Of all the canine performance events – agility, rally, herding, and all the rest – competitive obedience is the oldest, having been standardized by the American Kennel Club as far back as 1936. It makes sense that obedience came first, because everything else depends on having a dog who can reliably perform certain basic tasks. The sport of obedience has evolved over the years, but the heart of the program is still quite basic. Dogs learn and then demonstrate skills that are successively more difficult. For each new set of skills the dog masters, a higher title is conferred.
There are three basic obedience titles: the entry-level title, Companion Dog (CD); the mid-level title, Companion Dog Excellent (CDX); and the highest-level title, Utility Dog (UD). To earn his Companion Dog title, your dog will need to demonstrate these skills:
-Heel on lead, in a simple pattern called out by the judge
-Walk in a figure eight pattern, still heeling and still on lead
-Stand still while the judge touches him lightly with one hand
-Wait as you walk across the ring and then come promptly when called
-Heel for a second time, this time off lead
-Sit still, in a line with several other dogs, while you stand across the ring
-Lie down, in a line with several other dogs, while you stand across the ring
To earn his CD, your dog must demonstrate these skills three times, before three different judges. Most obedience trials take place over a weekend, so a well-trained dog can earn his CD in a couple of weekends.
Your dog doesn’t have to be perfect to pass. Each individual exercise is assigned a certain number of points, with a total point count of 200. To pass, your dog has to earn at least half the points
for each exercise and accumulate a minimum of 170.
Sound daunting? It isn’t. Any dog can learn these skills, and any handler can teach them with a good trainer’s help. At DSK, that’s our job.
No bored dogs!
Once your dog has earned his CD, and you’ve pressed his lovely ribbons away and framed his Companion Dog certificate, you’ll be ready to move up. The second level, the Open ring, is where your dog will earn his Companion Dog Excellent, or CDX, title.
And at this point, your dog will have a head start, because as a DSK student, he’ll already have been working on his Open skills. Sound confusing? It’s not at all; it’s just another secret of Kim’s success – she starts training dogs from the very beginning to do all the obedience exercises, not just the Novice ones.
Let’s explain.
Most dog trainers take a three-step approach to the three major title levels. At the beginning, they teach the dog to heel, come when called, and do sit-stays and down-stays – the basics of the Companion Dog requirements. Once the dog has his CD title, the ..
training moves on to the next phase, where the dog learns to work with a dumbbell, to negotiate two different jumps, and to drop into a down position during recall. Once the dog has his CDX title, the work moves into its final phase, where the dog is taught skills including retrieving objects on command and working using hand signals alone.
This 1-2-3 process, where the dog learns one set of skills at a time, can work, but it has two potentially fatal flaws. The first is that many of the “fun” skills are at the CDX and UD levels, and dogs working exclusively on CD skills can get bored and lose interest in training. The second is that the handler can get bored as well. Heeling, for instance, can be a terrific...
