The awards mean something here.
Some things are given. Some things are built.
Detection Dog Trials has no participation titles. No consolation categories. Every award in this sport has a threshold -- a standard of work, a number of trials, a level of performance that has to be reached before anything is earned.
The standard has never asked who you are or where you are coming from. Every team that steps into it is met exactly the same way. By the work.
Diamond
Score 90 or above on any element and your team has earned the Diamond title for that search. Element Total plus any Judges Discretion. Ninety points across nine categories that see everything your team did inside that search.
Diamond is what the work looks like when it is working. The communication. The precision. The partnership showing up fully in every decision made inside that search.
You may earn up to three Diamond titles in a calendar year. Each one means the same thing it meant the first time.
Sapphire
Score 80 or above at Preliminary three times and the Sapphire Title is yours. Not the same day. Not the same element. Three separate trials, three qualifying scores, the same standard each time.
What it recognises is what you and your dog have grown into together. The consistency that only comes from genuine partnership. Every team arrives here in their own time. All of them welcomed the same way when they do.
When the third score lands, Novice is waiting. Your journey, your pace, your moment.
Ruby
Score 80 or above at Novice five times and the Ruby Title is yours. Five separate trials, five qualifying scores, the same standard each time.
What it recognises is a partnership that has been tested and held. Novice asks more than Preliminary did. The hides are more complex, the work is harder. Every team that earns this title earned it the same way.
When the fifth score lands, Intermediate is waiting. Your journey, your pace, your moment.
Emerald
Score 80 or above at Intermediate eight times and the Emerald Title is yours. Eight separate trials, eight qualifying scores, the same standard each time.
Intermediate doesn't tell you how many hides are in the search. Between one and three, and the clock runs longer. The work is genuinely difficult and the standard doesn't move to meet you.
Every team that earns this title came through the same door. When the eighth score lands, Advanced is waiting. Your journey, your pace, your moment.
Advanced Titles
The titles keep pace with the work.
Advanced is where the work deepens. The hides are more complex, the search asks more of both of you, and the standard sees everything your team brings into the search area. Every team that reaches Advanced arrived here because the work brought them. The sport is glad they made it.
Every five qualifying scores of 80 or above, the next title is yours.
Bronze. Five qualifying scores.
Silver. Ten.
Gold. Fifteen.
Platinum. Twenty.
Every one of them earned the same way. By showing up and doing the work.
High In Trial
At every trial, across all divisions and all elements, one team records the highest average score of the day. That team is High In Trial. Every score from every element entered, added together and divided by the number of elements run.
Reserve High In Trial is the team behind them. Both qualify for the annual championships.
High In Trial is the rarest result in DDT. It does not care what division you are running or what level you came from. It only looks at the work.
Element Placings
First through fourth place is awarded per element, per division, at every trial. First place qualifies for the annual championships.
Each element is its own result. A team can place in one element and not another. The scores stand independently. Every search judged on its own merits.
Annual Awards
Given at the end of the year
Four annual awards. None of them have a formula you can train toward. Judges and hosts submit their candidates at the end of December. The sport decides.
Summit Award
The highest average score across the entire year. Consistency over time. A team that showed up at trial after trial and worked at the same high level regardless of the venue, the conditions, or the competition. The average is what decides it.
High Peak Award
The highest single score recorded anywhere in the sport during the year. The best performance. One search. One element. The number on the sheet when everything came together.
If two teams finish the year tied on their highest score, the second-highest score breaks it. The depth of the season matters even here.
Expedition Award
Not a number. A story. The most improved team of the year, or the team whose season represented something worth recognising that no scoring formula could capture. Submitted by judges and hosts who watched it happen.
Harmony Award
Presented at the Championships. Awarded to the search of the day that best demonstrates true harmony between dog and handler. Not the highest score. Not the fastest find. The search that showed what this sport is really about, as judged by the overseeing judge on the day.
Qualifications lead somewhere.
Element winners and High In Trial qualifiers advance to the annual championships. Prelim has two championship events each year — one in August for those who qualify before the end of July, one in February for all others. Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced championships are held in February.
If you qualify at one level and move up before championships are held, you may still compete at the level you qualified in, provided you have not also qualified at your new level.
Every title earned. Every qualification recorded. All of it lives in DDT Pro.