Last weekend the shelties and I attended our first every nose work trial in Castlegar, BC. It was a United Nosework Trial, an organization soon to be taken over by the United Kennel Club. In fact you had to have a UKC registration number to enter the trial. Lucky for me both dogs have been previously registered because we occasionally compete in UKC obedience.
I had no intentions of competing in a nose work trial this year. We have been busy focusing on agility and moving to a new province. I was a little disappointed that I would be missing the first SDDA trial in Western Canada, but it fell on the weekend after we planned to move. So with no plans to compete I haven't been actively training in the sport. In fact we haven't played the game since last fall.
Then one day I was on Facebook and noticed a post regarding a few spots left in an upcoming nose work trial. It was on a weekend I was free. I started thinking how fun it would be to attend with the dogs. But with so little practise I was thinking it wasn't a great idea. So I posted on a local Facebook site about where I could get birch odour locally. No one was sure, but a few people had some scented qtips they would lend me. So that night I was hooked up with a great nose work kit, and had a nice chat with a local dog trainer. The wonders of social media :)
So after 2 weeks of practise we headed to Castlegar for our first trial. UN/UKC works a bit different than SDDA (the organization I was currently training for). First their odours are different. They have 5 different odours, the first three levels being Birch, Anise, Clove. Second they have pre tests that you have to pass before you can compete in their trial. A pretest is a container search with 12 boxes, one of which is the hide box. You must pass the pre test at the level you plan on competing at before you can play. Third, they have two different formats of trials. A regular trial where you run all 4 elements at once back to back. If you pass all four you get your UN1 title. And an elements trial, which can offer any combination of the elements, but you need two passes in each to earn an elements title (2 container passes gets you a novice container title). When you get all 4 element titles at a level you now have the UN1 title. Fourth, you can only run one dog in each class because they will not move the hide. If you want to run a second dog you have to get someone else to run the dog for you. If the owner ran both dogs then they would know the location with the second hide and that would be cheating.
The organizing club had a practise room set up with 3 boxes in it, one with a marked odour box. So we could warm up the dogs on odour on the trial grounds before going into our search. Spryte did well with the warm up and I was ready for our PT1. In we go, we start behind the cones and then when ready I gave her the "search" cue and off she went. She was very focused, search each box, went to the end of the row, didn't find it and started heading back. Then she stops at a box and starts head bobbing. I'm thinking she has it and called alert. Then I heard the most heart sinking word from the judge, "wrong". I took a few steps away, Spryte hit the next box, head bobbed with enthusiasm and then gave her trained "sit" alert. She had alerted on fringe odour. One more box over and we would have had it right. How frustrating! Now we couldn't play in the next event, the container search, because we didn't pass our PT1.
The next PT was held in the afternoon. My plan had been to run Sprtye in the morning and Strider in the afternoon PT. With the fail in the morning I now had a problem, I couldn't run two dogs in one event. Lucky for me another competitor offered to run one of my dogs for me. I gave her Spryte. She warmed her up on the practise boxes. Sprtye was in love with the new lady who fed her hot dogs, and then they went in to the PT. I kept my fingers crossed and waited outside the building for them to return. Sprtye worked like a champ, knew exactly what to do and gave her "sit" alert, this time at the correct box. Yah she passed her PT in 9 seconds! Strider and I went in next. He was just as focused on the job and went from box to box stopping and sitting at the last one in the lineup. I called "alert" and got "yes!" from the judge. Wahoo, Strider passed his PT1 in 11 seconds.
So now we had the go ahead to play in the elements trial. The afternoon's event was a vehicle search. 3 vehicles lined up together all facing forward. At the first level the hide will be on the front of the car. From the front wheel well, along the front bumper to the wheel well on the other side. So the dog can go from front bumper to front bumper without ever having to search the rest of the vehicle. It was raining, so our judge was nice enough to have the vehicles moved under a covered picnic area for the search. The judge gives a briefing to let us know the boundaries of the search area and the starting line. Then we all go wait away from the search for our turn.
When Spryte's turn came up we entered the search area, I pointed to the first vehicle and cued "search". Spryte started smelling each vehicle, very interested in the first one. She skimmed the other two, so I brought her back to the first. She started barking in frustration, she couldn't find odour. So we went down the line of cars again and she started to sniff more heavily at the third vehicle. It was a jacked up truck, so the bumper was above Spryte's head. She got right under it, sniffing around heavily on the right side of the bumper and then she finally sat. I called alert and we got another "Yes!". It felt like we had been working for several minutes (max time allowed is 3 minutes). So I was shocked to hear later when receiving our Q ribbon that the total time was only 1 minute and 34 seconds.
Day two I decided to enter the level 2 PT's with both dogs, having the same lady running Spryte again. I wanted to get these out of the way if I could. Entering a PT on the same day as a trial, didn't work out well for us the day before and it was something I wanted to avoid in the future. So both dogs tested on Anise and both dogs passed. Spryte did it in 16.22 seconds, and Strider in 19.43 seconds.
The first element of the day was novice containers, again just Spryte was entered. She was really starting to get into the game. She whined outside while waiting to go in for our turn and barked on the way in. She was having fun now and was getting very confident. We passed the round with a time of 9.43 seconds and earned a third place finish too!
After lunch was another vehicle search. Again Sprtye was way more confident and excited. She crossed the start line, went straight to the first vehicle, was very intense in her search and then sat after sniffing a spot on the front bumper. It was another successful find and completed in a mere 13.59 seconds. Our fast time earned us a second place finish. The two successful vehicle finds also meant Sprtye earned her novice vehicle title!
It was a great experience and I'm glad we attended. I now have a better idea of what a UKC nose work trial is all about. In fact we had so much fun, we are heading back to Castlegar in three weeks to do the other half of the elements. A interior and exterior nose work trial. Wish us luck!
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