I was delighted to be asked by Helen Soper ‘Ace of Dogs’ to be asked to judge at her first ‘Scentwork UK’ trial. She had attracted a really good entry of 16 dogs from 14 handlers all ready and eager to have a go at their first Level 1 some of which had never entered a competition before.

Unfortunately my new ‘mapping’ system didn’t seem to be working and I ended up getting lost on route which meant that Helen had to come and find me but we were both relieved that all the competitors’ had found the venue. Unfortunately the previous hall booking took their time meaning that we couldn’t start until 10.30am so it meant that we needed to get a move on to finish by 4.30pm.

I was introduced to my scribe Lynne Moulson who I must say was absolutely brilliant and took on the tasks of stop clock starter & stopper, score recorder, adder up and certificate writer. Helen was both trials manager and runner which meant a lot of hard work, especially keeping a steady flow of competitors which is no easy task.

As a judge generally I was mightily impressed with the overall standard especially in that many of the competitors were very confident to call an early ‘alert’ when their dogs had only searched two chairs; a very brave thing to do and were awarded full handling marks for doing so. With the vehicle search I wanted to see how quickly the handler knew the difference between their dog searching for the scented article or just going off to have a general sniff!. Also I wanted to see, once they had realised, where they resumed the search and if they had missed out any part of the vehicle; my handling marks were a reflection of this. The dreaded ‘boxes & luggage’ search again took its toll resulting in a couple of ‘false alerts’ with some dogs being rather interested in a green bag. It seemed that some handlers didn’t know the difference between an investigation and an ‘alert’, just beginner stuff really. However others were brilliant at reading their dogs especially Sharon & Inca whose indication was so brief.

So our winner was Patty and Joey and it was Patty’s experience and her ability of reading Joey’s signals that made them the best team on the day. Also well done to Pauline & Tia, the rather excitable Golden Retriever, who managed to keep Tia’s exuberance under control, Janice & Gem for very nice quite and calm handling and Michelle and Rio who were also a lovely team to watch. Also well done to Niki & Karen, both who called an incorrect alert in the first search but managed to keep their cool under pressure successfully finding the next 3 and qualifying. Well done.