My thanks to Stacey Robinson for the invitation to judge the L6 at this lovely, spacious venue. The weather for mid-January was amazing perfect with a light breeze and warm sunshine after a light frost.
We had 8 runners and I started with the ‘Interior 1’ search which was a large hall with stacked chairs at the rear. I hid 6 hides and the time allocated was 6 minutes. We had some good searching with most teams finding 5 hides with Chris & Jumbly mopping up all 6 in a most impressive way. Jumbly wasn’t bothered about having a cursory room romp around and got down to the business of searching straight away and was the only do to do this. I wasn’t surprised with work like this that this team went on the win the red one. Well done. Also most notable was Sue & Tiva and Tiva was particularly impressive at getting into those tight awkward corners without the assistance of Sue, very unusual indeed. Sue & Tiva’s last search was conducted in a very business-like manner resulting in this team coming home a very credible 4th. Well done.
The outside area was a small patio area surrounded by a fence and I hid one fairly close to the grass on the downwind side. The other was hidden under one of the sills along the rear hall wall. Susanne & Luther absolutely ‘smashed it’ and found both scented articles in just 35 seconds. This is the first time that I have seen this pairing and Luther, being in very experienced hands, will have a most promising scentwork career. There will be so much more from this very young talented dog, well done on your second place. This search was also well executed by Helen & Preston. Helen was one of the few teams to allow Preston to search just the other side of the fence as it was downwind although ‘calling’ the second find on the eleventh hour gave us all a heart stopping moment.
The final search consisted of a spacious kitchen area with 4 scents hidden and surprising 5 teams found all 4 in what I thought consisted of 2 difficult hides, one under the table leg overlaid with a table cloth and the other under a work top. Martina & Phoebe in their usual purposeful style completed the search in just 137 second, this impressive search, coupled with being just one of two to find the ‘boogie’ scent under the chair wheeler resulted in this team coming home in 3rd place. Well done.