Thankyou Pauline for inviting me along to judge this level 5 at Wichenford.My 1st visit to the memorial hall,lovely venue.
It was a reasonable morning weather wise once the fog/mist cleared,with what I would describe as,”a little nip in the air”.
A Thankyou also to the TM for the day,Bridget and to my lovely scribe,Nikki.You both did an excellent job.
We had a total,of 8 teams competing.
A white dog was used prior to all searches commencing.

Interior 1
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This was the main large kitchen area,4 hides,(2 cloves and 2 gun oil), and 3.5 mins were allocated after running the white dog.
On entering the kitchen and immediately to the left,2 hides were placed under the wheels,at either end of a large kitchen unit.
A further hide was placed further around the edge,approx 65cm from ground level,under the handle of a dishwasher.Continuing further round to the right,some 2 meters away another hide was concealed under the bottom shelf/ leg of another unit.
All teams were successful in finding the 2nd hide,under the wheel in the corner,with a couple missing the early number 1 hide.
The others equally missing hides 3 and 4.
We had Elaine and Jack showing everyone the way home,finding all 4 hides with time to spare.
1 team finding 2 with the remainder find 3 out of the 4….
Lovely display of searching by Elaine and Jack with Pauline and Maddie hot on their heels.

Exterior
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I used the area to the left and rear of the building.
3 hides and 3 mins allocated.
Number one hide, cloves,was secreted between wooden planks which made up a decorative surround to a tree in the patio area.
Number 2,gun oil, I chose to hide this in a crack in the paving slabs,halfway along the footpath.The 3rd hide,also gun oil,was sited approx 60cm from ground level in a crack on one of the wooden/concrete pillars adjoining the footpath.
This search area proved to be quite a challenge to some of the dogs,the luscious fresh grass proving to much for some not to have a wee nibble.
This coupled with a tiny robin dive bombing some of the dogs,he was obviouly protecting something,even had a go a me…lol
I thought the hide in the footpath would be the difficult one,but not so,with 6 of the teams successfully finding it.7 finding the hide in the pillar.
Only 1 team,Elaine and Jack correctly finding the number 1 hide in the wooden planks.
No team found all 3.
That said,there was some lovely searching by,Kate and Tali and Jan and Jasmine.
It was nice to watch several of the dogs pick up the scent to hide number 2 along the adjoining wall,and successfully track back to source in the
paving slab.

Interior 2
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This was set up in a corridor,adjacent to gents toilets and another room leading of,which contained lots of interesting items,(ladders,buckets,hoover ect ect…)
Another adjoining larger room which appeared to hold all the chairs and tables for the venue,also present were radiators and cupboards.
5 hides were secreted here and 5 mins allocated.
Entry to the area was by one of 2 doors leading of the main hall,one into the corridor and the other into the larger room of the two.
Most teams teams started through the door into the corridor.
Immediately on entry, to the right hide number 1,at the bottom of the door leading to the gents.(Gun oil).
Following around and to the right leading to the emergency exit,hide no 2,(gun oil)this was hidden behind and halfway up a radiator.
Number 3 ,(cloves),was stuck to the foot of a set of step ladders in the junk/ cleaning room,no problem,all dogs finding this one with ease.
Hide number 4 ,(cloves),was secreted behind a cupboard door to the right,on entering the larger of the two rooms.
Lastly hide 5,(gun oil),was hidden at the far end of this room ,on the bottom leg of a stack of chairs.All dogs finding this hide.
At last the dogs were warming up ,with 4 teams finding all 5 scents,and three teams finding 4….
Excellent display of scenting here by Jan and Jasmine,Rebecca and Pixie,Kate and Tali and Phillips and Stan.

Overall it was a very enjoyable way to spend a morning,my pleasure to judge.
The end result being a very close fought battle with the top 5 teams all on 110 points and only wrong alerts dividing them.
My congratulations go to the eventual rosette winners on the day….
1…Rebecca and Pixie(No W A)…2… Kate andTali(1 WA)…3…Jan and Jasmine(2 WA)…4…Philippa and Stan(3 WA)…
Well done to all those that took part,hopefully we will meet again on the horizon in the not to distant future.