True earned her Nose Work 2 title!

Friday we headed down to Clackamas, Oregon to compete in Nose Work 2.  We did Nose Work 1 in April, and True sailed through it, earning her title as well as 2nd place in vehicle search and 3rd place overall. Woohoo! We were more than ready for that trial, but I wasn't so sure about NW2.
 
Nose Work is still such a new sport that trials are few and far between, at least in our area. Entries are drawn on a lottery system, so when a NW2 trial was listed so soon after we completed NW1, I went ahead and put our names down, figuring our chances to get in were pretty small.  Well, out of 90 entries, 40 were drawn and we were one of those.  So, ready or not, off we went.
 
Clackamas is about a 4 hour drive for us, and we needed to be on site at 8 am, so we headed down the night before.  The morning of, we got up early (True normally sleeps till 10!) and headed to the trial, held at an elementary school.  Fortunately, once she saw what we were there for, she was plenty alert!  We were 5th in the lineup, a good thing because the search area is cleaner at that point, with less scent contamination from people or other dogs.  They split us into two groups, with one group running the interior search and vehicle search in the morning while the other group ran the container search and exterior search.  For the afternoon, we switched.
 
We broke no speed records this time, but True was solid and spot on in all of her searches.  For the interior she located two hides, one in each of two different rooms, the first in only 23 seconds, the next in 50 seconds.  Ironically, considering she was so fast in vehicles at her NW1 trial, the vehicle search gave her the most trouble, locating two hides in a search area of 4 vehicles.  It took almost two and a half minutes out of an allowed three minutes, but she did it! 
 
The container search was two hides in a sea of luggage, boxes, and storage containers, some of them containing food or toys.  She rocked, ignoring the distractors and finding the two hides in a minute and a half.  The on to exterior, out on a playground.  She bulletted straight for the hide from the start line, and I hesitated a few seconds to call it, just to be sure.  It was buried under some bark and she persisted in pawing at it, so I called it and we were good.  18 seconds for that one (but to be fair, she had it in about 5--the delay was all me).  That put us 4th for exterior, and earned her the NW2 title!!
 
Here she is, displaying her new ribbon: