When Nikki Kirk, our judge for the L2/3 trial was asked if she could do a run through before the big day I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to run a ‘mini-trial’ at the same time and invite some of those who weren’t able to come along to the one last November. It also worked out well in that Hazell Burton, who had booked a scentwork session the same afternoon, was also available in the morning and was quite happy to scribe for us.

So the mini-trial consisted of 3 competitors, 2 with 2 dogs, one with two dogs both in L1, and the other having one dog in L1 and the other in L2. One competitor was using ‘Cloves’, as the target scent whilst the others were using ‘birch oil’ which resulted in a very interesting day.

The first search area was the tables and chairs and although Sarah’s dog Cybi was very interested in the start maker cones, which gave us one scary moment, Cybi went on to do a very good search and passed this section of test as did everyone else.

The second test was the vehicle search starting with the L1’s who had to find the scented article hidden around the bonnet area of my van. Laura & Ollie did a very good methodical search with a lovely passive indication showing Laura that he knew his job well. Carolyn & Mily, being our only L2 had to search 3 vehicles with one of these being hidden around the wheel area of Carolyn’s own car but with Mily’s great enthusiasm for searching certainly did not give Carolyn any scary moments.

Everyone then went indoors for the ‘Box’s & Luggage’ search starting with the L1’s hoping to find the hidden scented article in the bottom flap of a cardboard box. First up was Laura & Ollie and it was Laura’s calm handling with the rather boucy ‘Ollie’ to gain a pass in this section. Next to go was Sarah & Daisy who did a very quiet and methodical search and although doing a little bit of ‘re-visiting’,Daisy gave a good clear indication for Sarah to call the correct alert.

Next up was Carolyn with her other dog ‘Enzo’ who is fairly new to scentwork but didn’t want big sister Mily to have all the fun and gave Carolyn a really indication so she could call the correct alert.

The last exercise was the ‘exterior search’ which was all to play for Carolyn’s other dog Mily as she needed to find at least one of the scents within this area to pass. Mily had the added distraction of finding the scented article amongst the judges own items which looked all rather interesting but didn’t cause Mily any problems as she found both articles really quickly.

So after all the tests had finished we ended up with 4 of the 5 dogs passing and three of those also gaining the ‘Clean Sweep’ award. So well done to all those that passed and a big thank you to Nikki Kirk for her very positive feed back which I know all the competitors found helpful and also to Hazell Burton, our scribe, for her contribution helping run the day so efficiently.