My thanks to Jennie Dean for the asking me to judge and also organising, scribing and virtually doing all the jobs making this a most efficient and well run trial, your hard work with running Scentwork UK trials is much appreciated. Also to Chas Roberts, sorry I forgot to mention you in my presentation speech, who turned up just to watch and ended up doing an excellent job of keeping the competitor flow, so thank you.

My general impression was that the standard was particularly high with virtually everyone knowing the difference between their dog investigating an environmental as opposed to locating the scented article. Out of the 15 runners we lost 3 teams 2 of which are working on new handling ideas and unfortunately Nicola with Acer. Nicola sensed that Acer wasn’t his usual self, so Nicola unselfishly withdrew him so well done Nicola for putting your dog first and I hope Acer back to his usual self soon.

1st Paul & Jack Three near faultless searches from this team gained them full marks and the top spot today, Well done. Jack is a nice keen Lab who made us all laugh by legging it to the exit gate after each find for his ‘treat’. The only slight criticism was Jack’s sniffing along the fence at dog odour pretending, like many of the other dogs today, that he was sniffing for the scented article when in fact he wasn’t.

2nd Helen & Trek – These two have really found their groove lately. Trek does things super fast and has objected to Helen reining him in too much. Helen is particularly observant knowing what areas Trek misses and very calmly asks him to search these areas which now he does without a fuss. Well done on your well deserved 2nd place Helen.

3rd Emily & Monty – Monty is a very enthusiastic Lab/springer x . A very impressive exterior search leaving us all on the edge of our seats by finding the very last find with just 5 seconds to go. Just a handler error with the first Interior search but definitely deserved to be in the ribbons. Well done.

4th Helen & Nellie – First attempt in L5 so well done Helen and Nellie. The first to run in the ‘Interior Search’ and I was particularly impressed with Nellie’s persistence at going to source. This team won’t have any problems with theses advanced levels.

Also just to mention Pippa, Zoe & Lindsay. These three teams needed all 3 finds in the very last search to qualify which put them under a lot of pressure. I am always interested to see how people cope with this situation and manage to keep their nerves under control. So well done you three for keeping focused and your cool right up until the end.

Also to Chris with Bailey who was particularly sympathetic when Bailey didn’t like the distance banging, Chris gently encouraged Bailey back to the search area and skilfully using one of her ‘False alert wild cards’ to successfully call all 4 finds. Well done.