The end of a field trial is quiet and quick. Somebody reads out four names, one or two more people are given a card, and everybody drives home. Understanding what has just been recorded takes a little more than watching it happen.
What an award is, exactly
The regulation is unusually blunt here. An award is any placing in a stake decided by the judges, which may be first, second, third or fourth. That is the whole definition. Beyond those four, the judges may confer, at their discretion, Diplomas of Merit at a championship and Certificates of Merit in other stakes. A Certificate of Merit is therefore not a fifth place. It is a separate judgement that the dog did work of sufficient quality, whether or not anyone else was ahead of it.
Three rules that decide the shape of the card
- No ties. Awards at a field trial must be discrete, and equal awards are prohibited. If two dogs look identical on the day, the judges still have to separate them.
- Nothing is owed. The judges are empowered and instructed to withhold any prize or award if in their opinion the dogs competing do not show sufficient merit. A stake with four runners can finish with no first place.
- Merit has a floor. A dog that has not met the basic requirements of its sub-group cannot receive an award or a Certificate of Merit at all, whatever else it did well.
Why the card is worth more than the rosette
Placings and merit awards open the Royal Kennel Club Stud Book. First, second, third and fourth awards, Diplomas of Merit and Certificates of Merit all qualify a dog for entry. That is the machinery that turns a day’s result into something permanent, and it is why a Certificate of Merit is prized rather than treated as a consolation.
The same awards then feed the draw. A qualifying award buys a dog a place in an earlier preference group when the next open stake is oversubscribed, which is a practical benefit that arrives long before any title does.
The faults behind the placings
Judges are not writing a score, they are writing observations against two published lists. Eliminating faults must exclude a dog from the rest of the stake. Major faults may cause the judges to discard it. For retrievers the eliminating list is hard mouth, whining or barking, running in, being out of control, failing to enter water, refusal to retrieve, changing game while retrieving, chasing, and being without merit. The major faults are unsteadiness at heel, being eye wiped, disturbing ground, poor control, slack and unbusinesslike work, failing to find dead or wounded game, noisy or inappropriate handling, and sloppy retrieving and delivery.
One asymmetry is worth knowing because it changes what a card means. Being eye wiped is a major fault for a retriever and an eliminating fault for a spaniel. The same event, on the same day, ends a spaniel’s stake and merely damages a retriever’s.
The eye wipe, and the sentence that softens it
Game picked by the second or a subsequent dog constitutes an eye wipe, and a dog whose eye has been wiped during the body of the stake is discarded, however it occurred. But the regulation immediately adds that all eye wipes should be treated on their merits, and that a first dog which acknowledged the fall and made a workmanlike job of the line or the area need not automatically be barred from the awards for failing to produce the game, provided nobody else collects it. In a run-off, the position shifts again: a dog stretched to the point of failure can be eye wiped, be penalised for it, and still feature in the awards.
Hard mouth: the one with a written procedure
Hard mouth is the fault the regulation describes physically, because the evidence is easy to miss. A hard-mouthed dog seldom leaves visible damage; it crushes one or both sides of the ribs, and blowing up the feathers will not show it. The judge is told to place the bird breast upwards on the palm, head forward, and feel the ribs with fingers and thumb: round and firm is sound, caved in or flat may not be. The bird must reach the co-judges for examination, the handler must be given the chance to examine it in the judges’ presence, and the decision is final. From February 2026 the judges must also distinguish damage caused by shot or by the fall from damage caused by the dog. The regulation ends the passage without any softening: there should be no hesitation or sentiment with hard mouth, and the dog must be eliminated.
What the card cannot tell you
It does not say how close the placings were, because there are no marks to be close with. It does not distinguish an easy win in a thin stake from a hard one; the regulation sets minimum numbers of runners as a condition of Stud Book qualification, without saying why. And it does not record the ground, the wind or the supply of game, which are the three things that most affect what any given dog was asked to do.
Where this comes from
The definition of an award, the merit awards, the prohibition on ties, the power to withhold, the basic requirements floor, the retriever fault lists, the eye wipe rules and the hard mouth procedure are in the Royal Kennel Club Field Trial Regulations 2026, read on 5 September 2026. The typology of eye wipes is expanded in the retriever judging guide FT26.