Level 3 Thursday 18th May 2023
We ran an afternoon trial in lovely warm weather. Thanks to my trial team, Bridget as Trial Manager doing a brilliant job as always and Fiona Somerville who scribed. We had 8 competitors.
We started with the tables and chairs search with clove on the underneath of a table leg and gun oil on a door at the back of the room. The clove on the chair was easy to find although one or two people didn’t allow the dogs to fully settle on the odour before calling it meaning they weren’t quite at source. The gun oil on the door was a little harder but very achievable as long as the handlers tasked the dogs to the door.
The second search was a wall search with one odour on a door hinge and one in a hole in the corner of the wall. It’s a distracting little area this and some dogs were more interested in the grass and smells from the field next door but some were very efficient, in particular Jane and Nell and Jan and Onyx.
The odour was placed on two bags in the next search and again very achievable if the dogs knew their job but some needed a little more help and a couple of dogs preferred to play with the items!
Back outside and the two items in the exterior search were a plastic camping drainer and a set of steps. Most teams got these easily.
Well done to all, we had 5 qualifiers. The top three were consistent across all the searches and their placings were well deserved.