Freestyle

Canine freestyle

Dogdancing or canine freestyle is a relatively new dog sport where the aim is to dance with your dog. It's a wonderful sport and tremendous enjoyment for handler and dog and for the spectators as well. The combination of dogs and music results in funny, crazy, surprising, beautiful dances - and no dance is ever the same.

This sport originated from obedience exercises which were performed to music. Good, basic obedience is still a foundation for this sport, but most moves hardly resemble traditional obedience exercises. There are more and more exercises and creative and innovative moves are encouraged.

Canine freestyle started at about the same time in Canada, England and the United States at the end of the 1980s. A few of you may have already seen Mary Ray's yearly performance at Crufts.

Heelwork to music and canine freestyle

There are two seperate styles in dogdancing. Heelwork to music is originally from England and is almost self-explanatory. A large part of the routine consists of heelwork and the dog may not go further than two meters away from the handler. In canine freestyle, distance work is encouraged and the number of moves is much larger. Sometimes there's hardly any heelwork involved.

For who?

Dogdancing is a sport for anyone who loves to train their dog and who likes music and dancing. Age hardly matters. If you are ambitious, the dog's health is an important issue for certain moves, like standing on the hind legs or crawling. If you're not sure your dog is 100% OK constitutionally, check with your veterinary first.

Moves and exercises are always taught through positive training methods. Clicker training is really the best for this sport. Because of the motivating teaching methods, the dogs love this sport and show it during their dances!

For an impression of this sport, there are a few videos as well as many pictures of seperate moves and exercises on the Dutch part of this website and in our Photo-album. Do take into account that though I'm thoroughly hooked, I'm still only a beginner!

More videos and photos and other information on canine freestyle are to be found via the page More information.