It's All About The Journey...

ADVANCED RALLY CHALLENGES

by Bea Moore

If you’d like to have some challenging Advanced Rally course practice, I’d like to offer some to you.
The hardest thing about Rally, as you probably know by now, is for you, the handler, to perform the required skill and to also know how to shape your dog to do their part. If you make a mistake, so does your dog. Most of the deductions in Rally are caused by the Handler!!!

This month, we’ll concentrate on some Circles/Abouts Signs: We will be doing the red signs in this course, (216, 315, 316, 312, 319, 320, 29, 119, 120). The black signs are similar so you may want to work on them off to the side. Here is a demo of this course. I used my advanced dog, Casey, and then my Novice dog, Jason.

I like to add my personal notes, after reading descriptions, to help handlers and dogs be successful. In this course, you can reference the descriptions in the current rally regulations linked below. The descriptions are written very well, so please take the time to read them.
The following hints I offer, may also be helpful to you. But don’t forget to read the AKC Rally Descriptions first!
#216: Give your dog time to sit each time before continuing. Don’t teach dog to do a quick sit all of the time because they’ll learn to anticipate continuing and not sit. Occasionally count 1001 during a sit.
#316: You are actually performing two Left about turns (#29) with 2-3 steps in between them. Then make a left turn after the 2^nd left about turn, being careful not to lose your balance. Make sure you are stable before making that left turn.
#312: The dog will spin to the right in this exercise. Try not to move your feet after the halt until the dog is finished with the spin. It can be a bit challenging with the dog spinning towards you.
#319: This sign is pretty self-explanatory. But this video will give you a good idea on how to do it.
AKC Video Version 1

Your dog just needs to learn how to spin to the right while in heel position. Once the dog can do this, then you can throw in your spin to the right after the dog commits to his spin. You can see this in the videos. Doing the spin simultaneously is great, but not expected. I’ve only seen a handful of dogs who could. Teaching them the verbal command helps.
#29: The dog does not sit before moving forward in heel position with the handler. Give your dog the command to go ‘around’ just before you commit to your left turn.
#119: As you begin to turn right, give your dog the command to circle to the right around you. When your dog is back in heel position, continue forward in the new direction.
#321: This is the same as doing 2 left about turns (#29) in a row. So, your dog is going around you clockwise as you turn counter-clockwise in one spot. Give your dog the “around” command twice, once to begin and once again to do the 2nd 180.
Remember how difficult it was to learn the Left About Turn (sign #29) when this exercise first came out years ago? Even before Rally ever existed! Once you got it, it wasn’t difficult at all as long as you remembered to let the dog know to circle you to the right (“around”) before you began turning to the left. This exercise is taught the same way, except you do it two times in a row on the same spot from where you are standing! How easy can that be??? Be careful not to do it too fast if you get dizzy though! It’s amazing how just breaking down an exercise like this can make it easier than you thought when you first saw it <@@>
There are 111 signs in Rally. Here is a link to print them out and put them in a protective sleeve to use them.
https://k9rally.com/Documents/AKCs%202017%20RALLY%20SIGN%20SET%205.16.17.pdf
Current AKC Rally Regulations: http://images.akc.org/pdf/AKC1193_ROR001_1217_WEB.pdf