06/10/2025
Trial Prep - What does it REALLY mean?
Regardless of what sport you do, when it comes time to trial in front of a judge there are a few things you’ll need to start doing about 1-2 months out depending on your dog’s trial experience.
Does You Dog Have The Moves?
If your dog can’t reliably perform commands at home or in class about 90% of the time, don’t expect them to magically know how to do it at a trial. Your dog will make MORE mistakes at a trial, we guarantee it. So shoot for the moon (Or a perfect score) and you’ll land amongst the stars (Which is hopefully still a passing score).
Build Duration
You need to make sure that you and your dog are capable of performing an entire course/routine. You can start off by rewarding small segments then continuing but you need to work up to doing the whole thing, start to finish, with no rewards or corrections. MOST dogs will behave weirdly when corrections or rewards are withheld. Learn to let some things go. By this point you should have trained things thoroughly that your dog can realistically do a passable routine at the level you are competing at. If it falls apart, go back to rewarding more in between and clean it up, then go back and do the whole routine without treats. Do this sparingly, often enough that your dog is comfortable with it but not enough that your dog loses it's drive and it's will to live. For things like obedience and Rally, this often gives me a realistic expectation of how my trial will go and allows me to tweak and fix things in the weeks coming up to a trial. Mix up your start to finish routine with lots of fun, thorough training in between to keep your dog’s drive up.
Leave The Food Outside the Ring
For a lot of us, training with a toy or food is second nature. Make sure you set aside time to put your food outside the ring and go to the food to reward your dog after they’ve done something you are happy with. I like to use a metal bowl so I can shake the treats and my dog knows they are there. Then, before we go in to do our obedience routine (Or a toy for agility) the dog knows that they still need to perform in the ring to get the treat outside of the ring. You will need to work up to this, I like to train this while I am building duration.
Home Away From Home
Take it on the road and train in different places so your dog learns to do the same skills in different, distracting environments.
You May Now Enter
Don’t forget to train going into the ring! Is your dog going to work itself into a frenzy watching other dogs go, and be unable to think by the time it’s their turn? Or does watching other dogs get them hyped up and ready to go? Do they need a long time to warm up to their surroundings or do they get more stressed out hanging around waiting? Don’t forget about the other end of the leash, these apply to you too! Often times stepping into the ring has left me with my heart racing and feeling like I’m going to pass out. My dogs know this too, and have often responded by shutting down. Practice entering the ring with your dog and setting them up. It helps to have someone be a pushy ring crew to get you going too!
I train as hard and as carefully as I can and although I want to win and do well (Doesn’t everyone?) I leave ALL my expectations at home when I go to a trial. Things happen. Things you thought were bulletproof fall apart, silly errors are made due to nerves, and there’s no time like a trial for your dog to do something they’ve never done before, leaving you questioning your sanity.
Happy Trialing!
