Thank you to Jo for inviting me to judge at your first trial as a trial manager. It ran very smoothly and was very well organised. Thank you to Kate for all help on the day. The weather forecast was horrific, high wind (50 mph) and heavy rain. On the day, whilst it was wet and windy I think we felt fortunate that the weather was kinder to us than the forecast suggested!. Given the wind and rain I thought the external test elements would be the most challenging for the competitors. In reality, all teams worked the external searches really well and it was the 2 internal tests that handlers struggled with.
Container search; the scented article was placed in the flap of a cardboard box which was located towards the back of the search area, but not on the outer line of containers. We had 4 wrong alerts, all on different items.
Table & chairs, the scent was placed on the under side of a chair located diagonally opposite the start point. Again we had 4 wrong alerts. 2 teams calling on the chair adjacent to the chair that had been scented. A
Vehicle. The odour was placed on the drivers side rear wheel nut with competitors asked to start their search on the passenger front side bumper. Most teams worked this search really well in challenging weather conditions. All correctly called the hide
External; a stack of 5 bricks were the item that contained the odour. I chose the bricks as I knew they wouldn’t blow away!!!! The bricks were placed towards the rear of the search area. Again, despite the challenging weather conditions all teams were successful in this element of the trial .
All teams demonstrated some really good work, but the top four were very worthy of their placings.