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
Consistency is harder than a single outstanding performance. The Sapphire title recognises teams that show up and work at a high standard across multiple trials. Score 75 points or above at three different trials in Prelim, or five different trials in Novice and Intermediate.
The average across all elements at each trial counts. Not your best element. The whole day.
Sapphire is the title that reveals what a team has actually built between them. Not what they are capable of on their best day, but what they have grown into together -- the kind of partnership that shows up the same way every time they step into a search.
Ruby
Winning once is a performance. Winning repeatedly is something else entirely.
The Ruby title belongs to teams that find a way to be the best in the room across a full day of competition, not once but three times in Prelim, or five times in Novice and Intermediate. Every search run that day matters. The average across all elements decides it.
Ruby is what sustained excellence looks like when it has been built correctly.
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.
Esprit du Corps
The passion and honour of the cause. The spirit within a team that reminds everyone in the sport why they are here. Submitted by judges and hosts. Awarded to the team that carried it best.
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 January for all others. Novice and Intermediate championships are held in January.
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.