This was the first trial run by Susanne & Ewan Broughton who did an amazing job especially during these rather challenging times. Susanne put a lot of thought into everyone’s safety having sanitising sprays and dispensers dotted around the venue and competitors were very obliging stuck to the toilet rules!
Also dividing competitors into smaller groups and having different time slots seemed to work rather well and I do believe that some competitors even preferred it. Well done Susanne & Ewan.
Level 1 -The standard was extremely high as the marks will reflect with 100% passes which is very unusual indeed. The vehicle searches were particularly impressive with Charlotte Ping and ‘Blue’ completing the search in just 15 seconds. This team continued their near foot perfect performance making it very difficult for me to steal any marks from them. I was not surprised to later learn that this team had gone on to win. Well done. The hardest search, for most teams, seemed to be the ‘Exterior Search’ as the search items were placed on grass which unfortunately turned out to be rather doggy. However this didn’t seem to faze Jane Wood’s Lennie who did an amazing search even ignoring a dog walker passing by whilst searching. At 13 yrs old Lennie doesn’t seem to have slowed down and completed the ‘Boxes & Luggage’ search in just 11 seconds. Well done on your well deserved 2nd place. 3rd was Chris & Jubley and this was the first time I have judged this young dog. Jubley seems to take his scentwork really seriously and carried out a rather impressive detailed vehicle search, very unusual to see in a dog of this age. Also another very good vehicle search was Sue with her young Springer Fern. Fern again is just a youngster and it was Sue excellent reading of Fern unravelling the exact location of where the ‘scented’ article was hidden that made this a most impressive search. Well done.
The L5’s arrived at 1.30pm and I aimed to set up a fair and reasonable test for a L5. However an interesting observation was that although most handlers tasked their dogs into the more difficult areas, they neglected some of the easier places which unfortunately some dogs missed. I do like to put in one difficult ‘hide’ per search in a L5, to give handlers something to think about but my preserved difficult ‘hides’ didn’t seem to faze any of the teams at all. It appears that competitors have been training their dogs during ‘lock down’ rather that making cakes! There was some foot perfect performance and it was difficult to split between the 1st & 2nd place which was just decided on time. 1st Laura & peanut. I have judged this team before and just love Laura’s calm and sensitive handling with this dog. A very good start in the first search, ‘Interior 1’,finding all 5 hides in just over 2 minutes. Also a very methodical ‘Exterior’ search in under a minute illustrating that Peanut is just as good with the outside searches as he is with the inside. Lovely to watch and not surprised this team went home with the red one. 2nd and another team that put in a very impressive performance was Caroline & Mr Wilson. I was particularly impressed by how Caroline kept her cool as Mr Wilson decided to leave it to the very last second to find the last article in both the ‘Interior 1’ and ‘Exterior search’. Good systematical coverage of all three search areas enabled this team to find all the scented articles thus gaining a clean sweep which is quite unusual in these higher levels. Well done. 3rd & 4th places were hotly contended as we had 5 teams on 130 marks so in the end it came down to time. 3rd Stacey & Bella – Unfortunately one of 5 teams that missed the scented article that had been hidden in one of the kitchen cabinets. I was surprised that this article proved to be difficult with many of the dogs catching the odour either around the fire extinguisher or through the hatch on the other side of the wall. However this team pulled out all the ‘stops’ in the ‘Interior 2’ search both going out with mission and purpose making this part of the test look so easy and completing the search in just 94 seconds. Well done and lovely to watch. 4th Richard & Ziggy – I was very impressed with Ziggy’s great drive and tenacity in locating the odour. Spending 2 false alerts in the first search could have put Richard under pressure but Richard certainly didn’t allow this to affect his performances in the next 2 searches and ‘mopped’ up all finds. Well done. Heather Donnelly (Judge)