Obedience Regulations - American Kennel Club

Obedience Judges’
Guidelines
• The capability to complete all the necessary paperwork.
Sickness. Judges are expected to be physically fit. if you find you cannot
fulfill an assignment because of illness or other serious occurrence,
immediately notify the trial secretary and/or superintendent and the trial
chairperson by telephone, overnight letter, telegram, e-mail or fax. if
you are delayed en route to a show, make every effort to contact the trial
secretary or superintendent’s office immediately.
When judges can no longer properly perform the duties of a judge
because of physical difficulties, they do the position and the sport a
disservice by continuing to accept assignments. the AKc has a Judge
emeritus Program to honor judges who have served the sport faithfully
and wish to retire. contact the AKc companion events Department for
additional information.
Change of Address. Judges are responsible for promptly notifying
the AKc companion events Department of any change in mailing
address, e-mail address and phone number(s). the change will be automatically
reflected in the AKc Judges Directory.
Obedience Regulations. the Obedience Regulations are the basic
guide to judging but do not contain explicit directions for every possible
situation and only list the more common and serious faults.
they clearly define the exercises, their order and the standards by
which they are to be judged. the Obedience Regulations set the standard
of perfection by which the performance of each dog is scored and give
the judge little choice in deciding how an exercise is to be performed.
they require that judges fulfill their responsibility by making competent
decisions based on a mental picture of the perfect performance.
the knowledge gained from studying the Obedience Regulations,
exhibiting and attending AKc obedience seminars, and putting this
knowledge into practice will permit a judge to make practical the principles
of sound judging.
Judges are given full discretionary authority within the framework of
the Obedience Regulations. Judges must exercise this authority impartially.
Judges are required to make their own decisions and to accept the
responsibility this implies. if a decision depends on the exact wording
of the Obedience Regulations, the judge is expected to look up the specific
regulation prior to making the decision. A judge may not discard,
modify or require anything not specified in the Obedience Regulations.
An obedience title is intended to evoke admiration. to be worthy of
this admiration, the title must be based on performances that fully meet
the requirements of the Obedience Regulations. scores for each exercise
must be amply justified by the performance of dog and handler. the
owner of any dog that receives a deserved score of 190 points has reason
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