UKC nosework trial, 4 New Titles

This trial was less than 1:00 drive from home at Emerald Downs. We've been there for trials twice before. Gimme already has her Superior Interior (SI) title and just needed one leg each for container, vehicle and exterior titles. If she got all three, she would also get her Superior Nosework title. So there was a possibility of 4 titles.

 

Right before our morning container search, Gimme stepped on a blackberry vine and started limping. It kind of came and went. She was fine walking up to the staging area, but the longer she was on her feet the worse it got.

Container search - 3:00 to search and 2 hides. Gimme was pretty distracted by her owie, but managed to pull it off, completing her Superior Container (SC) title. She even got second place with a time of 1:05. The first place dog found both hides in 14 seconds! I would love to see them work.

The judge asked to talk to me and I explained what happened. She let the Q stand, but said if Gimme was still limping in the afternoon she wouldn't be allowed to search in vehicles. Certainly reasonable... Another competitor gave me some arnica and I did energy work on her paw. Then we just had to wait. Fortunately by the time of her next search, her paw was mostly back to normal. I could see her gait was a little "off", but she wasn't limping.

 

Vehicle search video - 3:30 to search and 2 hides. Gimme did a nice job, finding the first hide behind the front license plate of the black vehicle (far left). From there she went here and there, but wasn't finding the second one. I realized she had gotten to the far side of the silver vehicle (far right), but hadn't searched it. You can see in the video as she goes there, I'm actually between her and the hide. I asked her to humor me and search there again. When we get in there the second time I was still between her and the hide, but she catches the drift of it and snaps back to indicate. This completed her Superior Vehicle (SV) title. She got second place with a time of 1:30.

 

We came back on Sunday afternoon for our last search.

 

Exterior search - The search area was in one of the horse barns and we had 4:30 to find 2 hides. We had a long aisle with 4 of the 5 stalls along side it (tan), the open sided attached shed (brown) and the horse washing station (grey). This seemed larger than 1500 sqft., but I could be wrong. In any case the time to search it was generous. There was a bit of fresh poop as an added attraction. 

 

Gimme was immediately drawn into the shed area, but was ready to leave it after only searching the far half of it. I asked her to check the near end and we were rewarded by finding our first hide (see red arrow). 

Gimme was not interested in the stalls, only looking at them as she went by. We went out into the washing area and she wasn't interested in any of it. I asked her to check the pipe/faucet (blue dot), which she did but was uninterested in it. We went back into the main aisle and I got her into second stall (from the start line) and only got a perfunctory sniff. I asked her to go into the third stall and she was quite interested in a large hole (nose level, large black half-circle in the diagram) in the wall, but didn't try to make anything of it. 

 

As we left the stall I was trying to take her to the fourth stall, but she became interested in the wall between the aisle and the washing area. She began with the far end, sniffing it, started to go to the far side, but quickly came back. As she got to the other half she began strong detailing and finally indicated up under the top edge for our second hide. (see red arrow in second picture)

 

Three of the four dogs to NQ indicated low on the wall, so her precision was a great boon. This completed her Superior Exterior (SE) title. She got another second place with a time of 1:56.

 

These three searches mean we have all four elements at the Superior level, so Gimme earned her Superior Nosework (SN) title. One weekend, four new titles. This brings Gimme's total title count to 70. YAY GIMME!!!!!