The Australian National Kennel Council, now trading as Dogs Australia, runs a five-class obedience path: Community Companion Dog, Novice, Open, Utility, and Utility Dog Excellent. Each class raises the bar on precision, distance, and how much a dog works from instruction alone, rather than the small visual cues most handlers lean on without realizing it.
Storm, one of PetCoach’s dogs in training, working the front position below with a tug reward shows exactly what almost every exercise in this guide asks for at the finish: a dog that comes in and sits squarely in front, engaged and driven to be there, not just complying because it has to.
ANKC is the organization’s legal name. Dogs Australia is its current trading name, used throughout its own rulebook. Both refer to the same body, and this guide uses ANKC throughout. Its rules are one obedience system among several worldwide, alongside AKC’s Novice, Open, and Utility system, FCI’s Class 1/2/3 system, and the UK Kennel Club’s own regulations.
The Title Ladder
ANKC’s obedience path runs through five classes, each gated behind the one before it.
- Community Companion Dog earns CCD. No prerequisite, dogs 12 months or older.
- Novice earns CD (Companion Dog). Requires no prior CD title.
- Open earns CDX (Companion Dog Excellent). Requires CD.
- Utility earns UD (Utility Dog). Requires CDX. Optional, not the automatic next step.
- Utility Dog Excellent earns UDX. Requires CDX or UD.
Two rules make this ladder stricter than it first looks. A dog that already holds CD can’t re-enter CCD, and a dog that has competed in Open can’t drop back down to Novice. The ladder only runs one direction.
Utility is explicitly optional in ANKC’s own rules, not the automatic ceiling AKC’s Utility class is. A handler can go straight from CDX to UDX and skip Utility entirely, ANKC’s own non-jumping path. It carries one lasting cost: a dog that earns Obedience Champion through that route is permanently barred from Obedience Grand Champion, which requires both a UD and a UDX title. Neither AKC, FCI, nor Crufts has an equivalent skip-a-rung mechanic.
Community Companion Dog (CCD)
Exercises:
- Heel on Lead: dog and handler move as a team on a loose lead, including a Figure Eight around two stewards standing about 3 metres apart
- Stand for Examination on Lead: the dog holds a stand on lead while the judge checks it by touch, but only along the withers and back. The head, mouth, tail, and legs aren’t touched at this level
- Recall: the dog is left sitting off lead about 12 metres away, then called in and expected to sit directly in front without a second command
- Sit Stay and Down Stay: two individual stays, the handler walking about 10 metres away and back without pausing
CCD is entirely about a dog and handler working as a team on lead, with almost no independent decision-making asked of the dog. It’s the direct equivalent of what a well-run functional obedience program already covers, see PetCoach’s own sit, down, and stand training, just held to a stricter, judged standard. A dog that sits crookedly at home is fine. A dog that sits crookedly in front of a judge loses points.
Novice (CD)
Exercises:
- Heel Free: the same pattern and Figure Eight as CCD’s Heel on Lead, now performed entirely off lead. This is the one change between the two exercises, and it’s the defining feature of Novice. ANKC’s rulebook never reintroduces a lead at any class above this one
- Stand Free for Examination: also off lead, and the judge’s hands-on check now covers the head and body, not just the withers and back as at CCD. The mouth, legs, and tail still aren’t examined
- Recall: the same mechanic as CCD’s, from 15 metres instead of 12, and the dog now finishes by moving briskly back to heel position after the front
- Retrieve on the Flat or Change of Position (handler’s choice): either a dumbbell retrieve thrown at least 4 metres, or a distance-cued “down” given from about 3 metres away. Both are optional at this level, and neither exists at CCD at all
- Stand Stay and 1 Minute Down Stay: the same individual-stay format as CCD, held longer
Off-lead heeling is the headline change, and the comparison worth holding onto: CCD asks for a team on a lead, Novice asks for the same team without one. Everything else at this level either extends a CCD exercise, a longer recall, a longer stay, or introduces one of two optional skills that Open will make mandatory.
This clip shows the Figure Eight performed off lead, the exact version Novice tests, not the on-lead version from CCD.
Open (CDX)
Exercises:
- Heel Free and Stand Free for Examination: identical to Novice’s versions
- Drop on Recall: the same recall mechanic as Novice, but from 20 metres, and the dog is dropped mid-approach on command before being called in again. Where Novice tests a straight recall, Open tests one that can be interrupted and resumed on cue
- Retrieve Dumbbell on Flat: Novice’s optional retrieve, now mandatory, and thrown at least 6 metres instead of 4
- Retrieve Dumbbell over Solid Jump or Directed Retrieve (handler’s choice): either the same retrieve with a jump added on both sides, or a retrieve where the dog is sent to one of two designated gloves on a single arm signal
- Broad Jump or Distance Control (handler’s choice): a straightforward width jump, or a stand-stay cued through Down, Sit, Come, and Finish from about 5 metres away
- Directed Sendaway: the dog is sent about 10 metres to a marked area and expected to sit there on its own, no retrieve, no lead, purely directional control at a distance
This is the class where retrieve work, jumping, and true distance control all appear for the first time, none of it present anywhere in CCD or Novice. It’s a similar shape to what happens one rung up in FCI’s Class 1 and AKC’s Open class. The second competitive tier is consistently where retrieve and jump work enter the picture across all three systems, even though the exercises themselves don’t share a name.
Utility (UD)
Exercises:
- Seek Back: an article is dropped mid-heel-pattern, and the dog has to find and retrieve it by scent or sight after the handler has walked at least 20 metres past it
- Command Exercise: a heel pattern and a set of position changes performed using a single command mode, chosen in advance, either verbal or hand signal, never both together. A genuinely different discipline from Novice and Open’s heeling, where verbal commands are simply assumed
- Directed Jumping: the dog is sent to a marked area, then the judge, not the handler, chooses which of two jumps it takes on the way back
- Scent Discrimination: the dog picks, by scent alone, the one article out of twelve that carries the handler’s own scent, across three separate materials, leather, metal, and wood. At 45 points, this is the single highest-value exercise anywhere in ANKC’s obedience ladder
- Speak on Command, Food Refusal, or Directed Retrieve (handler’s choice of one): Directed Retrieve here uses three gloves instead of Open’s two. Food Refusal is worth calling out specifically, it isn’t a skill escalation like the others, it’s a pure impulse-control test, and it doesn’t build toward anything that comes later
- Moving Positions: the dog is left in Sit, Stand, and Down while the handler keeps walking in a straight line, then loops back to heel. Nothing at Novice or Open asks the dog to hold a position while the handler is still actively moving away from it
- Group Examination: an off-lead group stand-for-exam, handlers’ backs turned, at about 5 metres
Scent discrimination and single-command-mode heeling are the clearest illustration in the whole ladder of just how far obedience competition sits from what an ordinary pet actually needs. That gap is the honest premise behind PetCoach’s own framing of why obedience training matters in the first place. The sport rewards a level of sustained precision most house pets will never be asked for, and that’s a design choice, not an accident.
Beyond Utility: UDX and Higher
UDX doesn’t introduce a new skill family. Every one of its seven exercises is a direct escalation of something already covered at Utility or Open:
- Seek Back gains a decoy article the dog has to actively reject, not just find the right one
- Moving Positions becomes Positions in Motion: instead of looping tightly around the dog, the handler walks further out and returns from behind it
- Scent Discrimination flips its source: the dog now hunts for the judge’s scent, not the handler’s
- Directed Sendaway gains a recall tacked onto the end
- Distance Control lengthens from Open’s optional Down-Sit-Come-Finish sequence into six changes of position cued from further away
- Directed Retrieve becomes Multiple Retrieve, doubling from one retrieve to two
Above UDX sits Obedience Champion and, for dogs holding both UD and UDX, Obedience Grand Champion, the title permanently closed off to any dog that took the non-jumping shortcut described earlier.
How Scoring and Qualifying Works
Every class scores to either 100 points (CCD) or 200 points (Novice through UDX), and the qualifying score is a flat 85 percent of the total at every single level, from CCD’s 85 out of 100 up to UDX’s 170 out of 200. That consistency doesn’t hold across the whole competitive-obedience family. AKC’s qualifying score is a flat point threshold rather than a percentage rule stated the same way at every class.
Deductions fall into four bands. Minor covers small, forgivable slips, up to 20 percent of an exercise’s points. Substantial covers a real miss that still leaves the exercise scorable, from 20 to 50 percent. Anything over half the exercise’s points, or a total failure to perform its core ask, means that exercise doesn’t qualify, even if the rest of the run looks clean.
One rule is worth knowing on its own. A dog that never sits, downs, or stands at least once during a heeling pattern receives an automatic non-qualifying score for that exercise. It isn’t a graduated deduction, it’s a flat fail, regardless of how clean the rest of the heeling looked.
How This Compares to Singapore’s Obedience Scene
This is a real connection, not a claim of formal affiliation. No Singapore kennel club or association is ANKC-affiliated, and nothing here should be read as saying otherwise. What’s genuinely documented is that the vocabulary and title names showing up in Singapore’s own pet-community obedience competitions trace back to this specific rulebook.
Three points of evidence, taken together:
- Singapore’s own entry-level class runs the same five exercises as CCD, on the same 100-point scale, with only the per-exercise weighting differing
- Exercise names appearing in Singapore’s higher-class descriptions, Distance Control, Seek Back, and Food Refusal among them, exist in ANKC’s rulebook and don’t exist in AKC’s at all, which rules out AKC as the source for that specific vocabulary
- Judges credentialed at Singapore’s pet-community obedience competitions have consistently carried Australian ANKC credentials, not AKC ones
Singapore’s own competition rulebook is self-authored, not adopted wholesale from ANKC. It borrows vocabulary and title names, then reshapes them into its own class structure, which is a different thing from running ANKC’s rules directly.
How ANKC Differs From AKC, FCI, and Crufts
- Number of classes: ANKC runs 5 (CCD, Novice, Open, Utility, UDX). AKC runs 3 core classes. FCI runs 3. The Kennel Club (Crufts) runs 7 core classes before Championship Class C
- Utility’s role: optional in ANKC, not the default ceiling the way it is in AKC’s core path
- Qualifying score: a flat 85 percent at every ANKC class. AKC uses a flat point threshold. FCI grades on three tiers (Good, Very Good, Excellent). Crufts runs its own placement and points-based progression
- Shared vocabulary with FCI: essentially none. FCI’s numbered classes and coefficient-weighted scoring don’t map onto ANKC’s title-based, flat-point system at all
- Closest cousin: Crufts, since both are Commonwealth-lineage systems with a similar naming instinct, though the exact class-for-class overlap is worth reading directly against the Crufts breakdown rather than assuming it from the shared background alone
FAQ
Is ANKC the Same as Dogs Australia?
Yes. ANKC is the organization’s legal name, the Australian National Kennel Council. Dogs Australia is its current trading name. Both refer to the same body and the same rulebook.
Does My Dog Need ANKC Registration?
For the general obedience classes described here, no. Some ANKC events are breed-specific, but the obedience trial classes in this guide aren’t gated on registration that way.
Is ANKC Relevant for Training in Singapore?
No Singapore body runs ANKC’s rules directly. But the vocabulary and title names in Singapore’s own home-grown obedience competitions trace back to this exact rulebook, as covered above, so the underlying training targets carry over even without a formal affiliation.
How Does Utility Differ From Open?
Open introduces retrieve and jump work and basic distance control. Utility replaces straightforward commands with scent work, a single fixed command mode, and directed jumping chosen by the judge rather than the handler, a meaningfully different set of skills, not just a harder version of Open.
Curious what obedience training looks like for your own dog, competition or not? Talk to PetCoach’s team about a plan built around what your dog actually needs.
