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Agility - Breed Showing - Gundog Work - Obedience
Rally
I have always been intrigued by Rally Obedience - it looked such good fun and a completely different approach to the canine sports we already had in the UK. When I heard that the APDT were bringing the sport over into the UK I couldn't wait to have a go. I went on their Level One Seminar in August 2009 with some friends and we all had a great time. We loved the sport and wanted to get involved but there was nowhere to train. We started getting together to train on a regular basis, people heard and wanted to come along as well and it soon became apparent that we were going to have to set something up, Midlands - UK Rally was born.
As the sport gets established in the UK then lot of APDT members and DTCs are running fun and practice trials so people can start to get some competition experience before the official trials start.
On Good Friday Gail & I (from the Midlands - UK Rally team) went on our first Practice Trial, it was the Special Easter one organised by Aricia DT. We had a very enjoyable day, both dogs worked very well and coped beautifully with the competition enviroment. It was very interesting to see the course set up and how different teams approached the different stations. The Judges gave us some general feedback on things for us all to watch out for - the three main offenders were tight leads, verbal corrections and the dog being out of position on static exercises.
At the end of the day there was the prizegiving. We were thrilled to find out that Rupert was joint 1st and Jenni was joint 3rd - what a wonderful day for the Midlands - UK Rally team!
Jenni and Rupert show off their Rosettes from their first Rally outing
As well as giving us some valuable competition experience Gail and I found the day very useful as potential judges - we will have lots to talk about on the Judges Training on the 11th April.
Copyright Rachel J Bradley 2012