The State of Obedience, Part 2: The Problems

Finally getting back to my commentary on the State of Obedience.

To recap Part One, I think obedience has problems in both attracting newcomers and retention of participants. Attracting newcomers (i.e., moaning about low Novice A entries) generates the most gnashing of teeth, but in my ever so humble opinion, retention is a bigger problem. Obedience needs to keep more of the newcomers that try it and keep more of the old-timers from drifting away.

What are the factors that make obedience less attractive than other dog activities, especially agility?

Not exciting to watch.

I wouldn’t say obedience is “boring” (oh, heck, maybe I would), but think about it: How often do you see non-obedience passers-by stop to watch “a few minutes” and find themselves still watching an hour later? At our agility trial, which is held in a park, there is always a substantial ringside contingent of captivated spectators who have never seen an agility trial before. Most tellingly, when was the last time you saw a crowd of obedience people entranced by an obedience trial?

Not exciting to do.

The exercises in obedience never vary. Oh, sure, the Open B and Utility B classes switch up the order, but that’s it. In agility, the courses are always different. In hunt trials, the terrain differs and the set-ups differ. Even the birds differ with each trial.

Bad experiences are often prolonged unnecessarily.

Obedience has the counter-productive tradition of not allowing participants to excuse themselves when things are clearly going badly. If a Novice competitor has to drag their dog around the ring during the on-leash heeling, why can’t they excuse themselves before the more humiliating experience of off-leash heeling? If a dog fails during the solo exercises in Novice or Open, why the expectation that the team must hang around for sits and downs? I had a training partner when I first started in obedience. She entered Novice twice, during which her dog showed interest in many things, none of them involving heeling. My friend felt so humiliated, she vowed “Never again.” And she meant it. I wonder, if she had had the option of leaving earlier during her runs, instead of being forced to continue long after it was clear things weren’t going well, would she have possibly been more likely to keep trying?

The transition between levels is too steep.

In agility, there are essentially no new obstacles introduced between any of the levels. The only obstacle change is that the weaves are 6 poles in Novice and 12 poles in the other two classes. The courses become more complex, the time requirements get tighter, and fewer mistakes are allowed. There is a relatively smooth progression of difficulty.

In retriever hunt trials, there are new challenges at each level, but they build on the prior level. The first level requires single retrieves across land and water. In the second level, the dog must do doubles (two birds thrown, requiring the dog retrieve one right after it’s dropped and remember the drop location for the second). The retrieve distances become longer at the second level and the dog will need to do a short, blind retrieve (a retrieve in which he doesn’t see the bird drop and must follow directions from the handler). At the third level, the dog must do triples on land and water and longer blind retrieves. As in agility, the handler teams are held to stricter standards at each level.

In contrast, in obedience, the leap beyond levels is huge. Multiple, completely new, exercises are introduced at each level. Between Novice and Open, the heeling becomes more demanding (figure 8 is off-leash), but the rest of the exercises are virtually new. You could argue that the out-of-sight stays in Open build on the Novice stays, but I think the leap in length of stay combined with the handler leaving the dog alone makes the out-of-sights almost a different exercise. There is no handling from any distance in Novice to make the progression to a Drop on Recall smoother. There are no jumps in Novice and no retrieves. The recipient of a shiny, new CD can bask briefly in the success…until the handler who hasn’t started training beyond Novice realizes that the next level will require another year or so of training.

Obedience veterans jokingly refer to Utility as Futility, but the statistics tell another story. About 44% of dogs that get a CDX will go on to get a UD. Only about a third of the dogs that complete a Novice title will go on to complete an Open title. In other words, two-thirds of handlers that complete a CD are trying and failing at Open or they never try because the task seems too hard.

In my opinion, this lack of retention of participants between Novice and Open is the single biggest issue in obedience.

I believe that the vast majority of newcomers hit the wall of challenges in Open, give up, and never come back. Some give up because their dog cannot do the Open jumps. Some cannot get beyond the challenge of teaching a retrieve. Some lose a Q so many times during the out-of-sights, they just can’t face the prospect of having another success yanked away because their dog went down on a sit with a few seconds to go. Some small dog owners are afraid to leave their little dogs alone with a group of big dogs of unknown temperament.

The gulf between Open and Utility is so wide, it’s a mystery why Open is a prerequisite to Utility. I am one of those participants that would happily give up on Open, with its out-of-sight sits, to train for Utility. But if you can’t get past Open, you can’t go into Utility. In agility or hunt training, because of the more natural progression of increasing difficulty, if you can’t pass at a lower level, you sure won’t be able to pass at a higher level. Yet, in obedience, I suspect there are many dogs that would have an easier time in Utility than in Open.

The Reward System is Too Heavily Skewed towards the Great Teams

I think a huge factor in the popularity of agility is that a team’s pursuit of a MACH (Master Agility Championship) depends only on the team and not who they are competing against in a particular trial. The teams are being measured against a standard, not one another. If another team makes a better score, it takes nothing away from your own points.

The situation is similar In hunt tests, there are three title levels (Junior-JH, Senior-SH, and Masters-MH). If a dog has ten Masters passes in a year, it gets invited to the Masters National, and if it passes the 4 or 5 tough series in the Masters National, it gets the MNH title. The dogs are judged against a standard, and not against one another. In fact, in hunt tests, there aren’t even any placements of any kind at any level. All teams either pass or fail.

In contrast, in obedience, an OTCh requires you beat other dogs, and the more dogs you beat, the better. The OTCh is modeled more on the breed ring chanmpionships and field trial championships. Yet, even in the breed ring, dogs don’t vie against dogs that already have their championship. Even in field trials (the competitive version of hunt tests), the professional handlers are treated separately from the amateurs and less experienced dogs can start in classes with less experienced dogs.

I am no where near the rarified OTCh level. Still, I hear the grumbles and discouragement of people with very good, even great dogs, that struggle to make any points against the very best teams that go to every trial looking to pick up points. Unlike the MACH or MNH quest, the OTCh struggle works against comradery. It feels a lot better to cheer on a fellow MACH because those MACH points didn’t come at the expense of one’s own MACH points. Obedience is such a tiny world these days, that the last thing it needs is a system that drives wedges between competitors.

The OTCh “compensation prizes” are the UDX and OM. Both have their problems. Getting a UDX requires passing both Open and Utility. Contrast that with agility, where the “X”s (MXJ, MX) can accumulate with a pass of EITHER jumpers or standard. They do not depend on one another, so a handler can fail one event early in the day and still feel like there is a purpose to running in the other event later (unless their only goal is double Q’s for a MACH). The OM title is meant to recognize dogs that make high scores, but can’t get an OTCh because of the local high level of competition. I think, to many handlers, it’s a painful reminder that they might have been able to get an OTCh if they competed in a different area of the country.

Next installment: What I would do to address the problems of Obedience.