A Very Successful Sniffing Weekend For Nelson

It was a very successful sniffing weekend for me! Mom took Madison, Olivia, and me to a local AKC Scent Work Trial at Camp Phillippo. We all set goals to meet and it is quite rare that we achieve them all. This weekend, Olivia and I hit our goals, it just wasn’t the weekend for Madison. I exceeded Mom’s expectations completely which is really fun to do! Olivia will post about her sniffing later this week.

Many of you don’t participate in AKC Scent Work, so I will quickly summarize the levels and rules so you better understand why my success is so special to Mom. Competitions have nothing to do with age, so I am usually one of the youngest dogs competing against older more experienced dogs.

AKC Scent Work has levels and elements:

• Four elements: buried hides, containers, interiors, exteriors
• Novice – one hide per search, lots of time
• Advanced – two hides per search, a bit less time than novice, plus a toy distraction in the search area
• Excellent – three hides per search, less time, in interiors, there are two searches and you have to figure out if there is one or two hides in the first search to move on to the second search, there are also toy, food, and audio distractions in every search area
• Master – variable numbers of hides in each element, the number is unknown to the team searching, distractions in the search areas, interiors is three searches and you have to pass each one in order or you fail
• Detective – the highest level in AKC Scent Work five to ten hides, number is unknown to the handler, five to fifteen minutes search time

Last weekend I was in Advanced Interiors, Excellent Containers, and Excellent Exteriors. Mom said that with so many hides and not a long amount of time, I probably would run into trouble finding all three hides. Well, I proved her wrong! I passed all ten of my searches! I earned my Advanced Interior, Excellent Container, and Excellent Exterior Titles! In my first Excellent Exterior search I was the only dog to actually find all three hides. I also placed first. Containers became easier for me on the second day and I earned fourth place in one of my searches there too.

Mom is super proud of me! Scent Work and Nose Work are both sniffing sports but different types of competitions. Earning my NW1 a couple weeks ago on my first try, and now passing all my searches and titling at higher levels is crazy. Most searches I place in the middle of the pack. We are fine with that as I am only fourteen months old. Speed will come. I got lots of compliments on my good work and enthusiasm too. March has sure been a good month for me! My new fancy name: Ethos Let’s Go Crazy SWN SEA SIA SEE SCE RATN NW1

My GBGV Life is happy, so we’re joining Comedy Plus for Happy Tuesday!