We wrapped up the CANINE.NZ 2026 nosework trial calendar with a five-event Buried Hide trial at the Purina Pro Plan Auckland Exhibition Centre at Ardmore. We ran three Sand events inside the arena and two Water events outside, which felt like a pretty fitting way to finish what has been a very full year of trialling for us.
When we were talking at the beginning of the year about what we wanted our trial calendar to look like, one of the biggest motivations was simply creating more opportunities for ourselves and our dogs to trial regularly. Trialling gives you information that is difficult to manufacture in training. You get to see what stays intact when the environment is unfamiliar, what falls apart a little, where your dog needs more experience and where all of that training has actually done its job.
Scent Squad has members throughout New Zealand, from Auckland through the lower North Island and down into Christchurch, but those of us based in Auckland also felt there was room to continue building more SSANZ trial opportunities here. There is already a very active community further down the North Island, and we wanted to start developing something similar in Auckland, both for our own teams and for anyone else who wanted to come along and trial with us.
Getting bitten by the Buried Hide bug
When CANINE.NZ ran our first Buried Hides in June, none of us really knew how much of a focus they were going to become.
CANINE.NZ had not hosted them before, and quite a few of our Scent Squad members had done very little dedicated Buried Hide work with their dogs. We got our first taste of Sand and Water in June, and I think it bit a bit of a bug in quite a few of us.
From there, members started entering Buried Hide trials elsewhere when the opportunity came up, and we also began training them more deliberately ourselves. Part of the interest was learning how the trial itself works, but probably the bigger part was trying to understand the substrate and the scent picture it creates.
Over the last few months, and particularly over the final four weeks before this trial, our Auckland Scent Squad group put a lot of time into it. We held regular Thursday night Buried Hide sessions at a local park and started deliberately changing things rather than simply repeating the same setup.
We looked at fresh sand in new containers. We looked at different ageing times. We played around with temperature. We changed locations and arrangements and watched what happened as the environment changed around the dogs.
Some weeks a dog would come in and absolutely smash rep after rep. Then the next week the same dog might throw a false alert almost immediately. Those sessions were often the ones that taught us the most, because instead of simply saying the dog had a bad day, we could start asking what had changed in the picture.
What was the dog actually experiencing? Had the substrate changed? Was the odour collecting differently? Was it moving differently? Had we changed something without really noticing it?
There is still a huge amount for all of us to learn, but I think the results from yesterday showed why putting that training time in was worthwhile.
Five searches, five different pictures
Ardmore turned out to be a really useful venue for this event.
Anyone involved in dog sports around Auckland will probably know the venue. It gets used heavily for dog events, so naturally it comes with plenty of existing dog odour and environmental distraction. At the same time, the arena gives you a huge amount of usable space, which was exactly what we needed when trying to house three separate Sand searches.
We were able to spread the searches well apart, think carefully about start lines and approaches, and use the space so that dogs were not simply standing at one search looking directly at another set of containers. The two Water searches were outside, which gave the dogs another completely different picture again.
I think one thing yesterday reinforced for me is that Buried Hides do not need an elaborate environment layered on top of them to be interesting. The substrate is already part of the challenge. The containers can be very obvious and the dog still has plenty to solve.
The pass rates across the five events were:
| Event | Qualified | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|
| Sand 1 | 1620 | 80% |
| Sand 2 | 17/20 | 85% |
| Sand 3 | 13/17 | 76.5% |
| Water 1 | 18/20 | 90% |
| Water 2 | 15/20 | 75% |
I found those numbers really interesting.
Water 1 had the highest pass rate of the day at 90%, followed by Sand 2 at 85%. Sand 1 came in at 80%, while Sand 3 and Water 2 were quite close, at 76.5% and 75% respectively.
It is a nice reminder that we should be careful about deciding beforehand which search is going to be the easy one. Water might look more straightforward on paper, but when you put it outside and let the environment have its say, the picture can change very quickly.
We can make thoughtful decisions around spacing, visual barriers, container placement, start lines and airflow. At the same time, there will always be variables we cannot completely control, and that is part of scent work.
A very good day for Scent Squad
I was particularly proud of our Scent Squad teams yesterday because Buried Hides are something this group has genuinely worked on together.
Across the five events, our Scent Squad teams completed 44 individual searches and earned 35 qualifying results, giving the group an overall pass rate of 79.5%.
Lia McKenzie and Kira qualified in all five of their searches. My dog's, Mantis went two from two, Rou went three from three, and Emma Ruck and Echo went four from four.
Supreet Chadha and Browse, Zoe White and Calypso, Rob Mosen and Envy, and Ingrid Shum and Ranger all finished four from five.
The Sand results were particularly satisfying after the amount of training the group had put into that substrate. Scent Squad had an 88.9% pass rate in both Sand 1 and Sand 2. Sand 3 proved considerably more difficult at 62.5%, which was very much in line with the wider results from that event.
We also had some very quick searches.
Across the five events, Scent Squad dogs occupied 17 of the 25 places available when you look at the five fastest qualifying times from each event.
Water 1 was probably the standout. The five fastest qualifying dogs were all Scent Squad dogs: Echo at 5.84 seconds, Calypso at 5.90, Rou at 6.53, Envy at 8.79 and Moose at 9.77.
For a group that only started putting a really deliberate focus into Buried Hide training this year, I think there is a lot there to be proud of.
Judges’ Choice and the people who supported the day
We were very lucky to have Gaye Stammers judging all three of our Sand events and Adele Williams judging both Water events.
Our Sand Judges’ Choice awards went to Sarah Parsons and Remi, Supreet Chadha and Browse, and Kelvin Johnson and Sage. For Water, Judges’ Choice went to Lia McKenzie and Kira, and Rob Mosen and Envy.
I was especially pleased to see Supreet, Lia and Rob recognised. All three are Scent Squad members, and all three have put a lot into both their dogs and the events we run.
A huge thank you to Gaye and Adele for giving us your time and experience and helping us finish the year with such an enjoyable trial.
We were also very fortunate to have some wonderful support from businesses around yesterday’s event.
Thank you to WOOF, The New Zealand Pet Food Company, for supplying treats for our competitor goodie bags. LickiMat generously supplied the LickiMats that went home with our Judges’ Choice recipients, while CANINE.NZ added WOOF treats to the Judges’ Choice prizes.
Kelly Daniel from Hybrid Dog Training also supplied bags of Seaweed Sparkle, which we were able to give away as spot prizes throughout the day.
And a very big thank you to Supreet Chadha from Mustard Bloom Media, who spent the day behind the camera capturing the dogs, handlers and all of the moments happening around the searches. Her photographs are throughout this recap, and they give us something to keep from the final CANINE.NZ trial of 2026.
Those little extras make a difference to the feel of an event, and we really appreciate everyone who contributed.
These are Scent Squad trials
I say thank you to Scent Squad after almost every CANINE.NZ trial, but because this was our final event of 2026, I want to say it a little more clearly.
These are Scent Squad trials.
They may have CANINE.NZ written across the top and I may be the person sending the emails and coming up with some of the ideas, but there is absolutely no way I could have run the trial calendar we did this year without this group. Every now and again someone tells me that “Sarah’s trials” are some of their favourite trials to come to, and while I love hearing that, what people are actually experiencing is the work of a whole team.
There are people within that team who have taken on really consistent roles throughout the year. Zoe White has been our scorekeeper at every event and somehow always has the certificates, ribbons, goodie bags and everything else exactly where it needs to be. Lia McKenzie has spent much of the year alongside her, helping with scoring and learning our ever-evolving live call board system as we have worked out what runs best for us.
Sylvia Bell and Emma Ruck have both been there event after event, stewarding, marshalling, moving equipment and helping with all of the jobs that happen before and after the actual trial. Rob Mosen has supplied an endless list of useful equipment, from gazebos and tarps to whatever random thing we suddenly realise we need, and is consistently one of the first people there and willing to lend a hand. Ingrid Shum has become another person I know I can call when something needs collecting, fixing or solving at the last minute.
Wendy van Dijk and Kylie Kath have also been there whenever they could be, helping carry containers, move equipment and pack everything up and down. Rachel Conrad and Lucy Pickering have given us their time as marshals, stewards and general helpers, sometimes simply coming along to support the trial even when there was no dog of their own to run.
Our Wellington crew has been part of this too. Briar Paterson and Nina Hannert-Nimmo have been brilliant sounding boards from the beginning of the year, reading catalogues, proofing things and talking ideas through with me. They have also travelled all the way up to Auckland for several trials and, alongside running their own dogs, have stewarded, marshalled and helped wherever they could. That kind of support means a lot when people have already travelled such a long way just to be there.
Danielle Carter and Tegan Coxen have also stepped in across our events whenever they could, whether that meant marshalling, cleaning, shifting equipment or simply taking on whatever job needed doing at the time.
And in particular, Lynn Paterson deserves a very big thank you. She collected 21 boxes of sand, arrived early to help unload them, helped zip tie equipment together, filled water buckets, moved things across the Ardmore grounds and then stayed to help get everything packed down again. There was a lot of physical work involved in this trial, and she carried a huge part of it.
There are countless little jobs involved in running these events that competitors may never see. Someone has to carry the containers, set up the gazebos, move the equipment, check the ribbons, manage the call board, steward for the judges, clean up afterwards and somehow make the whole thing feel seamless when the first dog walks to the start line.
That is what Scent Squad has done for me all year.
Five trial dates may not sound enormous written down, but what we achieved together in 2026 was a massive undertaking. I am incredibly proud of what CANINE.NZ accomplished this year, but more than anything I am grateful for the people who accomplished it with me.
You have all put up with my crazy, gone along with ideas that probably sounded slightly ambitious at the time, and repeatedly turned up ready to help make them happen. I could not have done this year without you.
Now we get to take everything we learnt in 2026 and see what we can build in 2027.