Your responsibility is to your dog, first and foremost, and then to hopefully pull out a win. As soon as you can get the scratching started, you should. Be quick to handle your own so the burden of the scratch is always on your opponent. However, you cannot be blatantly obvious in failing to handle your dog when free of holds after the first turn. I can tell you I was always a lot quicker to handle when we were up to scratch though. That is how the game is played.