Patch Agility Club Trial

The first Scent Ops trial in Northern Ireland with a mixture of more experienced competition teams and new faces doing their first ever competition.

Judge Lesley Clements

Diamond league

1st Lynda Crozier and Copper 83

2nd Laura Kirk and Tilly 78

3rd Patrycja Tomczyk and Vena 62

Champ league

1st Jillian Marshall and Humphrey 91

2nd Janine Brownlees and Duster 90

3rd Antoinette Traynor and Tiggie 89

4th Ben Lacy and Blitz 81

5th Liz Mitchell and Holly 77

6th Nicky and Bobbi 64

The search area was a rectangular room that gets used for storage within an indoor training facility.

A mixture of tables with boxes (cardboard, plastic and polystyrene) stored on top and underneath, chairs stacked and unstacked, filing cabinets and other random objects.

The room has two doorways one a fire exit and the other internal. The start was at the internal doorway but handlers were allowed to go in and have the door shut behind them before starting the search.

The hide was under the clasp of a metal case situated just under a table and in between some random boxes. There was a piece of unused vet bed in one of the boxes that some dogs found intriguing but no one false alerted on it.

Handlers worked the room both ways with a mixture of on line and free searching. Those that worked anticlockwise were able to see their dogs pass the hide and do a lovely knock back due to the influence of the external fire door.

We had a few teams who have a few years of competition experience and these teams scored highly as was to be expected.

A few of the newer teams showed their inexperience and didn’t fully commit to searching at times or displayed a weak indication, but most worked the hide in well.

It was a pleasure to judge and observe lots of teams working so well together.