Friday 8th July at the Hovercraft Museum
CLUB 1st Thelma & Bella 95 2nd Anne & Dilly 94 3rd Helen & Buddy 93 4th Marie & Wren 90 5th Janet & Teddy 82 6th Jack & Amber 81
DIAMOND CLUB 1st Jan & Mattie 84
BRONZE 1st Alexandra & Luna 86 2nd Anne & Dilly 82 3rd Mark & Kibo 76 4th Helen & Buddy 74 5th Thelma & Sylvie 69 6th Sam & Ruffles 68 (teamwork 15)
DIAMOND BRONZE 1st Marie & Bridget 83
What a scorcher of a day. Firstly, let us say that we were impressed with the care and sportsmanship for the dog’s welfare today. Well done all teams! Thank you all for looking out for each other too.
Bronze would normally include at least some outdoor area however due to the incredibly high temperatures it meant the tarmac and a lot of the metal hovercraft surfaces were far too hot even at 10am. We therefore chose inside the largest hovercraft and gave two parts to the search. The first was solely a perimeter search and the second was a full area search, including across the floor.
The first hide was in a wing flap of a small hovercraft. Most dogs recognised their odour and went past, having to work it back to be able to pinpoint. The second odour was in a stack of chairs meaning to really get those top marks dogs had to detail the stack to indicate at source. Dogs that missed this hide mostly skipped searching down the chairs, cutting the corner due to cabinets sticking out.
Whilst sheltered from the sun, there was little to no air movement inside which really presented a unique challenge for teams, some dogs recognising their odour but not quite committing to work it in to source. It was also still incredibly warm and teams who had a slower search conserved more energy and prevented heavy panting so more sniffing was happening. A proportion of handlers worked on line and this helped to control the speed and cadence of the search.
Well done teams, another day that was a pleasure to judge. Thank you to all who entered.
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