Judges report Thurleigh 31/10/22
Firstly I would like to thank Marianne for inviting me to Judge , I love watching other teams work & I most definitely wasn’t disappointed.
There were a few new faces today at this level 1 and so nice to see some newcomers to our wonderful sport.
Overall I was extremely impressed with the standard today and that made my judging very easy from one point of view but unfortunately it was going to mean the final results were going to come down to time , which I feel is a little unfair on the dogs that work beautifully but are never going to be fast , I don’t have a solution at this time but maybe it is something to look at in the future
Anyway we started with the exterior search , I had brought 3 bricks from home which were my 3 named articles, I quite like having 3 items the same . All the dogs were successful which I was very pleased with, a couple found the area quite hard to concentrate and we almost had one dog scent mark but expertly handled to move away and find the article.
The boxes & Luggage was next and sadly this was the search that caught a couple of teams out .
Amazingly Rachel Carter’s Winston raced off passed the cones and went straight to the correct item , he knew exactly where it was , it took Rachel the 6 seconds to believe him ! !
We did a car search next at thurleigh the vehicle search the vehicle is parked at the front of the village hall , because of this I put the find on the rear number plate so it was as far from the road as possible .
Again all teams found it .only one person lost some marks for touching the vehicle.
Our last search was the table & Chairs again I saw some lovely searches , one even decided on the table was the way to go , bless .
I wish to thank all the competitors for allowing me to judge you & your dogs it was an honour, I wish you all well in the future.
Also I want to thank Julie Fletcher, for scribing for me , you did a fabulous job
I was so pleased to see everyone qualified and we had so many on full marks

Judges report L4 Thurleigh 30/10/22.
Many thanks to Marianne Tembey for inviting me to judge today,I’ve had a lovely watching some really great partnerships. All of you made me smile and I feel you all deserve a mention,so this is the ramblings of how I remember a fun afternoon.

As today was the first day after the clocks had gone back it also meant it was the first dark evening of the year. With 11 competitors to judge,Marianne and I hatched a plan for her to judge the exterior items whilst I judged the wall so that we could get both exterior searches completed in daylight. I do love a good plan and judging by monsoon like rain we managed to avoid just as we both finished the exterior searches,it was a very good plan!

My wall search covered the front of the village hall and a dwarf wall around one edge of the steps leading to the front door.
A clove sticky dot was placed on the overhang of the dwarf wall which despite the swirling effect between the hall wall and the dwarf wall,didn’t present any problems and all of the dogs found it fairly quickly.
The gun oil which was placed in an air brick was slightly harder to pin down though with most dogs going past it,having to turn back and track it to source. It was so interesting to watch how some dogs worked the odour by getting above it,whilst others worked it upwards.
Only a couple of handlers chose to work the area from right hand side which actually gave them the benefit of the wind blowing towards them,Emma Rebbetts with Bailey and Bev Plew with Tye stood out when both dogs literally found the gun oil within seconds,excellent work of the wind.
Melinda Needham & Lady and Sarah Stonton & Jack also had fantastic searches both finding the odours really quickly,with Sarah & Jack just pipping Melinda’s time at a speedy 37 seconds!
Scentwork shouldn’t be all about speed but it was still great to see super speedy Jack work with such confidence,especially when I knew how hard Sarah has worked on gaining his trust in new environments.

Well done everyone,you all found both odours on the wall and in windy conditions that’s really a great result.

My second area was boxes and luggage.
The distraction odour used was tea inside one of the boxes,a couple of dogs showed interest but none of them stayed with it long enough to create any wrong calls.
A couple of partnerships fell foul of bouncing odour between a big briefcase and the gun oil which was on the handle of a child’s backpack,which unfortunately resulted in a couple of wrong indications. It was lovely to see how well the handlers responded to the wrong indications with most of them laughing it off,even when it was Teddy fibbing to Sarah Connatty,I do t think I’ve seen a dog with a better sense of humour than Teddy has,such a character.
It’s always great as a judge (or instructor) to watch how a handler deals with the wrong calls,one handler who really stuck in my head today was Vicky Cartwright with Brecon who did a really great victory ‘whoop whoop’ correct or incorrect call,love it Vicky,so good to see and it obviously works as Brecon is such a happy little soul.

A piece of clove Velcro was place inside a box file on the edge of the search area,several of the dogs went straight over the box but a few did great head checks leaving their handlers in no doubt that they had found the correct box,noticeable were Nicky Hamlin’s Bing,Charlotte Pings Blue and Meghan Jones Rocket,who all caught the odour and tracked it back to source at lightening speed and gave great indications.

My last area was the table,chairs and perimeter. I’d decided the day before that I was going to put both odours on the perimeter,rather than on the tables and chairs.
Clove was placed in a wooden ladder and gun oil into a skirting board between two items.
When I ran my own dog Chilli as the white dog he showed me that the clove in the ladder could be sourced on either side of one of the ladder rungs (it was laying flat with the odour trapped between the uprights) I would say that it was a 50/50 split with dogs indicating on either side,interestingly none of the dogs indicated on the front edge that as humans the scrimes and I thought they would,which shows how differently odour travels and just how clever our dogs are at finding it.

A couple of partnerships,having found the odour on the ladder,were convinced that they would need to find the other odour on the table and chairs and continued to over search them rather than the perimeter. Unfortunately this pushed a couple of the dogs in desperation to please,to indicate on the distraction odour of shampoo on a chair.
A couple of handlers also called their dogs off the correct odour because they’d forgotten that there could be two odours on the perimeter.
Lynne White’s face as she cautiously called the skirting board was an absolute picture,you were so sure that Alize was trying to kid you weren’t you? What a methodical and thoughtful searcher Alize is,beautiful to watch.

Heather Preston and Whispa continued their day of great searches with lovely indications in all areas by finding both odours on the table,chairs and perimeter giving them the only clean sweep of the class and winning at their first L4,fantastic.

Huge congratulations every partnership had a qualifying score and that really is an achievement.

4th Meghan Jones & Rocket
3rd Bev Plews & Tye
2nd Sarah Stonton & Jack
1st Heather Preston & Whispa