{"id":299,"date":"2025-06-15T03:03:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-15T03:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/?p=299"},"modified":"2025-07-25T02:42:44","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T02:42:44","slug":"the-2022-akc-scent-work-regional-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/06\/15\/the-2022-akc-scent-work-regional-championships\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2022 AKC Scent Work Regional Championships"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The American Kennel Club recently announced the date for the first ever AKC Scent Work Master National Championship<\/a> event — October 12-14, 2025, at the Roberts Center in Wilmington, DE.\u00a0 \u00a0As of this post (June 14, 2025), the Premium has been posted.\u00a0 The event is limited to 400 entrants, with a first-come-first-serve entry, both USPS and electronic, that opens on August 1 and closes on August 29.\u00a0 Eligibility is limited to those teams who have earned the Scent Work Master (SWM) title and to the teams that finished in the first four places in any class at any of the Regional Competitions.<\/p>\n

Upon hearing this, a number of people said… “There were Regional Championships?”\u00a0 \u00a0And others said, “Yes, I was in them… but I can’t remember how we did.”\u00a0 \u00a0So I thought perhaps we should revisit the Regionals, and celebrate the Host Clubs and Qualifiers, because it seems that never happened.<\/p>\n

Background<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Regionals<\/a> and a future National Championship were announced in November of 2019.\u00a0 Most of the other sports seem to have 15 defined Regions, but there are five Regions defined for Scent Work:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Pandemic slowed things down, but the AKC announced in November of 2021 that Regional Championships for Regions 1, 2 and 3 were in the works, while 4 and 5 still needed hosts.\u00a0 In February, 2022, the five Regional Championships were announced.\u00a0 In June of 2022, the Region 1 (North) event was cancelled.\u00a0 In July of 2022, the Region 2 (South) event was cancelled.\u00a0 And, also in July, the Region 5 (West) event was moved from Chehalis, WA to Albany, OR.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

No reason was given for the cancellations, but online conversation at the time by clubs that considered hosting mentioned the difficulty in finding appropriate sites with enough space, enough line-of-sight-protection, parking, accomplished judges, rounding up enough volunteers, but, most especially, financial risk and likely net loss for the host club.<\/p>\n

Qualifying Trials<\/strong><\/p>\n

The trial format required two days of “qualifying trials,” with every element offered at every level in both the HD and Odor Division (No Detective).\u00a0 In order to enter, a dog had to already have the ‘regular’ title for that element (and so was eligible to earn Elite Qs from this competition but no ‘regular’ titles), and could only enter the most advanced element for which they had a title at the time of entry — so a dog that has their Scent Work Container Advanced (SCA) title and their Scent Work Buried Excellent (SBE) title was eligible to enter Advanced Containers and Buried Excellent.\u00a0 In the Odor Division, the first place dog from each class on either day was then eligible to participate in the Regional Championship Runoff competition that was held at the end of the day on Sunday, and they would compete at the most advanced level for which they qualified.\u00a0 In Handler Discrimination, the top four dogs in each class were eligible to advance.<\/p>\n

The results of the two days of qualifying trials were posted to the AKC Scent Work Trial results on the AKC Website, the same place from which we pull the WeSmellBetter Data for reports:<\/p>\n

Region 4 (Central) Qualifying Results:\u00a0 \u00a0 April 9<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0April 10<\/a><\/p>\n

Region 3 (Midwest) Qualifying Results:\u00a0 September 3<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0September 4<\/a><\/p>\n

Region 5 (West) Qualifying Results:\u00a0 \u00a0September 10<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0September 11<\/a><\/p>\n

Regional Championship Round<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the Regional Championship, Odor Division, courses were designed to include all four elements in one large area, except for Advanced, which had two elements in two areas.\u00a0 For the Handler Discrimination division, Novice scent was in containers, Advanced had an interior course, Excellent had an exterior course and Master used a combination of two types of spaces.\u00a0 The scoring in both Divisions was points-based.<\/p>\n

The first ever AKC Scent Work Regional Championship was for Region 4 (Central)<\/strong>.\u00a0 It was held at The Depot at Cleburne Station in Cleburne, TX, on April 11 and 12, 2022<\/strong>.\u00a0 \u00a0The Host Club was East Texas Scent Club.\u00a0 Debbie Holmes<\/strong> was the Trial Chair and Ann Bridges<\/strong> was the Trial Secretary.\u00a0 Judges were Peter Betchley, Diana Butler, Kathryn Butts, Ellen Heavner, Giovanna Imperia and Khara Scheutzner<\/strong>.\u00a0 Results from this Regional Championship Round were posted on Facebook by the official AKC Scent Work account, and are included below.<\/p>\n

Region 4 (Texas) Regional Championship Round Odor Division Results<\/a><\/p>\n

Region 4 (Texas) Regional Championship Round HD Division Results<\/a><\/p>\n

The Region 3 (Midwest) Championship<\/strong> was held next, five months later, on September 3 & 4, 2022<\/strong>.\u00a0 It was at the MAAC Training Center in Valparaiso, IN.\u00a0 The Host Club was No-Z K9 Scent Work Club<\/strong>.\u00a0 Sherry Russo<\/strong> was the Trial Chair and Rachael Alspach<\/strong> was the Trial Secretary.\u00a0 \u00a0Judges were Lora Barlow, Dave Conroy, Laura Feldt, Carol Kozanda, Lisa Godfrey and Shirley Tipsward<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Region 3 (Indiana) Regional Championship Round Odor Division Results<\/a><\/p>\n

Region 3 (Indiana) Regional Championship Round HD Division Results<\/a><\/p>\n

The Region 5 (West) Championship<\/strong> was held the following week, on September 10 and 11, 2022<\/strong>.\u00a0 It was at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Albany, OR.\u00a0 The Host Club was The American Belgian Tervuren Club<\/strong>.\u00a0 Nancy McClure<\/strong> was the Trial Chair and Judy Marquardt<\/strong> was the Trial Secretary.\u00a0 \u00a0Judges were Amanda Hutchinson, Lisa Kretner, Mia MacCollin, Terri Spaeth-Merrick and Tannis Witherspoon<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Region 5 (Oregon) Regionall Championship Round Odor Division Results<\/a><\/p>\n

Region 5 (Oregon) Regional Championship Round HD Division Results<\/a><\/p>\n

At the date of this post, June 15, 2025, those are the only AKC Regional Scent Work Championships that have ever been held.<\/p>\n

And….?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I made this post for a few reasons:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. To recognize the people who made the 2022 Regional Championships possible — and to memorialize their status as Experts should Regionals ever be considered again.<\/li>\n
  2. To recognize the participants in the Regional Championship Round competitions, since the results for two of the events have never before been published.<\/li>\n
  3. To point out that the 2022 Regional Overview stated that “The top placing dogs 1st through 4th from each Regional Master Championship Round will be guaranteed a spot in the following year\u2019s Scent Work National Championship.”\u00a0 There was, of course, no 2023 National Championship nor a 2024 National Championship.\u00a0 The Premium for the 2025 Scent Work Master National Championship says that those first to fourth place winners from the 2022 Regionals are ELIGIBLE to enter the Master National.\u00a0 Some have asked whether a qualified entry isn’t the same as a guaranteed entry; do we really think they will fill 400 spots?\u00a0 I don’t.\u00a0 However, I think those people deserve the bye, the “Golden Ticket” that they were promised, just to honor their achievement.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Thank you so very much to the trial secretaries for making the above results available to me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

    And (belated) congratulations again to everybody who participated in the 2022 Regionals in any way!<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    **Corrected July 24, 2025 to include Region 3 Championship HD Results.\u00a0 Original file was a duplicate of the Odor Division Results.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The American Kennel Club recently announced the date for the first ever AKC Scent Work Master National Championship event — October 12-14, 2025, at the Roberts Center in Wilmington, DE.\u00a0 \u00a0As of this post (June 14, 2025), the Premium has been posted.\u00a0 The event is limited to 400 entrants, with a first-come-first-serve entry, both USPS …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-history","7":"anons"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":330,"href":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wesmellbetter.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}