Judges report by Keith Clowes.
Level 1 competition at Finmere on the 16th July 2023.

Heather Donnelly trial manager kindly asked me to judge the Level 1 trial.

For this trial I judged all 4 searches. There was some good handling throughout the searches, although a few had problems.

Table & Chairs. I put 1 scent on the far chair, each team had 3 minutes. All handlers found the scent in a fairly quick time.

Exterior search. I used 2 scents, for this search they had 5 minutes. I placed one scent near the front of the items and 1 near the rear of the items. Again, we had some quite quick times, although a couple of teams only found 1 of the scents.

Vehicle/Wall/Fence. For this search we used a vehicle. I placed 1 scent on the rear near side wheel. The teams had 3 minutes. Again, we had some very quick times, although again a couple missed this finding the scent on the wheel.

Boxes & Luggage. I used 2 scents, for this search. They had 5 minutes. 1 scent was on a box near the start and a bag near the rear of the search area. Again there was some excellent searching with some quick times although a couple of teams missed a scent, with 1 team missing both scents.

I would like to congratulate the following four who were placed:

1st Sally Stephens with Inca
2nd Madeleine Greening with Mouse
3rd Sue White with Hippo
4th Sue Loughran with Loki

Also, congratulations to those that qualified

Thanks to everyone taking part, I hope they had an enjoyable time. I would also like to thank all those who helped and in particular Yaz Whitehall my scribe.