Tina Schuster

It seems that every time we judge a trial, the weather is one extreme or another. I have to admit though that I didn’t expect snow when I got to Karen’s fantastic new location. Thank you so much Karen and Pete for sorting me some thermals, as I had agreed to judge the outside again.

We started with the Level 2 test in the morning and exterior search – which we were able to use a dedicated fenced area for. Some dogs struggled finding the scent hidden in the dishwasher cutlery basket and indicated on the bike helmet next to it. Overall, the search proved successful for the majority of the teams. Moving on to the cars, it was great to see most teams find both scents successfully. Thank you very much Jane (with Alfie) for providing some entertainment at the end of the freezing morning, you had Heather and myself in fits!

After some lovely sandwiches – provided by lifesaver Pete and some urgently needed warming up, we started Level 3 in the afternoon. This time we did the car search first, which unfortunately wasn’t as successful as the Level 2 search. It seemed that a lot of dogs struggled with new scent of Gun Oil, which was true for the following exterior search too, with most dogs being able to find the article hiding the Glove scent, but not the Gun Oil… apart from Tomba (and Lisa) and Hugo (and Sarah), who were VERY adamant on the white bath mat!

Thank you very much to my faithful frozen scribes, Heather in the morning and Zoe in the afternoon. Thank you Alison for keeping competitors coming (like clockwork). Thank you Karen for asking us to judge, keeping us fed and watered and for keeping me warm(ish)!

Nigel Wilkes

This was my first visit to Karen’s new venue and Tina and I arrived at 9 am looking forward to the day ahead.

Karen was busy organising everything so we decided who was judging the outside and who was inside. Luckily for me I was inside and I met my scribe for the morning Helen who had scribed for me before. Tina and I then informed the handlers on how the day would go and who was judging each part of the trial.

We started on time with the level 2 trial and I started with the Boxes and Luggage, It started very well as the teams were quick to find both scents, however, there were a couple of handlers that were very nervous and this meant that they called incorrectly when they had plenty of time to allow their dog to search more, before they called the alert.

Tables and chairs were up next and again there were confident handlers and those not so confident, and they were ignoring their dog’s indication and went on searching, but in the end they did call correct.

It was very close for the first three places and only time separated them with the winner being Kym and Max, followed by Carol and Fiddle with Jane and Alfie coming 3rd.

We broke for lunch which was kindly provided by Karen before we then gave the Level 3 competitors a quick briefing and then started.

This time I started with Tables and chairs and all teams found the scent on the chairs quite easily, however, quite a few had difficulties with finding the scent on the item. There were a few exemptions with Rosie working very well.

Then it was boxes and luggage and again some found this difficult with quite a few teams only finding 1 out of the 2 hidden. Again there was a few who were very good with Kiwi working very well for the handler.

The trial finished with only 4 out of 10 being successful, this could have been due to the weather as for some of the time we had snow and of course it was very cold and damp.

The winner of the Level 3 trial was Kate and Kiwi who stood out and performed very well throughout.

I would like to thank Karen for asking me to judge, to my co-Judge for being outside all day in the cold and snow, together with Helen who was my scribe in the morning and Michelle was helped in the afternoon.

I really enjoyed the day watching so many breeds and their handlers working and to seeing how some dogs have improved from when I judged them at a lower level.