DFTowel- I suppose it's only natural that different training facilities, and even different groups, will have different pass/fail rates. When Anders got his all the other candidates also passed, but the others had been practicing specifically for the test and some had even tried for it before, so that didn't surprise me much.
Yeah, out-of-sight is something that a dog has to be used to doing. Did your tester have any "barriers" involved? The person testing Anders closed doors (between the out-of-sight room and the room where the handler waited) and other candidates said that had caused problems for them in the past- their dogs got anxious when the door was closed.
I'm wondering if the testing is as standardized as I would've expected
Did yours involve the tester opening the dog's mouth and otherwise doing "funny" touching that the dog had to be cool about?