Can You Tell Me What These Sports Involve?

[~Aimee~]

We are starting our first obedience classes in two weeks and some of the things on our outline include;

Rally Obedience

Dog Orienteering

Scentwork

Obstacle courses (tunnels, weaving poles, A frames)

In some of the more advanced classes they are doing flyball also. Can anyone give me a run down of was is involved in each of these?

[Seita]

Rally Obedience

I believe this comes out of the US and you do a heel pattern but you follow a course instead of being told what to do by a judge. Hopefully someone else can come along and explain this better for you

Dog Orienteering

I have no idea - but at a guess I would say it would be similar to normal orienteering but involve the dog in some way, or perhaps it's more like tracking??

Scentwork

Generally this is either scent discrimination where the dog gets sent to a group of different articles (wood, leather, metal) and has to find the one with it's owners sent on it. The other scent exercise is the seek back where an article from the handler is dropped somewhere along the way and the dog is sent to find it.

Obstacle courses (tunnels, weaving poles, A frames)

This would be agility - a course made up of jumps and obstacles is laid out and numbered. The handler needs to guide the dog around the course correctly without missing any or knocking over any, there is usually a time limit to do this in as well. As you get to higher levels in this you get courses with more obstacles and shorter times!

[luvsdogs]

Rally O is following a set course with instructions at each point with what to do. E.g. you sit in a chair & ask the dog to sit, drop, sit; dog stays in a hoop for 5 seconds; dog sit stays while you sing a line in a nursery rhyme; whatever little tricks can be done in a short while. The quickest time with no mistakes I think wins.