Judge’s report – Hinton Blewett 21st November 2021
Congratulations to all participants at today’s trial, I really enjoyed watching you all work. A lovely mix of young and senior dogs, and they all seemed to enjoy the searches.
We started with the exterior search. Sadly, a number of dogs indicated on the distraction scents, but everyone found at least one scent and worked the area well. Next, we had the boxes and luggage search. A few dogs were overenthusiastic and ended up retrieving one of the scents but, again, some very good searches, and no-one indicated on the distraction scents. All teams except one found both scents on the Wall search and handlers were all very thorough encouraging their dogs to search into corners and up and down the wall. Table and chairs proved a bit more challenging for some, with a number of wrong alerts and some handlers spending too much time on the chairs and not enough time searching the perimeter, thus missing the early scent on the door frame.
Seven out of eight teams qualified and the first place was well deserved. Indy was clearly worried about working in the hall, but Christine handled this really well and calmly and got the best out of him -not only that, but also she was handling him for her friend. Congratulations!