An introduction to AKC Rally

This video was taken several years ago, when I was competing in AKC Rally with my Giant schnauzer Atlas.  For those who aren't familiar with Rally, according to the AKC, "Rally is a sport in which the dog and handler complete a course that has been designed by the rally judge. The judge tells the handler to begin, and the dog and handler proceed at their own pace through a course of designated stations (10 - 20, depending on the level). Each of these stations has a sign providing instructions regarding the next skill that is to be performed."  The signs test your partnership as you ask the dog to perform maneuvers such as "left turn", "halt", and "send your dog over the jump".

The Advanced level, seen here, is more difficult than the Novice level because the dog is off-leash for the entire performance, and some of the course signs are more difficult than a Novice level.  As a handler, you are allowed to talk to your dog and encourage him as much as needed, and you can use hand signals and repeat them as needed.  In AKC Obedience sports, the handler needs to either have their left arm swinging naturally at their side, or have their left fist held up at the waist so it doesn't bonk the dog in the head.   AKC Rally doesn't require any particular hand or arm position, but I adopted the traditional obedience posture out of habit and to avoid accidentally hitting my dog.

In this video, Atlas is frequently gazing up at me intently to follow my next move.  This is exactly what you train for in obedience and rally.  It looks like the dog is completely devoted to his person, but in reality it is a behavior: practiced and trained and practiced some more.  That devoted, loving gaze is the same loving gaze you see in your pet when you are eating something delicious like a steak or a hot dog! In fact, the way I trained the sustained attention was by holding a hot dog in my left hand, and offering Atlas little tiny bits of it whenever he offered to look up at me.  For an AKC Rally trial, however, the dog has to learn to work without food, so it is important in training to gradually wean them off the expected treats.

For the record, we earned a perfect score of 100 with this routine.  It was definitely one of the best moments ever in my training with Atlas.  What was surprising, though, is that during the previous Rally trial, roughly 2 months earlier, Atlas and I disqualified because Atlas decided to go exploring the course without me and generally ignored me.  This is a common problem with dogs, and in the next video I'll show an embarrassing example of this and explain how I worked through those difficulties.