This was my first day of judging and I was a little nervous, as I so wanted the teams to do well. The environment was relaxed and the day went smoothly, with gorgeous weather (which always helps).

Thank you so much to Heather Donnelly for being a fantastic trails manager and ensuring everybody was happy and organised. Thank you to Grahame Godby for being such a fantastic runner which certainly ensured the day ran smoothly and on time, and a thank you to Dolores Palmer for being a brilliant scribe. I think we all made an excellent team.

We started with the interior tables and chairs and perimeter search.  Two dogs were worried about the environment within the hall, due to past spooks (Lynda and Teddy and Nicky and Peppa). I was so impressed with the patience and good sportsmanship that these handlers displayed. Peppa, did an amazing and successful first search, but then froze when asked to go back in and find the second scent. This was such a shame but didn’t stop Nicky from smiling. When Peppa came to do her boxes and bags she was much more confident and worked through the hot water urn starting up half way through the search. Teddy, bless him, was having a bad day and I understand he usually is fine in this hall but something was really worrying him. That said, he showed us what he was made of with the exterior searches, and Lynda didn’t let it worry her.  I also feel Kate and Paddy did very well as Paddy was really feeling the heat, and as he is anxious around people, his stress levels affected his search. Kate works him so sensitively and I love his non-slip boots! So well done to these three teams! The first search is always the most nerve racking, so it was nice to see how the day progressed and everybody started to relax into their searches. We went on to the exterior searches, boxes and bags and then the vehicle searches.  The second search was the exterior search. The sun was shining but there wasn’t much wind. The dogs searched well, despite some activity from the public around the search areas. The vehicle search was difficult as it was the end of the day, the dogs were tiring and it was unusually hot. I feel the dogs tried incredibly hard and worked well considering we really are not used to working in this heat.

I was particularly impressed with the number of clean sweeps in level 2! I thought the standard was incredibly high, the dogs understood their job well and you all showed an excellent understanding of how to read your dogs and could distinguish their investigative sniffing to their true alerts. It was this good handling that meant that Nikki and Zig Zag, Linda and Tassel, Hazel and Noodles, Elizabeth and Thomas and Kate and Lola all got clean sweeps! I was also very impressed with Yaz and Banjo, who got a few false alerts but still managed to keep their cool and do some fantastic searching.

Level 3 was a little more challenging but everybody rose to the challenge. Well done to Donna and Lucy with first place and Patty with Joey for second place. Your dogs showed they knew their job, and your handling was confident, resulting in clean sweeps. And congratulations to Tina and Breezer, Kathy and Star, Kate and Paddy and Felicity and Jet for some excellent searching on a challenging day. As Heather said there were a few heart stopping moments where the competition nerves got to you (and your dogs) and there were some false alerts and some reluctance to call it. The pressure certainly increases as you go up the levels, so this is natural.

Keep up the hard work, keep observing your dogs’ body language (head end to the tail end)  whilst searching and indicating, keep strengthening that indication and building confidence in asking the dogs to show you again should you not be sure. I hopefully gave you all something to think about and to practice before your next trail. You all demonstrated some brilliant searching and I look forward to seeing you all progress.

All in all this was a successful day and some wonderful scent work was demonstrated.