Thursday, July 2, Beau and I took a 9 hour drive to a
nose work trial in MA. The drive should
have been 6 1/2 hours but the construction and holiday traffic was
problematic! After a relaxing night in
the hotel, we journeyed to the NW1 trial in Huntington, MA. The venue was at a high school.
Our first search was the Interior search. I was very concerned about the search area
because it was in a very small locker room.
The room was less than 20 x 20 with ceramic floor and walls. There were lockers on two of the walls, two
benches bolted to the floor and various other items leaning against the other
walls. Beau was uneasy in this
environment. But he found the hide in 40
seconds. The maximum time allowed for
the search was 3 minutes.
The second search was vehicles. The vehicles were parked nose to rear with
about 3 feet between the cars. The
search area was outdoors with a wall in the left side and a pond on the right. Talk about environmental distractions! The search was allotted 3 minutes. Beau found the hide in 15.33 seconds!
The third search was exterior. The area was about 30 x 50 with grass and
concrete flooring. inside the area were
bicycle racks, bushes, benches, columns and lots of cracks in the
concrete! The allotted time was 3 minutes. Beau found the hide in 7.09 seconds! He was smoking! This search was the second fastest in the
exterior.
The last search was interior. There were 24 boxes arranged in three rows in
a gym. Only one box had the hide. Beau took me up the first row, batting a
couple of boxes out of his way. Down the
second row and he stopped at the second box in the row, pushing it with his
nose. The maximum search time was 2:30. He did it in 29.75.
To qualify at a nose work trial, the team must pass all 4
elements. So, Beau now has an NW1 title.
On to NW2 in the future.
In NW2, there are distractions in the containers and one or two hides in
each element. The distractions could be
food (human or animal), toys, cat litter, etc.
If you are interested in looking at videos of nose work
trials, please click on the link.
Vehicle search... nailed it!!!
Congrats to Howard and Hank for achieving this title. I know that they will be training hard for the next level and I'm confident that the team will get it. Whether it is being wonderful companions (which they all are as we know), competing and titling in obedience, rally, tracking, agility or earning conformation points, I have to say that the M&M crew is quite accomplished for a bunch of 4 year olds. Good job to all that love and train this bunch!
