Competition Obedience - Starting Out

I'm toying with the idea of entering beginners obedience competitions with Jed. There are some things he's good at, some things he could be good at with more practice, and some things we've never really done.

What kind of things are the dogs expected to do at the lower levels? I've tried Googling but it doesnt really bring up anything which answers my question. I'm trying to find out so I know what I need to train and what I need to polish...

Try this link

http://www.obedienceuk.com/book/page0.htm

Thanks for that link, gives me the exact info I was looking for! We're pretty much ok for everything in the lower classes apart from retrieves which we've been working on today actually. He isnt a dog who naturally likes to carry or hold things in his mouth so the training is going quite slow.

Thats 2 dogs who need their retrieves working on, Aaaaaaargh!

If I were you I would go and see a couple of Obed shows and see what its all about Pre beg is quite competitive and the classes can be quite big,Heel on lesd, heel free, recallwith finish 1 min sit stay and 2min down stay.Join an obed club with a competition class and most of all enjoy yourself

We do attend training classes which cater for comp ob. Jed has been doing obedience for 5 years now and I dont think I realised how good he actually was...He's probably about as good (if not better) at obedience than Flynn is at gundog stuff yet I enter Flynn into competitions but dont enter Jed in anything.

Yes, i'll have to find out where some comps are local to me and go have a look.

as is usual more dogs go out on the stays than any other part.

If you are working a dog other than a collie then you have to accept the fact that some judges cannot judge anything other than a collie! If you can cope with that you will do fine.

I put Parker in to a beginners test at a dog show last year. There were a lot of Collies (2 of my trainer friends were there with their Collies) but it was nice to see that the 1st and 2nd places went to.......Golden Retrievers! I was pleased with Parker as he took 6th place and he hasn't done any obedience training for ages as we have been doing heelwork to music.

We did heelwork on lead, heelwork off lead, sit-stay, down-stay and a retrieve. I was very shocked when Parker actually did the retrieve as this is the one thing he normally doesn't do! I think he just wanted to win that squeaky hot-dog toy he took home!

Really ? That's not my experience, but then I'm a Border Collie owning judge.

There are actually few dogs that are leading going into stays that then break them. The dogs that break stays are usually the ones who are not in contention before the stays.

There are a good few judges who don't know how to judge properly & put loads of halts in the heelwork & then get enough to mark without having to judge the actual heelwork. Hopefully as new judges come along & do the two judging seminars this will become very much a thing of the past.

A lot of newcomers think of me as a "Collie"judge however my first love was & still is GSDs & I have all sorts of dogs winning my classes & doing well under me. The most noticable thing about the dogs that do well under me is that they work"naturally"without the head pointing vertically upwards & their front legs doing the can can, add to this the fact that I penalize dogs that do their presents with their front legs & paws(& sometimes chest)through the handlers legs.

I have a photo somewhere of Tilly in a line up of six placed dogs in an obedience comp. (we were 5th!) The dogs were one terrier x breed and 5 collies. I was a very proud Mummy there!

I want you to judge us. Tilly doesnt do any of that but always thought that was a bad thing!!