How to get started in Rally-O

skittledoo

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#1
I've been pondering back and forth on this since Cricket was little and after talking to my boss more about it and her saying that Cricket would be a great dog to do so with, I'm really wanting to get into doing some competitive obedience. I mainly want to do it for fun and to work on building an even closer bond with Cricket and also to fine tune a lot of stuff and advance further on stuff.

We don't offer Rally lessons at my work right now though and I still need to check out the few local places I've found that offer classes to see how I feel about their training programs etc.

But... in the meantime.... how can I get started with Cricket on my own? What are some of the beginning stuff I should be working on? What are some good books that explain Rally-Obedience a little better?
 

MandyPug

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#2
I have Click Your Way to Rally Obedience. I'd look to see who it's by but Izzie is sleeping on me lol. It's a good book, very step by step.
 

Red.Apricot

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#3
Rally novice (at least AKC, which is what I'm familiar with) is just turns, sits, downs, fronts, heeling and stays (with a walk around). I think that's it... If you want to do AKC rally, they have the signs online in a PDF and you can look them up on youtube.
 

Shai

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#5
Back when we did rally-o (our gateway drug, back in 2009) I just downloaded the signs and figured out what they all meant, and made sure my dogs could do it. Granted this was the night before our first trial since that's about when I was talked into it ;). Ask someone if you aren't absolutely sure what a sign means, or check out YouTube.

Read the rules over so you know if, for your chosen venue, you can cue certain ways vs. others or repeat a sign if you realize you made an error, etc.

Or just ask questions here lol. Pretty sure there is experience with most major rally venues on this forum, and if not a good friend of mine has competed in and/or is a judge for pretty much all the rally venues in the US so I can always tag her with a question.
 

skittledoo

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#6
Thanks so much guys. She definitely knows stay and it's pretty solid. When we tested for her CGC the first time she didn't pass the supervised separation part so I worked on teaching out of sight down stays and treated it as a behavior instead of treating it as just leaving her alone with someone. That's what helped her pass the second time around. The CGC instructor loves her so much that she has used Cricket multiple times when she gives out the test to other dogs. Cricket gets to play the dog that you have to wall up to, greet the owner and then pass.

Her heel is pretty darn good since we had to fine tune that more for the CGC as well. The only thing she needs more work on with heeling is backing up and turning with me if I stand in place and turn in tight circles... Mainly needs work with her hind end awareness for turning counter clockwise with me.

One thing I love about this dog is she is so sharp, catches on fast and absolutely LOVES to learn.

One day I'm going to do a little freestyle dance with either her or Bamm (or both) as well.

I'm going to look up the book that Mandy posted. Also going to look up the YouTube videos.
 

MicksMom

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#7
Rally novice (at least AKC, which is what I'm familiar with) is just turns, sits, downs, fronts, heeling and stays (with a walk around). I think that's it... If you want to do AKC rally, they have the signs online in a PDF and you can look them up on youtube.
Also, either download/print the rally regs off the AKC site, or buy the hard copy (the hard copy includes obedience regs). The regs have descriptions of how to do each of the signs. One thing to remember when reading the descriptions, what is bolded and underlined is the principal part of the excercise. In other words, that has to be done. Everything else is just description.
 

Beanie

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#8
I will say that some of the new signs they just introduced this past summer are a bit confusing. I would have Auggie's next title (ummm RA maybe?) except they had just introduced new signs and I THOUGHT I knew what they meant, but I didn't. Even after having them explained to me I was still like "But the picture doesn't exactly... hm. Okay." You can probably just find YouTube videos of how to do them though. The judge was really nice and told me she thought I should work with a trainer who could explain the signs, because we did really good, just I messed up the signs LMAO.

But yes, basically get yourself a really nice heel... down, sit, stand in heel on command and the ability to switch between all of them. Print out all the signs and just practice them. I have a big stack and about 75% of the stack I immediately put to the side because they were things my dogs could do; the remaining 25% we worked on. It's really pretty easy. Mr. Auggie likes to do one day really well and then the second day be like HAHA ARE WE HERE FOR AGILITY WHEEEEE and make a bit of a fool out of me LOL.
 
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#9
I will say that some of the new signs they just introduced this past summer are a bit confusing. I would have Auggie's next title (ummm RA maybe?) except they had just introduced new signs and I THOUGHT I knew what they meant, but I didn't. Even after having them explained to me I was still like "But the picture doesn't exactly... hm. Okay."
Ahehehe. Where I do rally, the trainer sets up courses that are a mixture of all the levels so even though we are novice Squash and I end up practicing everything. The ones you're talking about are the signs the people who are competing in E/A right now call the "don't think about them" signs... Just recognize what you're supposed to do and do it without thinking about what the sign actually looks like. Whenever they are in our practice courses they are like "Oh, it's THAT sign. DON'T THINK ABOUT IT." lol

Anyway, just download the regulations off the AKC website (if you will be competing in AKC). They have a picture and description of all the signs but as others have said the novice signs are pretty easy, anyway. It's probably ring nerves or other handler stuff that will mess you up more than dog/training stuff - "Do I stop and have him stop and sit after this exercise, or just keep walking? How many steps do I take here?" kind of stuff.
 

monkeys23

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#10
Yeah our trainer sets up little sign courses for us and we might stop and work on a particular thing if we need to. So far the biggest challenge has been ME and not the dogs, LOL. I do weird stuff like slow down on corners (which I don't do on walks at all so thats kinda weird), go too fast/slow in places, etc. Been doing a lot of walking the signs without the dog to the metronome, lol.
 

Sekah

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#11
I will say that some of the new signs they just introduced this past summer are a bit confusing. I would have Auggie's next title (ummm RA maybe?) except they had just introduced new signs and I THOUGHT I knew what they meant, but I didn't. Even after having them explained to me I was still like "But the picture doesn't exactly... hm. Okay." You can probably just find YouTube videos of how to do them though. The judge was really nice and told me she thought I should work with a trainer who could explain the signs, because we did really good, just I messed up the signs LMAO.

But yes, basically get yourself a really nice heel... down, sit, stand in heel on command and the ability to switch between all of them. Print out all the signs and just practice them. I have a big stack and about 75% of the stack I immediately put to the side because they were things my dogs could do; the remaining 25% we worked on. It's really pretty easy. Mr. Auggie likes to do one day really well and then the second day be like HAHA ARE WE HERE FOR AGILITY WHEEEEE and make a bit of a fool out of me LOL.
You've got me worried now. I'm signed up for a Rally trial this weekend and haven't looked at any new signs or anything for quite some time. I do CKC. I think our last trial was... July? I was hoping to polish off Cohen's RE, but now I'm not so sure...
 

MandyPug

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#12
You've got me worried now. I'm signed up for a Rally trial this weekend and haven't looked at any new signs or anything for quite some time. I do CKC. I think our last trial was... July? I was hoping to polish off Cohen's RE, but now I'm not so sure...
I don't think there are any new really new signs for CKC yet. When in doubt though just ask the judge when you get your map.
 

MicksMom

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#13
I will say that some of the new signs they just introduced this past summer are a bit confusing...
Yep, some of those new signs certainly are confusing! The "Call Front, Return To Heel" should really say "Call Front, Handler Return To Heel" .

Once an instructer pointed out to me that the "HALTs, 90 degree Pivot, HALTs" and the "HALTs, 90 degree Pivot, Forwards" had the exact same graphics, I started doing them ALL as pivots so I don't screw up at a trial.
 

momto8

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#14
I recommend printing off the signs and just practicing them. Courtney, Ace and I are starting Rally very soon, and that is what we did over the summer, just practice practice practice!
 

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