This was my first ever judging event at a scentwork UK trial, many thanks to Jacki Lawer for asking me. It’s always very different seeing it from a judge’s point of view and all the hard work that goes into making a trial a success, I couldn’t have managed without a good team around me and some sound advice from Jacki.

Overall the standard was very good, a very well done to Sue Dorking and Sasha who obtained the maximum score of 100 points, closely followed by Sharon Leedham and Heidi. Both these teams quietly got on with the search and covered all the search areas very well. The exterior search caused a few problems, mainly because several teams did not task their dogs to search the whole area missing one of the hides.

The tables and chairs and perimeter search went very well with most teams finding the hides. The exterior vehicle/wall search was somewhat interesting, the 5 mtr wall did not have any suitable hiding places so I included several large articles against the wall, unfortunately, the wind was kicking up which caused a few false indications but 3 teams successfully located both hides. There were a few that called the finds a bit too soon in my opinion which again caused false indications. It was great to see from a different perspective how all the teams worked. Well done everyone.