[laurlitt]

Originally Posted by frontierrots

IF you fool around training obedience with all sorts of oddmoves then yes Rally can be somewhat easy, but if you pattern train your dogin obedience or only practice the exact obed exercises it can be very very hard.

This is a very good point. There are a lot of things about Rally that make it easier... but a lot that can make it harder... Traditional obedience doesn't really ask a lot of the dog in the sense of positions and 'backwards' movement. In Sch. ob. I taught Maddie a lot of 'positioning' exercises where she learned to get to heel position no matter where we started from, or however I moved... it made a huge difference in Rally-O... I didn't really have to train for it, just know the rules and the signs... I don't suspect it's that easy for others.

I've seen a lot of people fail in the ring and a lot of it is b/c they are not ready as a team (too young and not enough obedience and focus)...

It's a fun sport... I've enjoyed trialing in it during our Sch. breaks.