor of riding in front of a jury, rather than a single judge, are obvious. The opinion of three or five people gives the comfort of a somewhat level playing field, even in a sport as subjectively judged as ours.

And at least you know chances are good that someone will stay awake until the end of your ride.