Rally Obedience
A calm and co-operative obedience sport for you and your dog
Rally Obedience is a dog sport that is growing fast in popularity. It is a fun way of putting into practice regular training such as sit with distraction, heel-work and basic obedience. At a Rally Obedience competition, handler and dog navigate a course made up of a series of signs. Each sign has an instruction to be carried out before moving on to the next until the course is finished. Rally Obedience is great way of having fun with your dog whilst doing a purposeful activity. It a friendly and relaxed sport, full of helpful people.
Complete a course of varied exercises using heelwork and obedience. Demonstrate skills such as sit-stay, down, recall, loose-lead walking, send-around and many more. Ideal as either a follow-on from puppy training or as a sport in it’s own right.
Whether it’s your first time trying Rally Obedience or you already compete, we would love to support you with your Rally training. Your trainer competes in Rally Obedience so you can be guided through entering competitions should you wish to one day. However, Rally Obedience can also be enjoyed as a non-competitive hobby, taken at your own pace.
How Do Rally Obedience Competitions Work?
In Kennel Club Rally Obedience, there are 6 Levels of increasing difficulty. Level 1 and 2 are completed on lead, whilst Level 3 and beyond are off lead. As you go up the Levels, there are more signs to learn ranging from a jump to a retrieve or send to bed. You are really only competing against yourself to earn the titles, but there is an element of competition at a trial as awards are given for the 6 highest scores at each Level.
You begin with 200 points and deductions are made if any errors occur. You can choose to do a bonus sign at the end, potentially giving you 10 extra points, so your maximum score could be 210. A score of 175 to 189 is a Qualifying Score, meaning that if you gain 6 such scores you have earned a title at that Level. A score of 190 to 210 is an Excellent Qualifying Score, you only need 3 such scores to earn a title at that level. The qualifying score threshold for Level 5 and 6 is 180 minimum. Once a title is earned, you can put use the letters after your dogs name. For example, if you had 6 Qualifying scores in Level 1 of 175 to 189, you can use “RL1” after your dogs name. If you had three Excellent Qualifying Scores in Level 1 of 190 to 210, you can use “RL1 Ex” after your dogs name. What a lovely accolade to have!
In order to enter a competition, the dog must be at least 6 months old and be registered with the Kennel Club. If your dog is a pedigree, they will already be registered and have a Kennel Club name. If they are not a pedigree it is easy to register with the Kennel Club Activity Register. You simply choose a Kennel Club name for your dog, submit it, then you are free to enter competitions.