Home Field Advantage

The high school I attended in Southern California had a dominate prep football program. And no more dominate when playing at our home field, known as “The Pit.” In a 20 year span, the school’s football program established a 95% winning percentage in games at “The Pit.”

I’m 30-plus years and 3,000 miles away from those Friday nights at The Pit. Now living in New Hampshire, when I saw that a nose work trial was being held in Kingston, N.H. I was excited to finally trial within the confines of the Granite State.

All of our other trials were in Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. This time we would not need to head down the day before, and get a hotel room. (Although BoomBoom and Logan are great travelers and seem to love hotel rooms.) Finally we could sleep the night before in our own bed and drive about 45 minutes to the trial site. What a luxury.

It was interesting going into this trial having earned our first Nose Work 3 title just four weeks prior. Like in Mashee, Mass., this trial was at a summer camp. But it wasn’t summer. We were in the heart of autumn; cool temperatures and leaves blanketing the camp.

We started with interiors, which again was three cabins. Logan started strong, finding two hides in the first cabin, finding zero hides in what was a clear area in cabin #2, and one hide in the third cabin. Then it was on to exteriors.

Although I had seen the exterior search area during the competitor walk through earlier in the day, as we came up to the start line I focused on how much of the area was covered with leaves. The potty area Logan had already visited a couple of times was festooned, if you will, with leaves. Now Logan has never eliminated in a search area at a trial, but I figured this might be a tough obstacle.

Sure enough less than a minute into the search, and while sniffing in the dense leaf area I could see that body language us dog handlers see on those daily walks. I gave a quick yank on the leash, and a verbal cue to tie it in a knot as my 8th grade football couch use to tell us. With that Logan went back to searching and found the one hide.

We went straight to the vehicle search, which I was excited about. With two full-size pick-up trucks and two half-size school buses, this was the largest vehicle search we had seen in a while. Logan search very well. I does get distracted when in a wide-open area with nature around, and had to be redirected a couple of times, but he was right on the vehicles. He found one on the front of a pick-up truck, and then a second hide on the rear of a bus.

Containers was the last search of the day, and again, Logan did great. We went right to work and found the first hide in a few seconds. He investigated each container and did have to go out to the end of the scent cone before alerting on what was the second and final hide, but overall one of his better container searches.

At the end of the day Logan had his second NW3 title. This was our last trial for 2015, so we shall see if Logan can get his NW3 Elite in 2016. Well, Logan can get it, the question is can I get it.