Obedience Competitions
The third and most difficult competition is the obedience competition. This will test your dog's ability to do tricks and, more crucially, to hold them for a set amount of time. Before you take your dog out to the obedience competition, be sure to check the trick list and have your dog learn as many of the basics as possible, as well as a few of the advanced tricks, as well, if you're going for a higher difficulty.
Obedience Training
There's no special place you have to take your dog to train it for obedience; you're going to be doing most of the training in your own home, when you teach it tricks. To prepare a dog for obedience competitions, then, you're going to want to have it learn as many tricks as possible, but also learn them well, which, for competition purposes, means that the dog can "hold" a trick, i.e. stay in that trick's position, for a good amount of time.
If you intend to go up to higher difficulty levels in the obedience contest, then be sure to have all of the basic tricks memorized, and be sure that your dog can pull them off without much trouble in response to your voice command. You'll also need to have a few of the advanced tricks memorized, with the more the merrier. Although you won't be asked to perform any advanced tricks in competition, they'll still be important to perform in the free performance section of a competition to boost your score.
Obedience Competitions
When you bring your dog to an obedience competition, you'll have to proceed through three types of stages, and you'll be scored in each. These stages are free performance, trick sequences, and holding.
Trick sequences are generally going to be the easiest sections of a competition if your dog is happy and has learned most of the basic tricks. In this section, the judges will give you three tricks to perform in order. You'll need to get these off in the order required if you want to get a high score from the judges. You can still get a decent score for pulling off the first two tricks in a sequence, but if you want a high score you'll obviously want to do all three, in the correct order.
Free performance lets your dog shed its inhibitions and finally get footloose. During these sequences, you'll have a set amount of time in which to perform any tricks you like in order to impress the judges. This is where you want to bust out your advanced tricks, if you think your dog has learned them well! Be sure to vary your tricks up to earn high scores.
Keep doing basic tricks over and over again to improve the length of your dog's holding ability. Just be sure to reward them after they do well!
Holding is one of the most difficult parts of the obedience contest, especially at higher levels of competition. It sounds simple - all your dog needs to do is perform a trick, then hold it for a set amount of time. At the lower difficulties of competition, you're going to need to hold a trick for three or four seconds at a time, but by the time you hit the championship round, you'll need to hold tricks for 15 or 20 seconds at a time!
In order to practice your holding, all you can really do is try to repeat the basic tricks over and over again with your dog. Repetition will allow it to hold the poses for a good length of time, so you'll just need to perform a command, watch the dog perform it, then pet it when it finally breaks off and starts walking around again.
If your dog is well-trained and likes you a lot, then you shouldn't have many problems getting through the lower difficulties of the obedience competitions. Moving higher will require greater obedience from your dog, and you'll have to enter a competition with it in a good mood if you want to excel. To that end, be sure to feed it and give it something to drink before heading into a competition, and be absolutely sure to give it a shampoo and a good brushing-down. A beautiful coat of hair will not only make your dog feel better about itself, but will also impress the judges and slightly boost your scores.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment