Chimera had his first NW1 trial attempt on December 8th. He passed vehicles, containers, and interior easily. We had a snag on exterior: he sniffed at the base of a big plastic trash bin and then looked at me. I hesitated because I thought it might just be "that trash bin was interesting. What are we doing again?" In class, we'd recently had times that I thought he was alerting when he was just checking on something. He then left and searched elsewhere, and there was one other spot that he lingered but then moved on (without looking up at me). When we passed the trash bin again, he sniffed all around where the odor was traveling but didn't return to where the hide was, as I had expected. I guess since I'd accidentally told him that was wrong, he assumed I knew what I was doing and didn't bother to tell me about it anymore. We timed out. The judge said, "Juniper, you know where it is." I said "it's right there under the trash can!" "Yup. Listen to your dog." D'oh. Still a great day.
Our next opportunity to trial will be end of March, if we get into the lottery.
In the meantime, we had another opportunity for an ORT just an hour away, so I went ahead and signed us up for clove. No shenanigans this time - he clearly searched down the line of boxes and gave his usual "I smell it in this box!" behavior at the hot box.
