Book Review: Awesome Obedience: A Positive Training Plan for Competition Success

Book Review

Awesome Obedience: A Positive Training Plan for Competition Success

by Elizabeth Raba
© 2021

Whether you wholeheartedly embrace clicker training or use some combination of other methods to train, Hannah Branigan’s Awesome Obedience is full of useful and well-explained information for those training in competition obedience.  Of course, all good trainers have either an explicit or intuitive understanding of how to reinforce the behaviors they want and how to communicate to the dog with precision about what those behaviors are.  However, because clicker trainers like Branigan focus on the exact behavior that is “clickable” in any iteration during a training session, they have a tendency to get more granular than most in breaking behaviors down into constituent parts in building toward a finished behavior.  This can be a useful exercise regardless of your training philosophy and especially when you are troubleshooting some part of an obedience exercise.

Branigan assumes no prior obedience experience and begins her book by explaining the nuts and bolts of scoring, titling, and obedience vocabulary, and her breezy style is likely to appeal to a new generation of competitors.  After a brief orientation though, she has meaty chapters on motivation, core skills, heeling, and more until she covers all the skills needed for each exercise from CD to UD.  Each chapter builds on the previous skills, and Branigan does a nice job of always explaining (1) what the objective of the training is, that is, what the finished behavior should look like; (2) why you are training this behavior and how it will show up in the ring; (3) the progressive steps of training the behavior; and (4) how to teach those steps to your dog.  There are plenty of photos and diagrams, as well as tips and pointers for troubleshooting.

In one sense, Awesome Obedience can be thought of as an obedience cookbook.  While one could read it cover to cover, it is really meant to be read in discrete bits, as you work your way through skill building.  A true novice with a green dog could follow the book sequentially and be assured of success.  For experienced trainers, its real value is in letting you pinpoint specific areas of difficulty or confusion for you or your dog.  Branigan provides fresh insight into the various components of each exercise and teaches you to have a sharp eye for the steps that will get the performance you want.  For instance, both a tucked sit and kickback stand are position changes that depend on the dog shifting his weight forward on his front legs: Branigan teaches the weight shift first, then uses it to teach the sit and stand.  In linking the weight shift to these position changes, she eliminates many of the problems that can otherwise crop up: it is literally impossible for a dog to do a rockback sit with his weight on his front paws.   Awesome Obedience is full of these small details that may be the missing piece in your dog’s understanding.  Finding what you need is also easy because in addition to the standard table of contents, the book also includes a “list of skills” with page numbers, which helpfully directs you to the discrete skills needed for various exercises.

The book wraps up with more information on how to go from training to the ring, including using matches and show-and-goes, what to do before going into the ring, and what to do after your run.  There are even charts explaining what the judge will say during your time in the ring, what you should say/do in response, and what the dog should do.  Branigan has obviously tried to remember what it is like to step onto the show grounds with a Novice A dog for the first time and provides reassurance and advice that we all could stand to hear again from time to time.

We all know that the best trainers are flexible, creative, and always looking to learn.  They are constantly looking for ways to make their training easier, faster, clearer, or more enjoyable for their dogs.  Branigan’s Awesome Obedience manages the seemingly impossible task of welcoming and encouraging new enthusiasts to our sport with all the information they could want or need while also deserving a spot on all serious and longtime competitors’ bookshelves.