My thanks to Karen Denton for asking me to judge her enthusiastic group of scentwork newbies at their first ‘Scentwork UK Level 1’ trial.

It can be quite daunting to run a trial and to watch all your pupils compete, but I must say I was very impressed with the standard of the work here today with the results speaking for themselves.

We started with the tables and chairs and although there were a few of scary moments, with some strong investigations on the chair next door, we had a 100% success rate and everyone passed this section.

Next was the outdoor search which was a sectioned off paved area around the side of the community centre. Unfortunately this was also where a lot of dog walkers had previously walked their dogs through to the dog park which resulted in a lot of the competitor dogs becoming distracted. Fortunately most of the handlers managed to keep the dogs searching to find the scented article which was hidden in a tool box but we did have one incorrect alert on a folded up chair.

We then went indoors for the boxes and luggage search where I hid the scent under a flap area of a cardboard box. Again all the dogs searched this section well although one dog did think that a handle area of a bag needed a bit more investigating and unfortunately the handler mistakenly called this.

Lastly we finished with the vehicle search and I hid the scented article on one of the rear wheels. I gave the handlers the choice of which way around the vehicle they wanted to work and most choose to search to the right side and most of the dogs found it straight away. Some of the handlers weren’t so confident with calling this early ‘find’ and decided it might be best to go around the vehicle again just to make sure.

So at the end of the day all 6 competitors passed and the winner was Heather with Timmy the Lancaster Heeler on a fabulous score of 99.75. I thought that dog and handler illustrated excellent team work especially as Timmy didn’t look the easiest of dogs so well done. 2nd was Shelia with her Boxer ‘Zak’. Zak was so positive in his indication going into the ‘down’ position and refusing to move until his mum called the alert. 3rd place was Ann & OzzieWoody a young Springer who worked all the 4 search areas in a very calm and methodical way. 4th was Melissa & Woody a rather enthusiastic cocker who did some lovely searching but became rather excited about the smell of the dog park and decided to ‘leave his mark’ which unfortunately cost this team handler marks. Also well done to Matt & Bess and Lynn & Kaiser for keeping your cool as both teams called a wrong alert but went on to find the others and qualify. Excellent.

Heather Donnelly (Judge)