Hand House, Great Rollright, Chipping Norton, OX7 5RE
Start: 9.30 & 1pm
Entry Fees: £30 per dog.
Contact: Karen Denton karen@scentpals.co.uk
Trial Manager and Judges Reports
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Wed 28 Oct 2020, Great Rollright
Level 6: Judge - Ali Brannen
Judges Report Level 6
First off I would like to thank Karen for asking me to Judge this level and thanks also to Hazell for allowing us to use her venue.
We started with the first interior search which was held in the top part of the dog house. The hides from left to right were mirror-truffle, door-truffle, floor bracket-truffle and a plug socket-clove. 1/10 teams found all 4 scents and that was Hazell & Teddy. 4/10 teams found 3 hides and they were Yvette & Anya, Emma & Smartie, Peter & Dolly and Stacey & Bella. 4/10 teams found 2 hides and they were Melanie & Rowan, John & Skip, Laura & Peanut and Harry & Rosie. 1/10 teams found 1 hide and that was Lisa & Tomba. The most missed hides in that search were the mirror and the door with just 4 teams finding those.
Then to the exterior which was placed around a caravan and patio area. The hides from right to left were a crack in the patio by a gas bottle-truffle, caravan step-truffle, left corner of the caravan-gun and a bracket around the side of the caravan-truffle. Some teams seemed to fair better outside despite the horrible weather. 3/10 teams found all 4 and they were Hazell & Teddy, Yvette & Anya and Laura & Peanut. 5/10 teams found 3 hides and they were Melanie & Rowan, Emma & Smartie, Harry & Rosie, Stacey & Bella and Peter & Dolly. 2/10 teams found 2 and they were Lisa & Tomba and John & Skip. The most missed hide was the left hand corner of the caravan with only 5/10 teams finding this.
Lastly it was interior 2 which was held in the other end of the dog house and included the toilet and kitchen area. The dogs were certainly more on form by this search. The hides were placed from left to right bracket in the toilet-truffle, kitchen cupboard-truffle, a stack of seats-clove and the side of a heater-truffle. 5/10 teams found all 4 and they were Yvette & Anya, Hazell & Teddy, Melanie & Rowan, Laura & Peanut and John & Skip. 4/10 teams found 3 hides and they were Emma & Smartie, Peter & Dolly, Stacey & Bella and Harry & Rosie. 1 team found 2 hides and that was Lisa & Tomba. The most missed hide was the stack of chairs with 6/10 teams finding this.
It was a very good trial with a good standard of handling, and the dogs coped very well with the miserable weather. 6/10 teams passed this level and they were in 1st Place Hazell & Teddy with a clean sweep, 2nd Yvette & Anya, 3rd Laura & Peanut, 4th Melanie & Rowan, 5th place to Stacey & Bella and 6th place was Emma & Smartie. Great job guys.
Well done everyone who took part, it was lovely to see so many familiar faces. I look forward to seeing you all again in the future.
Trial Manager’s report
It was a day of two halves for this Level 6 trial. The five morning people had the worst of the weather with torrential rain – particularly during the Exterior search! The afternoon wasn’t much better but at least the rain stopped for the outside search. Despite the cold and damp our competitors were full of their usual smiles and good humour.
My thanks go to Ali, our judge, who set an even test with 4 hides per area. Both ends of the hall were used for the interior searches and a static caravan for the exterior search. She used quite a high percentage of truffle oil hides to challenge the teams with the new scent that they’d had to learn for Level 6. However, none of the dogs struggled with this scent specifically and we had about a two thirds pass rate.
Hazell and Teddy put in a fantastic performance finding 100% of the hides with ease. Yvette’s Anya worked really well and the best I’ve ever seen. Laura’s Peanut worked well for her even though he was a last minute replacement for her other dog who was poorly. Melanie’s Rowan improved throughout the trial and especially once Melanie had given Rowan the chance to make her own decisions! Emma drove a long way to take part but due to lack of practice because of lockdown, Smartie
wasn’t quite on his usual form but gained confidence with each search area. Stacey and Bella had a good shot at this trial qualifying at their first Level 6. Congratulations to all these teams and also to those who didn’t quite make it this time.
There were five teams in the morning and again in the afternoon. A white dog ran blind on all three search areas and Covid guidelines were strictly adhered to. It always amazes me how our dogs cope with our masked faces and muffled voices but they do bless them and I witnessed very kind and empathetic handling. These dogs are truly loved.
Thanks for coming. See you all soon.
Karen Denton