Thank you to Nigel for inviting me to judge and to Tina for being a very efficient scribe. I would recommend anyone judges for this team. Everything was ready for me and the day ran very slickly. The weather forecast was not good and Storm Dennis had already started making his presence felt with a strong wind. With this is mind I aimed to put hides out that the dogs would be able to source easily but would require the handlers to work the area. I used the front wall which had a bench, doors and windows. The search then went around the corner with a wall with lots of windows with low window sills, drains and a small stone wall opposite. I put 4 out and allowed 4 minutes for the search. Hide 1 was clove on the rear of the front strut of the bench. Hide 2 was on the end of a step just as the dogs went around the corner and was also clove. Hide 3 was gun and was in between the stones on the wall. Hide 4 was on the last windowsill in the corner towards the furthest point of the search. This required the dogs to work the corner or the handlers to task them into the corner. This was also gun. I was very impressed with how the teams worked. The weather was hugely windy and swirly. Of the 9 dogs, 7 found all hides and went nicely to source. Hide 4 was missed by 1 dog and hide 1 and hide 2 by another dog.
Interior 1 – I used a large hall. I placed an L of 14 chairs in the middle of the hall. This was a 5 hide search with a 5 minute search time. I placed hide 1 (Clove found by 8/9 dogs) on a small table to the far left as handlers entered the search. This was easily accessible to the dogs but did require them to be at the rear of the small table. Hide 2 (gun found by 5/9 dogs) was on the wall opposite the entrance door and was on the edge of a folded back room divider. Hide 3 (gun was found by 5/9 dogs) was further along this wall and was on the bottom edge of the table storage stand. Hide 4 (clove found by 5/9 dogs) and hide 5 (gun was found by 4/9 dogs) was on a long table midway along the wall, to the right of the entrance door. Hide 4 was underneath the top of the table and hide 5 on the opposite side at the bottom of the rear leg. This left the side the teams entered odour free and the chairs also odour free. 1 of the dogs was really not on form and was withdrawn during this search. Another dog just decided to false alert on 3 occasions and I could feel the handlers confidence, quite understandably, slipping way. The other dogs worked well but most handlers discarded the table once they had found 1 hide. This was despite the dogs finding the odour and trying to go to source. The step from 4 to 5 is quite a big one and requires the handlers to be more systematic when they search. The chairs were searched repeatedly with handlers convinced there must be a hide on them, many of the corners and rear of areas extending into the search weren’t checked at all by some teams.
Interior 2 was a corridor with multiple doors, a disabled loo and a small area at the start with a table and chair, this was 3 hides with a 3 minute search time. Hide 1 (clove found by 7//8 dogs) was on the table leg near the start of the search. Hide 2 (Clove found by 6/8 dogs) was on a door stop on the open door of the disabled toilet. Hide 3 (gun was found by 5/8 dogs) this was on the outside edge of the door frame nearest the far end of the search. Again a lack of a search system caused problems here with the dogs going past the toilet door and not searching the door and some dogs not being worked into the top corners of the corridor.
I was very pleased to have 6 out of 9 dogs qualify. I was so impressed by the standard on the outdoor searches in very difficult conditions. It required super team work and that was shown in abundance.