How to Get Started in Dog Sports with Ayoka Bubar
Dog sports are great fun for you and your dog. We spoke to Ayoka Bubar about which sport(s) to pick and what you'll gain.
Watch episode 42 of The Pawsitive Post in Conversation on Youtube or below, listen wherever you get your podcasts (Apple, Spotify) or below, or scroll down to read a transcript of the highlights.
How to get started in dog sports
Dog sports are fun activities for you and your dog, but with so many to choose from, it can feel daunting to get started. We demystify dog sports with trainer Ayoka Bubar, a Rally Obedience judge who has taught (and tried) many different sports. She shares the details and tells us how to match sports to dogs.
We talked about:
- Why Ayoka loves dog sports
- Why dog sports are good for dogs
- We get examples: rally o, tricks training, barn hunt, and carting
- Which kinds of dogs and people these sports are best for
- The best place to start if someone is interested in trying a dog sport
- The role of a dog's breed in choosing a dog sport
- Which dog sports are suitable for reactive and fearful dogs
- What Ayoka has learned from doing so many different dog sports
- The kind of community that is found amongst dog sports people
- And as always, we get a book recommendation
Ayoka chose Atomic Habits by James Clear as her book choice.
Ayoka Bubar is an approved judge for the Canadian Association of Rally Obedience and she never passes up an opportunity to try a new sport with her Rottweilers. She has trained or trialed in Flyball, Agility, Tracking, Trick Titling, Herding, Rally Obedience, Mondioring, IGP, and Scentwork, so she is the perfect person to tell us about dog sports. As well, Ayoka believes that dog training should be fun for dogs and their humans, which we love to hear. And she likes to use positive reinforcement techniques to help handlers communicate more effectively with their dogs.
Learn more and get details of classes at https://ayokabubar.com/
Follow Ayoka on Facebook and on Instagram.
Also mentioned in this episode:
Bark! The Science of Making Your Dog Happy by Zazie Todd. Available wherever books are sold.
Tricks classes by Erica Beckwith of A Matter of Manners Dog Training You can watch or listen to our conversation with Erica Beckwith about tricks training here.
Highlights of the conversation about dog sports for beginners
Z: So can you tell us first of all, why do you love dog sports?
A: Oh, I could. I have so many, so many reasons. I was thinking last night that what I do, I love primarily because it gives me an activity to do with my dog.
When I got my first dog, he was a very busy, very intelligent, get into trouble kind of dog. And I find sometimes when we're struggling with other behavior challenges, let's say, and they weren't huge with him, it was first time dog owner kind of stuff.
Having a dog sport where you can have fun, it's relatively low pressure for some dog sports. Bond with your dog. Meet Some new people that also love dogs.
And I do enjoy the competition aspect of dog sports as well. I'm a competitive person. I've been competing in sports or music all my life until I got dogs. And that participation in competitive activities just sort of transferred right into dogs.
K: Awesome. So I love how that's how good dog sports are for people, which I think is something that we don't often think about the human aspect as dog trainers. We think about the dogs.
Why are dog sports good for dogs?
A: Yeah, I think dog sports are great for dogs because they encourage people to train their dog, to spend time with their dogs. You know, I've often heard vets say, you know, dog sport people are the ones that pick up on any health issues with their dogs because they're spending so much time with them and observing them and get to know them so well that they know when something's wrong.
So I think dog sports build that human animal bond, help build that human animal bond. And I think dogs that are involved in dog sports are also likely to stay in their homes for their entire lives, more likely to. Because people are doing things with them and having fun with them and all that kind of stuff.
Z: I love that. So they're more invested in their dog in some ways. I think that's really good to have.
A: Yeah, yeah.
Z: And to have a joint activity to do with your dog that you love, I think it's wonderful. But there are so many different dog sports. So for people who aren't familiar with them, let's talk about some specific ones and who they're good for and what people get from them.
Let's start with rally obedience, which you are a judge for, and tricks training. What they involve, which kind of dogs and people they're good for.
A: Okay, let's start with tricks. I'll do rally obedience second, because tricks is... It's not really a sport, cause it's not competitive, but it is an activity. And you can get titles with your dogs. Which is a piece of paper and letters after your dog's name.
Tricks is like a gateway to dog sports, I find, because the main now AKC offers trick titles and Do More With Your Dog, the organization offers trick titles. And many of the tricks at the beginner level are simple things you can do with your dog. Sit, lie down, stand up, hand, touch.
So they're not always very complicated at the beginning, but they're also practical things. You know, heeling, walking on a loose leash, is a trick. And I like the approach that everything we do with our dogs really is just a trick.
You know, we think about formal training and then we think about tricks as shake a paw or rollover. Those count too as tricks. But I think the approach that everything we do with our dog is a trick can release some of the pressure when we're working on heavy duty. Maybe heavy duty more behavior challenge.
What else can I say about tricks? It can involve video titling. They're AKC done in person. I guess they could be done in person if you have an evaluator nearby, but you can do video titling as well.
So if you have a dog that is really scared of going into a big building with lots of dogs at a dog show to perform tricks, you can do it in your living room at home or in your backyard.
Z: I love that it's accessible to lots of different types of dogs.
A: Also lots of different types of people because, you know, just even to think geographically, we don't all have access to dog shows or trick dog evaluators. So being able to do it in your your home and send it away is a huge benefit and makes it really exciting. Now rally obedience.
Who is Tricks good for? I say any dog, any person. It's good for everybody. You know, I have a puppy right now and probably one of the first titles they will ever get will be a trick title because we're working on little pieces of things.
My girl who's gone now, Epic, had her novice trick title when she was 12 weeks old. So it's not super complicated or super difficult if you're working on these things.
At the beginning level, you can use food rewards and even no luring, but food rewards for sure. So Tricks is for anybody and any dog. There have been trick cats, trick gerbils, trick birds, trick horses. So any animal, I would say even as long as you can train them, you know, and most respond really well to positive reinforcement. So I would say all animals. Tricks is, is great for everybody. Any dog.
Rally Obedience is a sport. I'll just describe it a little bit. Where a dog and handler team navigate a course and throughout the course there are individual stations. There are at the beginning level, 10 to 12 stations. And at each station you need to perform a specific behavior that's been selected ahead of time for you.
And you do have the opportunity to walk the course without your dog to familiarize yourself the exercises. And the exercises at each level are picked from a set list, but you don't know till the day of which ones they're going to pick. So there's a bit of a luck of the draw, as it were.
And so dog and handler team navigate through that course together. Also quite a few organizations offer virtual trials as well as in person trials. So I think, you know, rally obedience is my, I call it my first dog sport love.
Well, actually, maybe my first was fly ball. Believe it or not. My second love was rally obedience and I love that it's not a fast sport like agility. Agility is zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom, and you're done in a matter of seconds. Rally obedience is measured in a matter of minutes.
So, you know, you don't have a lot of time, but you do have enough time. You can go a little slower.
It makes it more accessible to different kinds of people with different disabilities. It's accessible to different kinds of dogs. Some organizations allow dogs with disabilities, like a tripod dog or a blind dog.
So I think rally obedience, I mean, I say any person, any dog, and I really do mean it that it's accessible to quite a few people. And I've helped a few different teams with different challenges adapt to the sport in different ways. So I really like rally obedience as a beginner friendly dog sport as well.
K: I love that. I love how it's both. I think that as dog trainers, giving our clients the ability to find joy with their dog too is so important. Like, you can't be, like, just do something that's going to be really a chore for you, you know, so here's something, here's something that's good for your dog and you, you'll get a lot of joy out of it too. I think that's really good.
The next two we were going to ask about is barn hunt and carting. So what are they and who are they good for?
A: Barn hunt involves, and barn hunt is relatively new to me, but we're having lots of fun in it. It involves dogs searching among bales stacked up in different patterns, searching for a rat, a live rat in a PVC tube. The rats are safe from the dogs and that tube is hidden amongst all the bails in a ring.
So your dog has to go out into the ring, indicate the rat to you at the beginning level, and as you go on, indicate the rat to you, but not indicate a tube with just rat litter, so there's bedding in it or an empty tube.
So they really have to identify this is the rat not the thing that smells like the rat, not the thing that holds a rat, but the actual rat in a tube. As you progress higher in levels, there's more rats and more tubes.
I think it's just a fascinating dog sport. My girl, I've taught it to her as a scent work exercise. Some dogs are really into the hunting aspect of finding the rat and they get really excited about it or you'll see them, you know, digging in the hay really excitedly and some will bark when they find the rat. They're so excited.
My girl is more, it's more of a scent work exercise for her. We always joke that she's in it for the hot dogs, but that's fine. She gets her food when she finds her rat.
But it's a fascinating and really, really fun dog sport. Now for dogs that any dog can do scent work, the challenge in barn hunt is they also need to be able to, and it's one of the requirements for passing a certain level, to climb the bale and like at least climb on top of a bale and they need to go through a tunnel.
So sometimes for teeny, teeny tiny dogs, that's a really big challenge and sometimes for really, really big dogs. So think of a Great Dane going through. I think it's at 18 or 19 inch, you know, a bale on its side. Like a Great Dane going through that tunnel might be a really big challenge.
So there are some dogs on the edges, size wise, that it might not be ideal for, but they could still have fun in a barn hunt class just finding rats and scenting a lot.
You know, I talk about competing in dog sports, but there's no reason we have to compete if we don't want to. We can train for these sports and have a really good time.
What was the other dog sport? Oh, carting. Carting, yeah, yeah. Also called drafting. Draft dog is teaching your dog to pull a cart, like a two wheeled cart. I've done a little bit of this with my dogs.
Generally in the US it's breed clubs that offer carting titles or carting as a sport. In Canada, the Canadian Kennel Club offers it and it's an all breed sport. However, like, so theoretically your miniature poodle could participate in carting, but they have to be able to pull 40 pounds safely on a wheeled cart. So it doesn't need 40 pounds because it's on wheels, but they have to be able to make that cart move up and down hills and all around and to be able to do it safely.
So that certainly does exclude some of the smaller dogs. I won't say all of the smaller dogs because, say, a Staffy Bull Terrier might be as tall as a Miniature Poodle, but is a little heavier and a little more muscle, then probably would have an easier time pulling a cart. And they need a cart that's appropriate to their size, of course.
But yeah, it's an all breed program in Canada, so it's for quite a few, quite a few dogs based on size.
Z: I love how you're thinking about the accessibility and who these things are suitable for as well. I think that's really nice. So, I mean, there's a whole load of different sports that we also could get into. There's so many to choose from. So if someone is just wanting to get started in dog sports but they don't really know where to begin, what would you recommend?
A: I would recommend tricks right off the bat because tricks, you can do that in your living room. You may be able to find tricks class near you, but you can do that in your living room or your backyard.
A lot of the trick skills are dog sports skills. So if you decide you want to check out something else later on, you may have some of the skills that you need to do other dog sports.
And I also, you know, before I was able to access rally obedience because it was a newer sport when I had my first dog, obedience was what there was. So I did obedience.
I really wanted to try rally because you're able to talk to your dog. It's less formal than traditional obedience and it looks like a lot of fun. So also look at what's available near you.
And then I moved because my partner's in the military, so we moved and we ended up moving to an area where rally obedience is a fairly large sport with lots of opportunities for training and titling.
So look at what's available to you locally or available to you online. I teach online rally obedience classes and lots of my students are people that don't have a kennel club nearby to learn about dog sports. But rally obedience lends itself really well to online learning. Not every sport does, for example, barn hunt. Unless you have your own rats, it can be really hard to teach at home.
K: And your own hay bales, imagine explaining that to your family.
A: Well, the hay bales, the hay bales are important if you're going to compete. But we actually did a class that was more, with my girl Saga we did a class that was more, they called it urban barn hunt. So they hid things in boxes, on chairs, in nooks and crannies, in a room, almost like a scent detection exercise.
So that's how we learned barn hunt. And we did have an opportunity to practice on bales two or three times before we went to a trial. But our indication and the searching and all of that held up without having to have a huge access, a long term access to video.
K: Wow.
A: Yeah. Bales. Bales are kind of secondary when you think about this, I guess.
K: So it's good because they are not cheap.
A: Well, depending on where you are, it's a straw bale. So they are cheaper than hay bales. It is straw that's used. But yes, depending on where you are in the world, they can be less expensive. More expensive. Here in sort of central slash western Canada they're less expensive because we have lots of crops that are, you know, we usually use wheat straw and there's lots of wheat crops that are available.
But if you're not in a big agricultural area, I can imagine that they would be, or if you're in a more isolated area, hard to find.
K: So you have mentioned a couple times different breeds as you're talking the different dog sports. So what role does a dog's breed play in the whole conversation about dog sports?
Can any type of dog do sports? Are there some breeds that are more suited to particular sports? Does it matter at beginners? It's more important as you advance, what's your thoughts?
A: I think that for what we call the companion dog sport, so the obedience, rally. I'm trying to think what else? Agility, barn hunt, I would consider like a companion dog type sport. I don't think breed really does matter.
I think in barn hunt, if you have a terrier that's really gamey, you probably do have an advantage. But maybe you don't have an advantage because they get to hunt, but they don't get to complete their hunt. They don't get to kill the rat, they just get to find the rat.
So for some dogs that's not as motivating to find the rat if someone just picks it up and takes it away once they find it. So that may not be an advantage if you have a really gamey dog.
For agility, lots of people think you need a super fast high drive dog. Well, you can compete in agility on the weekend near your home without that dog. You know, there's lots of different shapes and sizes of dogs compete in agility and in rally and in obedience.
Some sports, I'm thinking of coursing, like the hound racing. Some of those sports are only open to hound breeds like sighthound breeds. But we also have coursing ability and what is called fast cat in the United States. We call it sprinter here. And fast cat is like a one dog. How fast can you go for 100? So they have pieces of that sport that are available to all breeds.
Some of the gun dog stuff is only open to retriever breeds. But I'm trying to think what else might be right, outright breed specific. I can't think of very many. I haven't participated in very many. Some herding. And the United States with the American Kennel Club is only open, competitions are only open to herding, what they determine to be herding breeds or breeds with a history of herding. Not just dogs from the herding group.
But in Canada it's an all breed program. If the dog can do the work and do it nicely and treat the sheep well, then it's open to all breeds. So breed probably plays a role, but maybe not as much of a role as you might think.
You know, just because you don't have a Border Collie doesn't mean you can't do agility. Just because you don't have a Parson Russell Terrier doesn't mean you can't do barn hunt. Just because you have a Chihuahua doesn't mean you can't do fast cat.
A lot of these sports have different, different levels of participation. And I really like that because it means more people can participate. There's people that are participating to get a leg towards a title. There's people that are participating to select qualifications to a national invitational so they can try out for world team. And you can have the same people at the same time.
Z: Excellent. And then some people are probably listening and thinking, but my dog is reactive or my dog is fearful. And this is actually a question I put to you when I was writing Bark! so people could go and read what you said about this in Bark! as well, because you gave me some excellent advice then.
But for people listening now, if someone has a reactive or fearful dog, which sports would you recommend to them? And this, sometimes it might be actually good for the dog to take part, mightn't it?
A: I'm going to sound like a broken record, but hey, Tricks! You know, Tricks is really easy if you have a fearful or reactive dog.
I find scent work tends to be more friendly to fearful or reactive dogs. You know, the hardest part, in my opinion, of say, a rally obedience trial, is that part of trialing where you're waiting to go in the ring and you may have five or six dogs cramped into one area trying to get in. That's probably one of the more difficult parts if you have a fearful reactive dog.
But scent work doesn't tend to have that happen as frequently. And I don't know if it's because it takes a little bit longer. In agility, in the next five minutes, you can have six dogs. And in five minutes and say scent work, you might have one or two dogs. So you don't have that congestion around the entrances to areas.
Carting can be, depending on the organization, great. Some organizations require group sits and downs. Some of them are on leash, some of them are off leash. Depending on the organization it can be really nice for fearful or reactive dogs.
Herding actually is a great sport. And I also teach herding for fearful or reactive dogs because it is one dog at a time in the arena. Not as much congestion because a run can take up to 10 minutes.
But start with tricks. Especially if you're working with a dog with a lot of behavioral challenges, tricks is a nice way to build some skills in a low pressure because fear and reactivity are such, in my opinion and my experience with a reactive dog, there's such high pressure training scenarios. You know, you have this dog that's reactive and you want to change their behavior so that you can do something as simple as go for a walk, or you could do something as simple as get to the vet safely or those kinds of things.
But tricks, you know, if something goes wrong while you're teaching a trick, it's not the end of the world. No one gets hurt, no one is traumatized. You can laugh it off. So I recommend to people to start with tricks and to go from there.
K: I love that. It keeps making me think about one of our colleagues, Erica [Beckwith of A Matter of Manners], who teaches trick classes, and I've done a couple of trick classes with her. And they're just, they're so gratifying and so much fun.
A: Yeah, they are fun and good.
K: Yeah. Yeah. And it really makes you appreciate your dog too, somehow.
A: Yep, absolutely. Because some tricks are incredibly hard. Like, I have Rottweilers. And they are good at retrieving, but not always good at giving the item up at the end. They're a little bit possessive, if I was to use a word to describe them, anthropomorphize with it. They'll bring it back, but they want to show it to you and keep it in the front.
So some of those retrieving tricks are a really big challenge for us at the beginning levels and at the more advanced levels. But I have had students and I've had friends, you know, they compete.
I have a friend with a Bulldog that has a trick dog championship. And retrieving has to be one of the elements for a trick dog championship. So really great trainers, lots of cool dogs and great skills and tricks. Yeah, they just make you smile.
K: They totally do well as a dog trainer, too. I think it helps you sort of poke around the edges of where do you need work with your mechanics?
A: Yes, absolutely.
K: I did a trick dog title through PPG with one of my older sled dogs. And I thought, beginner tricks. This is gonna be a breeze for me and her. And I picked the old dog because I wanted to be like, look, I'm so capable, I can do it on an old dog.
And I struggled. It was like you had to do something along the lines of you had to do ask her to sit in five different ways, like once with your arms up, once facing. And I had to retrain sit every single time. And I'm like, I mean, I knew this theoretically would happen, but the fact that it is actually happening, it's a wonderful way to build skills and training. And it's a low pressure. It's a low pressure way to do it too.
A: Yeah, absolutely. Just completely fun.
K: So you were a judge for rally and it sounds like that holds a special place in your heart. But you've actually done lots of different dog sports, which you've talked about already a little bit using positive reinforcement. So what do you think you've learned from each of these different sports?
A: Well, the main thing that I've learned is that they're all different sports, but a lot of the foundation is very similar. So what I find with my dogs, I start my dogs in the sport of, it's a sport, conformation, which is what I jokingly refer to as the beauty pageant for dogs. You know, when we think of Westminster Kennel Club, everyone can sort of picture that in their mind. So that on a smaller level.
Westminster Kennel Club is a conformation show. One of the biggest, of course, and most prestigious. But I start in conformation and a lot of the skills that I teach my dogs for conformation are actually transferable to rally.
And some of the skills in rally obedience are transferable to herding or to scent work. You know, scent work is transferable to barn hunt. Some of the agility aspects, and I haven't done agility for a while, but some of those are transferable to barn hunt as well. When you think of climbing and tunnels and using your body in different ways.
So it's not like if you do conformation and then want to do rally obedience later on, that you have to start from scratch. That a lot of the foundations in performing in a ring, with or without reinforcement and learning some of those skills is all quite similar when you distill it down to the basics.
K: And I know that dog training world, like any collaboration or collective of humans, can have pockets of places where it's a little bit tougher to be as a human, and places where it's a little bit more gentle to be as a human.
So what kind of community do you think people will find in the dog sports world?
A: I think the first place that you'll find good community will be if you have the opportunity to take classes, Whether it's in person or online, you'll find good community and people that are learning along with you and having the same challenges and the same kinds and celebrating the same kinds of success. You have an instructor, and when you go out into the competing world, there'll be other competitors.
For me, I found a lot of community amongst people in my breed. So, you know, versatile Rottweilers doing a whole bunch of different things. I've developed lots of great tips with other Rottweiler owners and Rottweiler breeders that way.
And in some sports, you know, like some sports make a really big effort, or at least has been my experience, to welcome new people and tell them that if their run's been successful, they congratulate them and say, what a cool dog, or that kind of thing.
So there is that opportunity and you're all there having the same experience at the same time, and you're all subject to the same more or less, depending on what level you're in, to the same rules, it could go really well for you or not, depending on the day. So I think the place where I found the most community actually has been in herding. And I think it's because in that sport we're working with another species with sheep or ducks or geese or cattle, and that species has their own agenda.
So when we're trying to move those animals through a course, sometimes they decide they don't want to do that. And herding is very humbling that way because it's not that you could have trained harder. It's not that you could have, that you need a different dog. It's just that the luck of the draw and the way the animals worked that day just didn't work out for you. So I find the community is stronger there because we really do realize we're all sort of having the same experience at the same time.
I love how encouraging all of this is. I feel like, you know, anyone listening to you will immediately want to go away and find some kind of sports class near them that they will want to go and try with their dog.
This interview has been lightly edited for content and style.
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