As I read the Facebook posts of folks from around the country, I’m always surprised at how different experiences can be depending on where you are trialing. I’ve never used anything but regular mail to enter a Scent Work trial, and I think I may been waitlisted or told the trial was already full 3 times over the course of 8 years and entry of approximately 40 trials. I’ve never had a mailed entry lost or denied because it was received too early (and since I travel a lot, I’m often mailing entries from towns relatively distant from the trial location, where transit time is ‘just guessing!’)
By contrast, I see people posting that they always use overnight or priority delivery service upgrades to send their entries; otherwise they won’t get in — which sounds expensive. I wanted to know more about that! So I put together a very unscientific survey on entry methods for Scent Work trials. I posted the survey link to the “Friends of AKC Scent Work” Facebook group and the Jotform was publicly available from March 13 – March 24, 2025. The “raw” results are available to anyone: AKC Scent Work Entry Survey Comments for distribution and AKC Scent Work Survey Results For Distribution. I haven’t included any of the participant comments in this post, but they are DEFINITELY worth a look — lots of very strong contrasting views — a great asynchronous discussion!
The survey had 374 submissions. Wesmellbetter.com doesn’t know how many different handlers there are in the system. We know that as of this writing, 26.5k different dogs have gotten at least one qualifying score. Arbitrarily, after much back-and-forth, the Coder and I decided to apply an assumption of “1.5 dogs per handler” to that number, to account for the fact that many have handled two or more dogs in the sport by now. That would mean about 17.6k handlers, so our survey response would be not quite 5%. That’s pretty darned good, really, and indicative of how strongly many feel about this topic. But I do think our sample is artificially limited, that we probably drew more people who are technologically adept simply because we promoted the survey on the internet and on Facebook. Also, judging by the comments, we attracted the attention of a disproportionate number of trial secretaries. There is no one from whom I’d rather hear on this topic but they are not the ‘general public’!
Who responded to the survey?
These are the locations in which they said they trialed in 2024. There was a few of us who contributed to numbers scattered disparately across the map, but the states reported were much more commonly contiguous. Often it was a single state or just two states, except for the northeast where, unsurprisingly, a bigger cluster of the smaller states were cited.
How many trials do people attempt to attend in a year? If someone starts the year planning to enter one or two trials a month, being waitlisted or not getting into a trial might not be as much of a disappointment as if they were only planning to attend one or two trials during the year.
Do you usually get into trials you enter? Respondents indicated that they usually do. The few that reported having less success with their entries were pretty evenly distributed among those who reported trialing in the northeast, the southeast, upper midwest and Pacific northwest, i.e. they didn’t seem to be trialing in one particular area of the country. I find this interesting in light of the many, many conversations in the “Friends” Facebook group indicating that entrants feel their chance of being waitlisted is often higher than their chance of being accepted into the trial. I guess those people just didn’t take the survey?
How far will you go to trial? One factor in trial availability tends to be your own threshold for travel. Around urban areas or in the mountains, distance is much less a consideration than “how long will it take?” so that’s what we asked about. Unsurprisingly, “up to three hours” is the sweet spot for most people.
Do you always have to travel a long way? No, in further good news, almost everybody said at least one of the trials they attended was within three hours of home, and for most, it was much closer. Of those who said it was more than three hours away, only one was in Alaska — the others were scattered about the continental US, with representation in every AKC Region. It’s just a big country!
What entry methods have you used? Keep in mind that these aren’t exclusive of one another — if a person has ever used a method, they would answer “yes.” I was surprised at the number of people who have hand delivered their entries. Have you? I never have. And over half of the respondents have used some kind of online entry. Is that because our respondents were the kind of folks already on the computer to fill out this survey? Could be.
How much do you pay just to get your entry in front of the Secretary? My questions about entry costs just turned out badly. I was trying to get at “how much do you expect to spend to enter a trial,” as in “I expect to buy a first class stamp” versus the people who say they always use Fed Ex or another “guaranteed delivery” service — because I just can’t imagine how much that costs; surely, as much as entering another class in the trial, at least?
But people asked the poorly-worded question I asked, and basically said “if I enter using regular mail, I expect to buy a stamp,” and “if I enter online, I expect to pay vendor and card processing fees.” Not terribly helpful. With the question of “How much in $$ do you expect entry to cost,” many misunderstood — at least I hope that is what happened! — and gave figures of over $100. I threw those responses out, but if someone really does routinely expect to spend more than $100 just to get their entry form into the system, I hope they will get in touch and I’ll be glad to amend the chart! Conversely, though, these responses — where most people said they spend a dollar or less — don’t support the idea that a lot of people are using special delivery services… but might they also indicate they aren’t fully cognizant of the extent of the fees they pay when making online entry? (Hint — check out the comparison spreadsheet linked at the bottom of this page for three of the online vendors on this!)
What worries you about using the mail for entries? The concerns people had about the mail were not unexpected. Again, these were not exclusive of one another — people could have multiple concerns — and most did.
What online entry methods have you used? Someone expressed concern that there might be “gaming” of the system over this question so I added a “prove you are not a robot” captcha to the survey. The resultant responses seemed legitimately distinct.
What concerns do you have about online entry? These seemed typical of those any of us have about using any kind of online payment system. However, many people had no concerns and, for others, only the experience many of us have had, sitting with finger poised over the <Enter> key as the clock ticked over to try to buy concern tickets or other coveted items, causing worry.
People are worried about fees, and that’s very valid — it’s important to understand them. For what it’s worth, I described the fee structures of each of the online vendors in my “Round Up of Software Options for AKC Scent Work Trials” post. Part of that post is a customizable comparison spreadsheet — WSB AKC SW Per-Class Entry Fee Comparison 1.2 — to help people understand what fees might look like for online entry using fee structure of the three vendors — Secreterrier, Eager Dog and TopDogWebDesigns — that price on a per-class-entered basis.
As someone who has only ever bought a first class stamp for entry, no matter how many classes, some of the online entry fees do look pretty high. Would it be worth it to me not to have to worry about being too early, or about having stamps and envelopes and checks on hand? Would I still need to worry about being too late if I wasn’t at the computer precisely at 9am or whenever the trial opens? Tough call! (As a side note, one person commented that “online entry with random draw” is the only method supported by NACSW. While that’s true, payment method is host’s choice and in that venue I have spent more than $25 to get payment to a host quickly enough to secure my spot. Online entry is actually the easier part to all of this… it’s the payment processing that is the challenge! And that’s why we need to look at the “DIY/build it yourself” methods next.)
Remember that the “raw” results of this are available to anyone: AKC Scent Work Entry Survey Comments for distribution and AKC Scent Work Survey Results For Distribution.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, I hope you’ll let me know. I’m definitely no expert at any of this — just a data-gatherer — and am always happy to update things if I’ve made a mistake or been misleading.
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Many, many thanks to you for your work on this project! Very interesting!! Appreciate all you do for the scent work community.