It was a successful weekend for two sniffers in the family. Olivia and I each had nose work trials and we did pretty well. I had two, my first ELT-S and first ELT-P and Olivia had another ELT-S. It was very cold, windy, and snowy but we didn’t mind the cold at all.
I started off Saturday with the morning ELT-S trial, Elite Select. It is four searches, kind of speed searches, some having a known number of hides, some a range, and some completely unknown. Titles are point based and a dog needs 350 points for a title. A trial has a maximum of 100 points. Well, to Mom’s surprise, I found all ten hides and earned 100 points my first time out. I placed fifth out of the six dogs that found all the hides. Mom wasn’t sure how I would do, so I did my best as always and was perfect!
Olivia was in the afternoon ELT-S trial. They are completely separate trials with different search areas and hides. No surprise, Olivia found all the hides and placed third in her trial. She almost always gets 100 and she already has her title, so she is working on her second title now.
Sunday was my first ELT-P trial which is an all day trial. It is a lot like ELT but sometimes there are extra challenges. My morning was great, we felt like we were doing really well but then in the afternoon we ran into some issues. In the end I missed four hides. Actually, Mom called finished just as I found one of those and she did not call another I showed her. Still we were happy with how it went and I managed to make it into the bonus points so I received 87 points. I need 400 for my title which will come in the spring, I’m sure. The video above is my first search of the day. Remember it is a law enforcement training center so they train all kinds of scenarios, thus this strange area I searched. It had two sides and I bounced back and forth the entire time.
The best news of my ELT-P trial is that I placed second in the above search. Not bad for my first time out with some really good dogs. I am good too, but remember, Mom and I are a team so we need to work a bit more on that I guess. Nevertheless, we are both happy as clams with my weekend, and Olivia’s performance as well. Now it is “break” time for nose work but I’m sure we will get back to trials towards the end of winter.
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