Tina Schuster

L2

The morning, I co-judged Level 2 with Nigel. We started with the Exterior (in parallel) with Boxes and Luggage and I was lucky it remained dry during the entire morning. Karen and Michelle did a great job keeping competitors flowing and even though it was Jo’s first scribing assignment, she was amazing and my brains when we had a “wee incident” (which I normally forget about) at the vehicle search.

The exterior search went very well for nearly all competitors, even though a lot of dogs took a keen interest (and in one case too much) in the yellow ball thrower.

Kudos to all competitors for moving on from Level 1 and the challenge of keeping your dogs search after the first find.

We then moved on to the vehicle search, which again, a lot of competitors managed to find both hides. Even though Jess (and Ruby) ran NFC, I would like to commend her on her perseverance and partnership with Ruby. Well done getting her focused and completing the vehicle search

L6

We started the Level 6 trial on time with the briefing at 1:15 (having had a break to have lunch and get our dogs out). It was my first time judging Level 6 and quite intimidating judging my peers. I would like to thank all competitors for their positive feedback and kind comments.

We started with Interior 1 – which turned out to be a bad choice as it started raining when we moved on to the Exterior search.

Interior 1 was the big hall, with 4 hides and a lot of tables to search (and in some cases over-search). Some competitors missed the pillars in the middle of the hall and some dogs the scent hidden on one of them. It was interesting to see that the scent on the blackboard had drifted downwards, leading to some dogs to indicate at the bottom corner. Lovely to see most competitors searching corners!

The Exterior was quite spacious with a lot of hides, so we allocated an additional minute for the 5 items hidden there. The pipe on the water/play feature proofed a tough find as did the top right corner (shed), with some competitors over-searching the top left (BBQ?) corner. Well done all for continuing searching in the rain with one forced break due to torrential rain during Lynn’s search.
Interior 2 was the changing room with 3 hides, which nearly everyone managed to find – some of whom needed a “full house” (and the associated bonus points) to pass. Thank you Annette for the kiss… as I said, I had never been kissed by a competitor before and well done for (finally) passing!

Thank you Karen for giving me the opportunity to judge at this level!

Nigel Wilkes

It was nice to be asked to co-Judge the Level 2 trial with Tina at Rubery for Karen Denton. It was a nice morning as we drove up the M5 towards Birmingham and I was excited to be judging as this was my first time at Rubery.

We had a briefing and by 9.30 we were ready to start. I was the lucky one as I was doing both inside searches and set up the boxes and luggage for the first search. I was introduced to my scribe which was Ellen and we were ready to start.

There were 11 competitors and it was good to see old faces with new dogs starting on their journey. As this was the first search some of the competitors where nervous and this showed as the first 3 teams only found one of the hides. It soon changed and we were soon getting both finds in very quick times. All teams were very good ion the boxes, however, the dogs had problems finding the hide in the suitcase, which was in the middle by the handle.

Next was the Tables, chairs and perimeter search and again all teams came in with enthusiasm and the handling throughout was very good. Most teams found the hide on the chairs, but a few teams had a problem finding it on the perimeter as it was on the first small blue child chair and dogs and handler rushed past it!

I was impressed with Rob and Bella and Jan and Gemma as they worked very well as a team on the searches I judged However, Carole and Tolly were excellent all through-out and deserved to win.

I would like to thank Ellen for helping me so much, Michelle for running around and making sure teams were ready and also Karen for asking me to judge.

To follow