The Nosework Competition

Me and mum headed out to the dog club early this morning, because we were going to take part in our very first nosework competition! Nosework is a dog sport where dog and handler have to find hidden scents in different environments. In class 1, the scent is eucalyptus.

Luckily, it was a warm and sunny day. Windy though. Anyway. I had to wait in the car when mum went to registration and attended course presentation. We were twenty-five dogs and handlers.

There were four searches: outdoor, vehicle, container and indoor. It took the whole day! The first one was very tricky, and I couldn’t find it, even though we used up all our three minutes. It turned out that only four of 25 dogs found it in the end, so it was ok. The second task was to find the eucalyptus scent on either a small tractor or a cart. Tricky as well, but I found it!

After lunch, we did the container search. Pizza boxes! My favourite. Zap! and I had it. By then we were both tired, and mum screwed up the final indoor search by yelling Found it! when I hadn’t yet found anything. Oh well.

At the concluding presentation, it turned out that we were in 11th place (of 25), which wasn’t bad at all. And - we got TWO honourable mentions for being one of the top three teams Working especially well together as a team! Yay!! Mum is proud! I won food, which is great! She actually considered choosing dog shampoo for a prize, if you can believe that.

I met a new poodle friend, a brown miniature named Frans, we met a very scary zigzaggy adder and mum found a tick on her person. On the whole, a very eventful day.