The Inaugural Heelwork to Music World Championships
A Judge’s View by Karen Sykes

What an honour to be invited to be Head Judge at the Inaugural Heelwork to Music World Championships held in Herning, Denmark 2010.  The Danish Kennel Club certainly know how to host a show and look after their judges, I must thank them for their hospitality which was terrific.

I was very pleased to discover who my co-judges were.  Marleen van Hees from Belgium. Some of you may remember her competing in the UK with her Bernese Mountain Dog Simba and her Aussie Gino and also representing Belgium in the International Freestyle at Crufts too. Carina Enevoldsen from Denmark who I have met many times on my visits to Denmark has also been in the sport since its inception in Denmark and attended the first Judges Training Seminar that I co-hosted with Kath Hardman. Together Carina, Marleen and I started work long before the competition was to be held, ensuring that we were up to speed with the World Championship Rules and ready for the task set before us.

Karen Sykes, Marleen van Hees, Carina Enevoldsen and Chairman of the FCI Obedience Commission Mr Johann Kurzbauer

I also did a lot of personal studying before my judging appointment to ensure that my marking system gave me the most accurate results for the variety of routines that were to be expected.  When judging all 3 sections it is important to me that I have a short-hand that ensures that I don’t miss anything in my final scores. For the FCI World Championships these three sections are Presentation, Degree of Difficulty & Musical Interpretation, each section containing several subsections.

The competition ran over 3 days.  On Friday the Heelwork to Music Team Event was held.  There were up to 3 dogs and handlers per team although some countries had just one dog and handler at the event.  The countries competing in HTM were Austria (Aus), Denmark (DK), Great Britain (GB), Holland (Hol), Russia (Rus), Sweden (Swe) and The Czech Republic (CZ).  There were 17 competitors in all and those placed in the top 10 would go forward to the HTM Individual Final on Sunday. 

Team World Champions, HTM - Team Denmark
Emmy Simonsen/Whisper, Helle Larssen/Doggie, Annette Dalgaard (reserve, not competing) and Anja Christensen/Queeny. Next to the team is Chairman of the Danish Kennel Club Mr. Jørgen Hindse Madsen.

Saturday saw 10 countries competing for the top spot as the countries from the previous day were joined by Belgium (Bel), Finland (Fin) and France (Fra).  A total of 24 dog and handler teams.

Team World Champions, Freestyle - The Czech Republic
Simona Drabkova/Melodor Bohemia Alke, Daniela Siskova/Aurora Piranhra Rainy Love and Vanda Gregorova/All That Brandy Gentle Mate.

Sunday saw the top 10 from both HTM and FS competing for the top spot and in a very exciting final the results were:

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the ring and it was very interesting to watch so many competitors that I have never seen before.  Here are some personal thoughts.

A couple of things did sadden me. Two of the competitors were eliminated/disqualified for incidents which could have been avoided. One team left the ring before the music had finished and a handler’s dog left the ring at the end of the routine and returned seconds later with a toy in his mouth. Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to turn a blind eye to these incidents and it was a very hard decision to make but along with my fellow judges we agreed that the infringements were definitely in contradiction of the rules and as such no matter how hard, the rules have to be abided by. The other incident was a competitor making a complaint regarding her score.  The incident was investigated by the Danish Kennel Club who stated that they had full confidence in the judges’ decision and the complaint was not upheld.

On the plus side it was a joy to see so many happy and motivated teams, old moves used in different ways and an occasional move that I had not seen before.  When I see how far our sport has come in such a short period of time I do wonder what the next decade will bring.  It is wonderful to be involved in a dog sport where you can really use your imagination.  I am full of hope for happy dogs trained in a kind way forming close bonds with their handlers and entertaining all who are lucky enough to see them.

There are moves which are always controversial such as front leg and hind leg work.  Over the weekend I saw good and poor use of both moves and marked them accordingly. My personal feeling with any move is ‘Just because the dog can, it doesn’t mean that it should’. Any move can be unhealthy if repeated too often or performed without care and control.

So where will we be in another 10 years?  Both Heelwork to Music and Freestyle are such young sports and yet have travelled so far in such a short space of time.  Each year we are seeing more coverage from the Media and more interest from the general public.  It is the responsibility of those who are at the top of the sport and the judges who put them there to keep in mind that the most important consideration is the welfare of the dogs and I am happy to say that the Individual Title winners, Thierry Thomas and Kath Hardman put on magnificent shows in which their dogs, Speed and Amber were physically capable of all of the moves and were not asked to repeat any of them too often.  Also the Team winners, Denmark and the Czech Republic gave crowd pleasing performances with great care and responsibility.  Congratulations to you all!

Thank you to The Danish Kennel Club and the FCI for making the Inaugural HTM World Championships possible and to everyone behind the scenes for working so hard to make it a success.