Starting on the Judging Road

I am now officially a UKC apprentice judge for all classes of obedience. I started the process in January and took the written test three weeks ago. The first part of the process was a lengthy resume of my life in dogs, which took a while to pull together. After they accepted that they sent me their written test.

The written test is 25 multiple choice and true/false questions and is open book. That sounds easy, but the questions are worded to be tricky and they cover the whole spectrum of the rules fairly well. I spent about two hours on it, working through all the possibilities with the rulebook, and ended up getting all 25 right.

The next step is to apprentice judge three times. An apprentice follows a licensed judge in the ring at a trial, and at the end the apprentice’s score sheets are compared to the judge and the judge decides whether or not the apprentice judged according to the rules.

All of this sounds like a bit of a hassle, but it’s a far easier process than the AKC’s and I think the UKC can use the support.

So if you see me following a judge in the next year or so….