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Being a good dog is a team effort — or, in other words, a good dog needs a good owner.
That is the foundation of rally obedience trials, one of the many disciplines in the growing world of dog sports.
“In the olden days it was dog showing and confirmation, which is dog and obedience,” said Donna Lewis. “That was pretty much it. And then it got involved.”
Lewis is a dog trainer and the president of KAOS Dog Sports, a volunteer-run organization in Regina that specializes in everything from obedience to high-level agility. She said she has seen dog sports explode.
There are working-dog types of sports, such as barn hunt, where dogs search for rats that are in tubes tucked in hay bales, and herding trials that test a dog’s ability to move livestock.
Then there are the agility competitions, like the ones demonstrated at half time during Saskatchewan Roughrider football games or the Queen City Ex. A prime example is flyball, a relay race involving four dogs jumping hurdles to retrieve a ball.
Donna Lewis, president of KAOS Dog Sports, and her dog prepare for a rally obedience team competition. (Dan Plaster/CBC)
Rally obedience is the perfect training for all of these sports, said Tanya Strom, a volunteer at KAOS and a rally obedience competitor.
“I’ve always said that rally is a great sport to build a better agility dog because there are many skills that translate to that sport,” said Strom.
Before entering a rally obedience competition, the first step for any dog and dog owner is basic obedience training. This gives the dog the basics and a positive foundation.
“We do a lot of confidence building here. We train in a positive manner and we reward with food and toys,” said Lewis. “They play, they get positive feedback from us and if they do something wrong, they don’t get a correction, they get, ‘Hey, what happened? Let’s try that again.'”
Once the foundation is built, the dog and its owner can begin rally obedience training.
WATCH | Rally obedience training gives dogs real life skills:
Rally obedience training gives dogs real life skills
The world of dog sports is growing. Rally obedience training is one discipline that gives dogs the training they need to be a better dog and to compete in other dog sports.
The competition sees the dog and the owner begin at a starting line and then teams complete a course of varied tasks. The commands range from having the dog stay still while the owner walks around, to agility drills like jumping over a hurdle or running through a tunnel.
The start is the crucial part, Lewis said.
“You start your run, make sure you look down and your dog is ready, you may be ready, but maybe your dog is sniffing the floor,” she said.
“So you want to make sure that, ‘Hey, are you ready? Are you with me?’ And … we reward them before the start line so that they’re saying, ‘Hey, is there any more cheese in your pocket?'”
Depending on the organizations, rally obedience competitions run from the local level all the way up to national and world championships. But many competitors use rally obedience to have a better relationship with their dog and help their dog deal with real life situations.
“Some of them are really great conditioning exercises, like backing up is an exceptionally good exercise for your dog,” said Strom. “There are things like stay, leave your dog and walk away and your dog stays where you left them. Giving them the confidence to do that is huge.”
Tanya Strom and her dog Kannon navigate a rally obedience course. (Dan Plaster/CBC)
But in the end, rally obedience is just having a great relationship with your furry friends.
“We just love doing this stuff with our dogs,” said Strom. “And honestly, there’s more sports now than we have time or money to do.”
