Nosework trials, day 3

Day 3 - NACSW @ Steilacoom We were hoping to get our L3I (level 3, interior element) title; at the least I wanted a leg.

Interior Search 1 - This search was in a classroom with the teacher's desk out of play. We were told 0-3 hides with 2:30 allowed. Gimme found two hides solidly. One was under the edge of desk and the other inside a little stack of chairs. After those she ran around and never showed interest anywhere else, so I called "finish". The judge said the third hide was under a chair near the door. Gimme was near there once, but not real close.

Interior Search 2 - This search was in a classroom with half of the room out of play. We were told 1-3 hides with 2:00 allowed. Gimme found a hide quickly then scanned around and settled on a table with a bunch of chairs around it. She finally gave me "the look" and I called alert. The judge said it was under a little chair behind me. So this is a false alert.  In hindsight, because of the tight spacing, I was between Gimme and the actual hide location.  So when she alerted, she was likely responding to the strongest scent available - an honest mistake.

Interior Search 3 - This room was a kitchen with 1-3 hides and 2:00 allowed. Gimme found a hide under the chair at the desk. Then she went around and around before settling on a stack of folding "wet floor" signs. She didn't show interest in anything else, so after we heard "thirty seconds", we made another quick trip around the area, then I called "finish" and was correct.

Interior Search 4 - The last search was in a storage room with 0-2 hides and 1:30 allowed. Gimme found one hide in the handle of the industrial size wet vacuum and then showed no real interest beyond quick scanning at anything else. I asked her "anything else" and she headed to the door, so I called "finish" and was correct.

The parking lot experts don't know if missing a hide in one search is effectively the same as a false alert in another search - though most have strongly held opinions. Truthfully most competitors have no idea how the scoring works - even those with a lot more experience than me. Here's what I learned about how element trial scoring works:

• To get the element title you must correctly make 100% of the total calls and not exceed 3 faults; to get a leg you need 75% of calls - not exceeding 3 faults.
• There is one "alert" call per hide and one "finish" call per search area (for those levels where a "finish" call is required.
• If you miss hides or have a false alert, then you don't get credit for the finish call.
• If you have a false alert you will be assessed 2 faults. So regardless of your percentage of calls, if you get two false alerts you cannot get a leg.

What I found out for this trial: there were 8 hides and 4 finish calls to be made.. To get a leg I needed 9 correct calls to make the 75% cut-off. In our case we got 6 of 8 hides, but only got credit for 2 finish calls. This left us with 8 correct calls out of 12 and 66.667%, so no leg. Bummer.

I'm wondering if I need to have Gimme on leash for interiors more often. It slows her down and may encourage more methodical searching. Both searches where we erred, she was off leash. She was on leash for the searches where we were successful.  Of course she prefers searching off leash, so I may let her start searches on leash and then put her back on about halfway through the search.