Judge L5.

Thank you to Naomi for inviting me to judge her L5 in East Sussex and her very warm welcome.

It was a very cold, blustery and raining sort of day, so we decided to start with Interior 1 search to stay out of the rain and hoped it would stop later.

Interior 1 was in Naomi’s very nice training barn. I placed 4 scents in this area – a brick in a corner (clove), back of the table (clove), front of the same table (gun oil) and on a lead hanging on the wall (gun oil). All scents were found but by different teams and only one team found all 4 scents and this was because Alison tasked Lola both ends of the table, whilst most teams thought once they had found one hide on it there was no need to search the rest of the table. Super well done to Team Lola for being so thorough.

Sadly I also have to mention in Interior 1 there was much controversy over a bag hanging on the wall. It had recently been washed and therefore in my opinion (as my experienced L8 Nellie paid it no attention) probably had a novel odour on it, coupled with dog odour from those dogs who paid it extra attention and some handlers hovering in the area a bit too long resulting in their dogs false indicating on it. 5 out of the 6 teams false alerted on this bag. So we brought in Buddy (Naomi’s L7 dog) at the end of the searches as a double check and second white dog to search the area. He, like Nellie dismissed the bag. Despite this and people still not trusting Nellie (which to be frank I felt was so un-sportsman/women like) my judgement was to not count the false alerts on the bag. It was a shame this had to happen however I think most teams were happy with the decision I made.

Anyway after a brief to the teams explaining the above we moved on to Interior 2 as it was still pretty wet. This was two rooms and 4 hides were put out – the second boot rack (clove), unit corner by the door (clove) unit bottom under the sink (clove) and a hole in the wall by the door (gun oil). 4 teams found all 4. Super well done.

Lastly was the Exterior search in the courtyard, 4 scents – drainpipe (gun oil), between two bricks in the round brick planted area (gun oil), halfway down the annex wall at the bottom of the wooden slats (gun oil) and the 2nd window bottom left (clove). Despite the awful weather conditions and a little wee incident, neither put any of the dogs off their game. This went very smoothly with four out of the six teams finding all hides and if there was a little more time the other two teams would have found the forth scent, I’m sure.

Congratulations to Anne and Missy for taking home the red rosette and trophy. Pretty amazing little dog of 13.5 years young with health issues. What a special achievement. A very well deserved 1st place to Team Missy.

2nd place went to Allison and Lola. What a fabulous team, only being pipped to first place by time. Really lovely teamwork and certainly a partnership to watch out for, I’m sure, as they march through the levels. Congratulations on your blue rosette.

A special mention to Sue and Luther for his amazing Exterior search. Whilst it certainly shouldn’t be all about speed, his methodical and accurate search gained him the fastest search of the day, finding all 4 scents in only 93 seconds in far from perfect conditions. Lovely teamwork and a great little boy.

Last but certainly not least, thank you to my fantastic scribes, Gill and Janet, who both did a wonderful job. Lovely to meet you Gill and lovely to get to know you and Janet a little bit better. Hope to either scribe for you both once you qualify as Judges, as I’m in no doubt you will, or have you scribe for me in the future.

I really hope despite the bag issue you all enjoyed this trial as much as I did and hope to see you all again in the future. In the meantime have a safe and happy Christmas.