L1
We started the morning with vehicle search, which was Heather’s van. The scent was hidden on the very bottom of the passenger side wheel arch, and all dogs – apart from (Alison and) Archie were able to pinpoint in about one minute. As it was quite windy, the end of the search a number of dogs showed interest in the driver side front, but all competitors managed to not call it on the “other” side.
On the tables and chairs, later on in the search, a number of dogs showed interest in a chair at the “end of the room”, which must have been where the clove scent had drifted to – with the open windows and draft from the exit door.
All competitors opted to be told which of the 3 items it could be in the exterior search and all dogs identified the right scented item (bike helmet)
In the boxes and luggage search, we had a lot of box-exited dogs, but yet again, all dogs indicated on the right box.

L7
With lots of time for lunch we started L7 at 1:30 pm, with Interior 1, being the big hall. All scents were on the left side of the room, one by the piano (T), and 2 each side of the emergency exit (GO and C). I had put an island of chairs in the middle, as a “time-waste” and some competitors completely forgot to search it, with some others spending a lot of time one it (Sara and Tia). A couple of dogs indicated on the visible decoy and Rebecca (and Marvel) was the only one to call it clear correctly.
Exterior was the back of the hall with nothing hidden until the alcove (C and T), followed by 2 GO in corners and a T at the very end. 4 teams found all 5 hides, 2 of which called the area clear. Unfortunately, Cedar (and Hazel) and Timmy (and Heather) were starting to flag and both handlers decided to withdraw from the competition.
Interior 2 was the back of the hall, disabled and ladies’ loo, with 3 hides in the ladies’ (Nappies bin (T), stall door (C) and stall corner (GO). The last hide was on the stop of the door to the back area (T), with Yaz (and Banjo) making an educated decision to stop “while they were ahead” and calling the area (incorrectly) clear to pass the Level.

I saw some great teams and handler behaviour in the day – both L1 and L7.Thank you Heather for asking me to judge and Linda for being such a great scribe!