Yesterday was Porter's first K9 Nose Work® trial.
Here are his results:
Container Search: 16.94 seconds - 5th place
Vehicle Search: 14.78 - 4th place
Exterior Search: 9.45 seconds - 2nd place
Interior Search: 9.52 seconds - 2nd place
He placed 2nd overall for the whole trial! I am very proud of my hard working boy. :) I was just hoping we would title, but would understand if we didn't since it was our first try, but to place! Sooo excited about that.
The strategy I had for the exterior hide worked well and helped him find it so quickly. But it was luck of the draw it was that close and along the wall I wanted him to search first.
For the majority of the trial I was very calm, which really surprised me. I thought I would be a nervous wreck. I slept well the night before when usually I am tossing and turning with my brain thinking about a million things in preparation the night before anything new and exciting. I didn't second guess Porter and delay in calling out an alert but just went with what he was showing me.
I had tunnel vision anytime it was our turn. I couldn't tell you how many people were at each element or even what the other side of the room looked like in the interior search. I was completely focus on only Porter.
He did have a snafu which stressed me out and made me worry we would be disqualified completely. He somehow managed to grab one of the hides and pull it out of it's hiding spot :/ And it wasn't like I was just standing there staring off while he was working on it for a long time. It was pretty instantaneous and even shocked the judge when I told her. I wonder if that's a first. Yikes.
Then, at the end of the day at the awards ceremony, they started calling people up who earned their title and half way through I realized they were going on alphabetical order and were well past my last name. So I thought we blew it and that situation had kicked us out of the running. I didn't know they save the teams who placed for the end so imagine my surprise when they called us for 2nd place!!
Overall it was a really nice trial. The atmosphere was very calm and relaxed in the parking area where everyone stays. All the competitors were very aware of keeping the dogs an appropriate distance apart from each other. The volunteers were super nice and a calming influence when you approached an element. The judges were great and a couple of times even praised us when we finished an element.
We had 6 of us from San Diego entered in this trial. Five ran yesterday and one ran today (she volunteered yesterday so she was with us). We set up a nice little camp with tables and chairs and everyone brought food to share. It was wonderful being with people you knew and trained with. Unfortunately, two of our group missed one element and will need to try for their NW1 again, but I am confident they will succeed. Another member of our San Diego group was the one to bring home the blue ribbon! So look out Nose Work community, San Diego is bringing some heat!
I also saw a couple of people who were in my Las Vegas nose work instructor course. I met some friend's of Sue (who has Porter's brother), saw a lady I recently met at a clinic I took from Kim Buchanan, and met a founding CNWI who has a FCR! Porter was more than happy to try to put the moves on her female, Turner. I even got to snuggle a 3 month old FCR who's big sister was trialing. Their household dynamics were amazing similar to mine (reactive older dog...wanted a chill go with the flow second dog).
I had a lot of fun and can't wait to begin training for our next set of challenges. I really hope I can give back soon and volunteer at a trial. There's no way we could do this without a good volunteer base.
Pictures will be posted a little later!!
