My thanks to Ellen Ward Lindley for organising a well run L8 trial in a super venue. Michelle very bravely scribed for me and was meticulous in her recording results as well as being good company all day. Thank you ladies.
I hoped the competitors enjoyed the psychological challenges of L8. As L8 is a new levels I wanted to test how hiding just 10 ‘scented articles’ throughout the 3 searches would fair. I have been aware that in the lower levels, being restricted by 1 minute per find hiding 2 scented articles didn’t work very well whereas in L8 I had the luxury of setting what time I wanted. I hid 2 in the first search and allowed 4 minutes, 2 in the second search and allowed 3.5 minutes and 6 in the last and allowed 4.5 minutes.
In the workshop ‘Interior 1’,most dogs found both scented articles with Karen’s Zelda finding both in just 50 seconds. However no one believed that there were just 2 because of the extra time that I had allowed. This was repeated in the ‘Exterior Search’ and again most dogs found two quite quickly and quite a few dogs alerting on the decoy because the handler felt pressure because they had only found two and thought there were more.
The final search I arranged in a way which much similar to a L3 except that I hid 6. Chris & Dilly did a brilliant search swiftly finding all 6, correctly calling the ‘All Clear’ and going on to being the worthy winner. Well done.
The last search ended with another 3 qualifiers with 3 just missing out. However I was amazed how the 2 hides in both the first two searches had such a negative affected so many of the competitors.