Platinum. This was a large building used for wood work so lots of piles of wood, work benches, insulation and tools.
The search area was two small rooms and a kitchen to the left with a closed door between two of the rooms that needed to be opened during the search. A large area of the downstairs workshop 9appox half the entire area) and then up some metal stairs to the mezzanine where insulation materials are stored—this top area had to be worked on a line for safety reasons.
There were four hides (handlers did not know this) one weak soak in the door frame between the small rooms and a strong hide in the furthest corner of the far room in a locker. One hide half way up the stair and one in equipment on the upper floor. None of the hides were set to be unachievable, the locker was at a height of approx 1m, all the others could directly get to source but only if the area was thoroughly searched, the area itself was the challenge to cover!
Teams had 10mins to search, all started in the small rooms. Interestingly the thought process with the hides was that the strong hide in the locker would draw them in and they might miss the weak soak in the door frame. Every dog got the door frame, either on the way into the second room or whilst working the room, no one got the hide in the locker. This may have been because there was very little air flow, or that it just overwhelmed the whole room, but type of odour also made no difference. Teams then moved onto the main workshop, half the dogs hit the stair odour from the opposite side of the room but not all handlers recognised this to start with and pulled their dogs away to search other areas. There was also some exceptional team work between dog and handler working this area, the winning team stood out for working this in from a distance and hitting it going up the stairs. Handlers all recognised their dogs in odour but couldnt pinpoint it and not many searched up the stairs, however they got it on coming down the stairs. The upstairs hide proved reletivley easy and all teams got this one, the challange was more negotiating around all the objects!
This level was a pleasure to judge, all the teams worked really well together and covered the whole area without rushing, had great search plans and worked to a really high level.
Gold
This was the same building but the whole of the downstairs area, excluding the two small rooms used for platinum. Search tome was 8 mins and 3 hides. Two hides were accessible as long as the area was covered, one was under a log underneath a table in quite a busy area, one was in the farthest end area which was a separate open room on the end of the workshop, this was a floor hide in the middle of that room. The third hide was the opposite end of the workshop, on a workbench in a cup. All dogs got the first two hides, although many handlers were surprised by the floor one, dogs worked this from the back wall but some needed a little help to come away from the wall to work the floor, there were certainly a few suprised faces from handlers when they called it! The third hide proved much more challenging, some dogs did hit odour in this area but none worked it to an indication. Again the standard was very high and lovely teams to judge.
Silver
This was half of the downstairs of the warehouse (areas not used for any previous hides). Two hides set to encourage clearance of the area, one in the far left corner at the edge of the search area on some ratchet straps on the floor and one on the opposite corner in the base of a broom, this was down an alleyway of wood piles, most teams got this one, a few missed it just because they didn't quite send their dogs or search right to the end, those that did had no issues. The ratchet hide proved a little harder towards the end of the day as the odour was pooling about 6ft away on a pile of mdf boards and was clearly quite a strong scent pool which took the dogs a while to work back, most got this when handlers sensibly tasked them on when they could not pinpoint a source on the boards. Good searches to watch, lots of keen entries having a go at silver for the first time and all did well, again good standards of work from all teams.
Platinum
1st Ann and Kenzie 86.5
2nd Lyn and Gayl 83
3rd Emily and Monty 80
4th Richard and Ziggy 79
5th Shelia and Nico
6th Natasha and River
Gold
1st Emily and Month
2nd Lyn and Gayl
3rd Natasha and River
4th Nicky and Bubbles
5th Janet and Dylan
6th Bev and Delilah
Silver
1st Chris and Jas
2nd Emily and Pip
3rd Sheila and Taylor
4th Natasha and Wren
5th Marie and Margo
6th Janet and Dylan
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