Level 6 Judges report.

Thank you to Jackie for asking me to judge – and providing such a lovely set up (including beautiful weather!) and to Katie for scribing for me. (even if you did have to turn your back sometimes!)

With the possibility that there might be some children descending to play football, we chose to do the exterior first. I think this proved good due to the weather as well, as it did get quite hot a bit later.

Exterior – 3 finds – 3.5 mins
The exterior was the outside of the building, including a small alcove up some steps, and round a corner with a telegraph pole and a parking space. The dogs all worked this so calmly and really were a joy to watch. It caused very few issues.
1. GO 4/5 The first find was placed on the back of a bench. This proved a tricky little find, as the dogs had to work back into it. Only Dexter and Pod finding it first with Lynn working Pod back into it very nicely and Dexter picking it up from the bench seat and working back into it.
2. Clove 5/5 This was placed in the crack on the steps leading up to the door, the wind direction helped a lot here, most of the dogs took the handler straight to this one.
3. Truffle 5/5 This was placed in the crack on the telegraph pole which had a nice split in the wood at just the right height…. a few dog noses on it made it a slightly more obvious hide and in hindsight I might have seen if I could put it in a slightly less visible location!

Interior 1 – 4 find – 5 mins – This was a smaller hall area with a door leading into a kitchen. I set up a reward area and started the teams along one side of the room (not part of the search) so that the doors could be closed with no one having to enter or exit to reward.
working round the room,
1. Clove 4/5 – placed at the base of a table leg near the entry door.
2. Truffle 4/5 – placed on the far side of the tables about 50cm up.
3. GO 5/5 – placed on the seat of a chair before entering the kitchen.
4. GO 4/5 – placed on the underside of a cupboard handle about 1/2 way through the kitchen.

This was an interesting search area. With both areas, although the kitchen was smaller in size, it was maybe seen as a bit ‘busier’ and so people spent a lot of time working the Kitchen having found 2 articles in the first area. The kitchen find proved quite tricky for the dogs to source, getting a bit stuck one side or the other.
Special mention has to go to Gill and Satch, who went round the area beautifully in about 1.5 mins and made it look simple!

Interior 2 – 5 finds – 6 mins.
Again, this was more of a challenge for the human side of the team than the dogs. The finds were all relatively straight forward, but the split was a challenge.
I used the entrance hall including a short corridor and the main hall area.
I placed a reward station in each area for the handlers to be able to reward the dogs.
In the entrance hall
1. GO 1/5 – placed on the door frame about 30 cms
2. Clove 4/5 placed on the escape door about 15cms off the floor
3 Clove 5/5 placed in a keyhole in one of the cupboards along the corridor. (40cms)
in the main hall
4. Truffle 4/5 placed on the floor fitting about 6ft in from the door.
5. Truffle 4/5 placed on the adjoining floor fitting about 8ft from the first .

The rest of the main hall was blank.
the Gun oil find on the door frame proved very difficult for most of the dogs, only Pod managing to source it correctly. The other dogs did pick up the odour and worked around, Buddy getting a little confused and offering a false indication on a nearby article but Debby read him beautifully and realised it was confusion rather than indication.

I used my own dog to white dog – I do know he can be faster moving through the area, as well as the bias from me knowing where the finds were (although I did try and push him to work back on himself and take more time!) With that in mind, I added extra time for each area, allowing people a bit more time to think about them, however this may actually have been a double edged knife with people thinking they had more time than they did.
It really was a joy to watch all of you search – the dogs were brilliant without fault. Confident, lovely line work, where the dogs were on lines, and nice flowing work where they were off. Such beautiful work I got lost in watching them all!
The indications were stunning, clear and precise – with true understanding of interest vs indication from all the handlers leading to no WAs (bar one little blip!)
Well done to the placings – I really was gutted that Pod did not qualify as he did such beautiful searching and worked all three of his socks off!!