Meliora Drents

Iris got her first two Master level qualifying scores on Saturday, and polished off her Scentwork Excellent Overall title by qualifying in her two searches Sunday at the October Scent Work Club of San Gabriel Foothills trial!

With her Overall Excellent title complete, Iris has in just one year of trialing completed 3 out of the 5 difficulty levels in AKC Scentwork. That requires 36 qualifying scores (3 per level for each of the 4 elements). She did it with 27 top-10 placements, 15 of which were top-4 placements, and two High in Trials; in an average field size of 26 dogs, and a qualifying score rate of over 80%.

More importantly… Scentwork has been an incredibly fulfilling journey for us both. Iris has truly come into her own, learning confidence in new places and around new people with positive experiences through a game she LOVES and capitalizes on her natural ability. I learned as a handler how to let my dog lead – shaping and guiding her, of course, but observing what came naturally to her and capturing that, rather than trying to control the outcome.

Grateful as always to the community behind us. Iris’s breeder, Two Gun Kennels: Made for Adventure; our many local Scentwork trainers and co-exhibitors, especially our upper-level trainers Mary Berube and Kay Hawthorne; and the family and friends who support this super-niche hobby of ours, to name a few.

Master Interior – A Video Analysis

In Master Interior, there are 3 rooms. There can be 0-3 hides in each room, for 2-6 hides total – which means one room *could* be blank (no hides). We don’t know any more specifics ahead of time. As a team, we have to “clear” (find all the hides) all three rooms within the allotted time per room. We can’t go back to a room once we’ve cleared it – if we clear it correctly, we move to the next room, if we don’t, our search is over.

My strategy going into this search was simple: go for a qualifying score, not worry about speed/placement, and trust Iris. At this stage, my role in our partnership is to ensure Iris covers the whole area within our time limit, and her job is to find stuff if it’s there.

First Room

Iris quickly encounters what ends up being the first hide through a challenging scent problem. You can see her bracketing between the podium and tall chair as she sources this hide. When she alerts, I miss her indication of its exact position, so for the first time ever in a trial, I ask her “where?” – she nose boops it, and I call alert. I did this because the judge may ask the handler to point to the hide location, and my response has to be immediate and within about 4″ of the correct location – if I hadn’t asked her “where” I would not have been able to respond accurately.

She almost steals a toy from a basket in the corner of the room, but drops it when I ask and gets back to work. Since only half of the room is in play (see the blue cones), when she starts moving too far outside the search area I gently call her back in. Sometimes the scent cone can be outside the boundaries, so I don’t like to be too strict about them, but in this case, I could tell she was searching but not in a scent cone. Shortly after, she finds a second hide. At this point, I knew that there could possibly be one more hide, so I guided her around the desks to check one more time. But, both because we were running out of time and I could see her starting to get bored, I correctly called Finish to complete our first room.

Second Room

It takes her a bit of time to find the scent cone. She spends some time first at the far wall and then around the table, giving me what I interpreted as fringe odor-sourcing behavior. She could smell some scent particles, but there wasn’t a clear scent cone for her. It makes sense seeing where the hide ends up being – it’s likely some scent may have wafted over and gotten caught on the tablecloth and far wall, but it was far enough away that the scent cone wouldn’t be readily accessible there. However, after she correctly finds the hide and we have time left, I do take her back to the far wall to double-check. But like the first room, she starts to look bored, looking up at me more rather than searching – so when I finally called finish I felt fairly confident doing so even though we had only found 1 hide.

Third Room

Walking in was surreal. I remember having the thought that the two correct rooms could all be for nothing if we messed up here. But Iris had shown me such excellent searching behavior and clear indications that she was finished in the other two rooms, that I felt the calmest I had all day.

This room was a little bit more complicated in that the teacher’s desk created an alcove with only one spot to enter and exit. Typically I let her search in whatever pattern she wants, but because of that alcove, I was deliberate to guide her into that area. Sure enough, there was a hide back there that she beautifully head-snaps to and alerts on.

After that first hide, she shows some interest along the bookshelves but finds herself snapping to a threshold hide on a desk she had missed at the start. But did she? If you rewind and listen closely, before crossing the start line, you can hear Iris sniffing loudly and my comment, “you smell something already?” – turns out, she did! I should have known to bring her back to the starting area. Thankfully, she got herself there.

I do take her back to the bookshelves – there could have been one more hide, but when she lays down on the rug, I had a pretty good sense she was done. Just in case, I brought her back to the alcove one more time, where she alerts again on the hide we’d already found, which sealed the deal as I called “Finish”.

Thanks Judge Steve DeTata for a really fun and challenging Master level search!! Steve has judged Iris in Advanced and Excellent interiors (and Excellent containers) and is one of our favorite judges to trial under and steward for when volunteering. And, thanks to Play Paws Record Video & Photo for the excellent videography!

Excellent Exterior

This Excellent Exterior search was the last qualifying score Iris needed for her Scentwork Excellent Overall title, and she executes it beautifully!