Meet the Rally Obedience Addict!

Sadly I had to help my competition partner, Mordanna's Quigley, a Jack Russell Terrier, to the Rainbow Bridge on 01/03/2012.

I adopted Quigley from the L.A. West Valley shelter in January 2002 and the two of us started competing in Rally Obedience in June 2006. We have shared lots of adventures inside and outside the ring since then, and I miss him terribly.

Personally I don't see Rally as a "stepping stone" to Obedience, but rather as a sport worthy to stand on its own merits. It has helped us on our journey to earning the CD and U-CD titles, but that was more of a pleasant side effect than purpose in itself and reaching those milestones certainly didn't make me stop competing in Rally.

In the grand scheme of competitive dog sports, we weren't a super high precision team, but we had lots of fun and for the most part Quigley's performances were very consistent. In 2010 he ranked #1 Parson Russell Terrier in the Front & Finish Rally Combined Ratings and according to my record keeping it looks like he might have achieved this feat once again for 2011, but I won't know for sure until the magazine publishes the official reports.