Obedience Competition

PoetikDragon

We have some folks on this forum doing agility, but does anyone do obedience? I could really use an explanation of how the whole thing works; assume I know absolutely nothing about training or competing with dogs.

lindsayt

We do Rally Obedience currently and our Shibas all have titles, and I started in formal obedience training with my first Shiba Beebe, up to the Utility level of skills. I am aiming for a Versatility title on Farrah. I'm putting my Kai in Rally also. AKC has formal explanations of Obedience in their site also. I haven't looked into UKC obedience, but they offer competition.

You need three qualifying scores or legs in most levels of obedience to earn whatever title it is you want. Most start with CD (companion dog) at the novice level. There are some "easier" classes now however, like the BN (Beginner Novice), which incorporates some Rally stations.

We need to just go ahead and enter that class at a cluster sometime and get it already.

If you're interested in doing this with your Akita, I would suggest at least 6 months of formal classes and lots of proofing, but change it up a lot or breeds like these will get bored quickly and start to blow you off.

The AKC site explains the particulars of what the exercises are, but in general it's controlled heeling, down stays, recalls, and as the levels increase, controlled retrieves over obstacles and off leash heeling, with some scent discrimination.

Calia

I've been practicing competitive Obedience with my husky, still somewhat new at it but it's a lot of fun. I'm still learning about the finer details, but the Novice level for the most part puts a lot of emphasis on heeling, stays, and recalls. As you advance to higher levels there are send outs, retrieves, some scent work, jumps, and distance commands. Right now Tikaani and I are at the Novice level, but we are practicing some of the more advanced stuff such as dumbbell retrieves and distance commands.

Here is an old video of part of my first match with Tikaani, the second part not recorded consists of a group of dogs lined up doing down/stay and sit/stay.




A match is a practice run to help get you and the dog more comfortable in a trial setting. During a match, the judge will sometimes give pointers on what needs work on, and you are allowed to reward/correct the dog. Trials are when you actually compete and earn legs toward a title, and are not allowed to offer any kind of reward/correction and you are limited in how often to give a command.


You may also want to consider trying Rally Obedience. It's a bit less formal than traditional Obedience and great to get your feet wet before doing traditional Obedience. @lindsayt has some great videos of her shibas doing Rally, I'm still new with it so I haven't done any matches yet. In Rally, there's pretty much an obstacle course of signs that tell you what to do. There are some traditional Obedience stuff like recalls and heeling, but there is also some less traditional stuff like heeling backwards.

Both traditional Obedience and Rally Obedience are fun sports, so if you have any specific questions don't be afraid to ask.

Edit: LoL, crossed posted with Lindsay

Trzcina

I've done some obedience with my Lapphund; she has her UKC U-CD and is 2/3 of the way to an AKC CD, but I don't know that I'll ever finish it (she's 12 this month). I showed her once in Open (the intermediate level) in UKC and the results were just comical... she knew all the exercises, but we NQ'd--though we earned laughter from ringside, so that was something anyway.

I personally like obedience, though we were never great at it or received wonderful scores (though we did place well in the two AKC trials, and got a High in Trial at a really tiny UKC one once!)--she's horribly silly when bored, and she does get both bored and stressed at trials. Which is part of why I'm not sure if I'm going to try to enter her in one more trial... I've never been able to tell if she really enjoys it or not. With just about any breed that isn't a traditional obedience breed (and even some of those that are), I think the big thing is just not letting it get repetitive and boring to the dog.

But yeah, I think Lindsay and Calia explained it pretty well, haha. I'd be happy to try to answer specific questions too.

ShawnaMaire

Ive trained Akitas in formal obedience and have had scores in the 190s out of 200 range. My last obedience and show dog was a brindle and white AA who has an AKC companion dog title (obedience title) and I have helped young kids train and compete in obedience.
What specifically are you wanting to know about obedience. I have trained Akitas to do the down in the middle of a recall even. Obedience is where I start with for each dog I own.

Zinja

Kris, @edgewood, does obedience with Kuma. He loves it!

I tried to get Ninja CGC certified but we couldn't continue taking the classes. She did very well in our mock exams though.