This is me and my girl Heart ’N Soul’s Pocket Change, SH
“Penny” went 8/8 through JH and SH by 16 months of age
“Penny” also has passed her 1st CD leg and has 1 Rally leg and 2 BN legs. I think this photo says a lot .... formal obedience (to me) is a calm and focused activity that increases bonding and concentration. I love it and wish I had the time and money to do all these sports more often!
I do show in UKC and my older female has 1 win and her puppy will make her debut in April. I am thinking of doing obedience too. She already has her HRCH and 350 point and 2 Upland passes. I think it's fun to do something different with the dogs.
I am currently showing one of my boys in Open. I walked into a trial two weekends ago and one of the competitors looked at me and said "you sure know when it's winter because the field people come inside"...LOL Obedience has always been a way of life in my household; my dad was an AKC obedience judge, and the rule at home was that I could do anything I wanted with my dogs, but I HAD to train obedience. I am thankful for that background! There is a great deal of what I call "crossover" skills for the dogs which is a big benefit. Our retired MH female is currently learning go-outs for Utility, and her cues are "dead bird" and "BACK" for the send...and she gets it. She is used to stopping on a whistle for blinds, so transferring that to a verbal SIT cue was easy...the benefits are endless. My Open dog needs a different approach to articles as was mentioned earlier by someone, because his FTP work tells him to just run and grab...so I am using scentwork to teach him the skill of scenting which then will be reconnected to his article training...it is a great deal of fun to work on teaching the dogs new skills or to show the dog that he/she has the skill set already to perform some of the obedience exercises.
I just say "Dead" and then "back" and after we'd done the directed jumping in one trial, the judge came over and asked "what did you say?". When I told him, he looked at me weird and said I thought so, and that was that. Have always wondered what he was thinking...
I've competed in all of the traditional AKC venues, including getting a couple dogs Tracking cert'd, but now that I'm a little older I find the travel to some of these locations 150 + miles away a little rougher at 4am. I've recently decided to abandon agility due to training styles/philosophies being ultra positive (and conflicting w/ my normal balanced style of training), so have decided to just focus on Obedience and at least JH / SH. I'm currently training 3 girls at the Utility level, 2 at the Open level and one of those 2 at the Nov level as well (she'll be competing this spring). I have 5 generations titled thru CDX/ JH at least. From a breeding perspective, I have always thought hunt tests and obed say the most about the working ability and work ethics of a dog. Agility-- to me-- is more "fun". Dock diving will never likely impress me. Glad to see how many others do obed here!
I've done a little competition obedience, not recently although maybe I should revisit it. I will say, that if you can find someone good to train with, it's a pretty good way to clean up double-commanding. That bad habit we often get into, especially if we train alone a lot! I was at a hunt test last fall and one of the judges mentioned he had an obedience background. He made the comment that we were lucky we weren't marked down for how many times we all said "heel!" on the way from the holding blind to the line (only about 15 feet). Guilty....I have worked on that and extending the sits during non retrieves over the winter, we shall see if it pays off.
Since I am having so many problems with my dog breaking at field tests we started doing formal obedience and Rally. I find that the obedience leads to a dog that listens in the field. Yes my problems are very bad with my male golden who has a terrible sniffing issues. He is getting over it but I will not take him back to the field until he can get his first Rally or obedience titles. The commands from the ring can be taken into the field. A dog that can focus on you in a ring test will focus on your command for the upper levels of field. I wish I would have started the Rally sooner.
I love how Obedience complements Field work! My first dog the Golden earned her OTCH. She was obedience trained first so I just transferred her skills over to field and it worked wonderful! You would think that all that Obedience would have helped with her blind work....not so much...you think I could get that dog to listen to me!!! It helped with line manners and focus...but not so much on blinds.
My curly-coat loves obedience and I think field work has complemented her Obedience skills. Gives her a bit more drive for go outs n such.
FYI UKC Obedience is awesome. The Utility class is more like our field training skills than AKCs stuff is. Both are cool but I think UKC is cool.
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