JUSTINE STEELE – JUDGE

The village of Yarwell provided a lovely setting for another L5 & when I stuck my head outside the hall it looked more like a campsite than a Scentwork Trial!!
We started with the smaller area of the interior searches & despite the worry (for a few!) of having to find 5 articles in a time of 4 minutes & of course the usual jitters, most settled really well & had a cracking start. Farley & Bertie whizzed round setting a blistering pace. In fact the first five teams cruised through finding all, including first timers Anne & the delightful Missy. The difficult find here, was a clove article in the pocket of a hung up kids coat but was found by all bar one.

Moving outside, 4 articles were placed in an interesting area. I decided on 5 minutes allowed time here as I had been a bit tricky by placing a ‘gun oil’ early & then a ‘clove’ in an inviting crack on the paved floor. These definitely challenged a few teams as only 4 pairs found all. Unbeknownst at the time these four would be the teams sharing the ‘silks & points’… Well done Chris with Jubbly, Jackie with Kona, Sue with Tiva & Ghost with Stacey. What proved to be the decisive factor here was time management over the entire area & trusting that your dog would have found something had it been there!! A lot of time was squandered when the human brain convinced itself there just had to be a scented article along the rear side wall. Teams that didn’t talk themselves & pooch into a Wrong Alert or spend too much time in this part of the area had so much more time to systematically seek & find all of the scented articles.

Moving back indoors with only 3 more to be hidden & found, I tried to make the final challenge relatively simple. As it turns out the main hall threw its own curved ball when inexplicably 3 dogs in a row appeared to indicate on the bottom corner of a locked door, so much so that I re-ran Chumley, specifically putting him onto where the ‘falsies’ occurred & thankfully neither he nor any of the remaining teams showed any interest at all… sometimes things baffle & we’ll never know what was so enticing to those three…
I thought the final search, albeit a big area was going to be an easy finish for all the teams, for some I’m sure this was the case as was demonstrated but for some maybe tiredness started to creep in. The ‘wheelchair find’ appeared to cause the issues, maybe because there were so many nooks & crannies…
Well done everyone especially Jubbly who gained EXCELLENT in EXCELLENT style & Kona who also cleanly swept!! Hope you all had a lovely experience.
Thanks again to my fab scribe Becca & of course Nikki for guiding the ship so excellently outside… see you all again soon…