Shelley Stubbington

Firstly thanks to Marie for inviting me back to this splendid venue, my favourite so far! Such a beautiful hall, perfect for a Level One trial. It was a glorious summer evening as I arrived at Foxham, and all the competitors seemed to be in good spirits.

I was co-judging with Marie, and my scribe and I (the lovely Jane Prichard) got started with the exterior items whilst Marie did the table and chairs indoors. Unfortunately the Exterior Items wasn’t quite as successful a search as I’d liked to have seen, with 5 of the dogs showing a bit too much interest in one item (a shopping trolley bag), leading to wrong calls from the handlers and a couple of false indications from the dogs. I think it was an unfortunate case of one dog showing too much interest which results in some slobber on it which then attracts others to be overly interested who then add to the slobber and so on! However there were some lovely and successful searches from Andrea & Ruby, Mike & Poppy (whose start line routine I love!), Michelle & Kirra, and Ann & Keltie.

Then on to the Vehicle search whilst Marie did the Containers & Luggage search. I set up a nice simple hide on the front driver’s-side wheel, with handlers tasked to start at the back. Thankfully this was much more successful, with all 9 competitors (plus the NFC dog) calling it correctly. Everyone did really well on this search, but the standout teams for me were Andrea & Ruby who work so beautifully together, and Michelle & Kirra as Michelle tasked Kirra to work beautifully, and Kirra’s nose was glued to the car from the moment she started until she worked her way round to the hide.

A lovely evening concluded with Andrea and Ruby winning on 100 and gaining their Excellence title, closely followed by Mike and Poppy in second who also gained their Excellence title. Both brilliant partnerships, and I look forward to seeing them again at Level Two. Thanks to Marie, Jane, Ann and Julie for keeping the trial running so smoothly. It really is a privilege to be invited to judge and to work with such great people.

Marie Poole

What a pleasure judging at a beautiful venue, with 10 teams taking part – 9 competing and 1 NFC. We had 2 new teams taking part in their first trial. Great to see this sport continue to grow. I was co-judging with Shelley Stubbington, I judged the table and chairs and Shelley judged outdoors. Shelley placed my scents for me so that I could white dog it blind with Roger. Unfortunately Roger was not on form, but luckily we were able to use our NFC dog as the white dog – thank you Rachel and Hattie for this. I had the very competent Ann Douglas scribing for me.

For the table and chairs the scent was placed under the centre of the seat on chair number 7, this was if you start counting from the front left hand side. The scent does drift a little in this hall and I watched some superb work where the handlers stepped back and just let the dogs work the scent plume until they settled on the correct chair. I also enjoyed seeing some handlers dropping the lead and trusting their dogs when they wanted to take a short cut under the table. Most of the handlers called this correctly with just one team choosing the wrong chair. Small deductions were made for touching the chairs and for poor coverage of the area.

For the containers the scent was placed in a large plastic buckle of a suitcase. The suitcase was towards front centre of the search. We used a variety of boxes – plastic, wooden and cardboard. Most of the teams called this correctly with only 1 team calling the wrong bag. This was by no means an easy search with few dogs sourcing it super quickly. Many of the dogs winded the article as they went into the search and this was often missed by handlers who had a set plan of how they were going to search the area. With one of my favourite shows “strictly come dancing” starting again soon – I recommend you take some inspiration from that show and let your dog lead. A plan is great but you have to respond to the changes in your dog’s behaviour. You can always revert to your plan after the dog has investigated any interesting scents.

I am excited to see how these teams progress – what a great standard at Level 1. Well done everyone.