10/07/2026
Reminder from AKC Obedience/Rally Department.
Attention All Obedience & Rally Participants
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By AKC Companion Events Department on October 7, 2026
Civility Isn’t a Suggestion: Restoring Respect in the Obedience and Rally Rings
Disagreeing with a judge’s score is nothing new in our sport; it has existed for as long as obedience trials have been held. What’s changed isn’t the disagreement itself, but how it plays out. With alarming frequency, these disputes occur publicly and loudly, with the apparent goal of making a judge back down rather than receiving an honest explanation.
The scenario is becoming familiar to anyone who spends time ringside. What starts as a reasonable question as to why that deduction was taken or what the judge saw turns into a flat refusal to accept the answer given. The exchange escalates, draws in stewards, other exhibitors, and spectators, and often becomes a public spectacle. Whether the judge holds their ground or the exhibitor walks off loudly declaring the judge doesn’t know what they’re doing, the score has stopped being the point. The point has become getting the last word.
That puts judges in a difficult spot. They can’t walk back a score mid-conversation, and defending a decision at length starts to look like litigating the score in front of an audience, which tends to make things worse. What’s left is a one-sided, exhausting exchange that wears the judge down in front of everyone ringside. It’s a bad look for the sport, and a particularly discouraging one for anyone new who’s trying to decide whether this activity is for them.
The disagreement doesn’t necessarily end when the trial ends for the day, either. It often continues in dog-sport Facebook groups, replayed for an audience far larger than the original ringside. Sometimes it comes with a video clip, a screenshot, or a post tagging the judge outright. Comment threads tend to reward whoever tells the most aggrieved version of the story, and people who weren’t even there weigh in as if they had been. Judges are expected to stay above that kind of exchange rather than engage with it directly, which leaves them with even less room to respond online than they have in the ring. A single disagreement at a trial can follow a judge indefinitely, with nothing on the other side to correct the record.
The AKC Code of Sportsmanship and Civility should be taken seriously. It isn’t a loose set of suggestions; it spells out what’s expected of everyone who steps into a ring. All participants are asked to treat exhibitors, judges, officials, and volunteers with dignity and courtesy, regardless of how they feel about a given decision. The Code is clear that strong competition and civility must coexist, not one at the expense of the other. It extends those same expectations online as well: courtesy doesn’t stop applying just because people are off the show grounds and back on their phones.
None of this is solved by adding another regulation, since it was never really a regulation problem. Peer accountability still does more work than people realize. A quiet word from someone a person respects lands harder than any policy ever will. Trial Chairpersons have a role in stepping in early. For conduct serious enough to warrant it, individuals can still make a formal complaint to an Event Committee. That process is reserved for real misconduct rather than everyday ringside friction. Most of what shows up ringside doesn’t need a hearing. It needs someone willing to say something in the moment, long before it gets that far. Respect, in and out of the ring, isn’t optional. Respect is why people keep showing up for the sport.
