The North Texas Nosework club hosted a UKC trial this last weekend. The trial was at Eastern Hills Elementary School in Fort Worth Texas, and put on by trial secretary Carrie Neitzel. This trial was our first debut into UKC nosework.
Four Judges; Darci Datta, Silke Satzinger, Nancy Anderson and Peter Betchley oversaw all five levels of UKC runs in every element. The three day trial brought out lots of exhibitors filling the gymnasium with handlers eager to trial their dogs. The venue added excitement in seeing how the different school spaces were utilized to create unique search areas. Vehicle ran in the school parking lot, Container was run in a cafeteria, interiors were in classrooms and exterior on the tennis courts.
Coming from trialing in AKC scentwork, it was interesting to see the ways AKC and UKC scentwork events were different. Some of the differences that stood out to me most this weekend were that in UKC novice, you are permitted one false call without NQ'ing. There is no "buried" element in UKC, instead there are vehicle searches where cars are lined up and a hide(s) are set on the cars, motorcycles, golf carts, etc. One difference in particular served as a learning moment for me this weekend. Unlike AKC scentwork, where two hides are in advanced and you must call finish after finding both hides, UKC advanced only has one hide. I must have not been paying enough attention when the judge told me how many hides I was running and how much time I had before my run because after finding the first hide, I cued my dog to find a second. I was embarrassed, definitely not a mistake I think i'm likely to repeat.
This trial was some dogs very first time running vehicle searches in trial. Before reading into the regulations for vehicle hides, they were what intimidated me most this weekend. Odor gets trapped and pools and even gets pulled up and over vehicles in patterns that are difficult to anticipate as a handler. To prepare for the trial we lined our vehicles up and practiced with the dogs, I noticed it was more difficult for our dogs to source odor on vehicles then it was on other objects in exterior searches. After observing many practice runs I was able to get a clearer mental picture of the ways odor can channel around parked cars. This was a new and unexpected challenge that I will continue to work on before our next trial.
One area I feel we did well in this trial was interior searches. On Saturday we honored to receive a judges choice team award under judge Nancy Anderson in a novice interior search. Raven was able to catch odor that had wafted over a low table and worked it back to source. It was my favorite run our whole weekend, I loved to watch Raven problem solve and I was thankful to the judge for setting up a run that was an appropriate and perfect amount of a challenge for a novice dog.
One of my favorite parts of attending a scentwork trial is seeing the huge variety of dogs of all breeds, shapes and sizes participating in the same game. I wanted to start including spotlights for all these amazing canines in my trial recaps:
We left the trial with our overall novice title and one pass for our advanced title. Trials give me an opportunity to reflect on our training and plan what we will be focusing on in the coming month. I'm thankful especially to all the volunteers who kept this trial moving this weekend and worked out in the chilly wind. That's a wrap on our Trial weekend.