Easy to try out akc events that have a low ramp up?

That's a great start, so if you're interested in rally it might be worth taking those classes. I do rally with my first sports dog and it's a pretty low-pressure trial environment. :)

I'll caution you a little with rushing into any ring though, even if your goal is just acclimation. Obviously this depends on you and your dog, but with mine I find that my dog is massively more confident and able to handle challenging environments when he is also more confident about what he's doing there. If you're a first time competitor and/or your dog is new to sports, I highly recommend taking the time to get foundations down, especially in sports like rally where you can't reward in the ring. My first rally trial I was nervous but my dog was 100% ready to work, and that made it a great experience for both of us.

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Eh, we have fun matches periodically, which I would argue is more valuable than the ACT. Just a bit rough since a lot of them are on Fridays so you may need to take time off work to go. I always host my club’s fun match on Saturday, but our May trial was cancelled and the next one is end of August and ain’t no one sticking around in near 100 degree weather for a fun match, so I’ll likely host one in November...maybe. I would honestly expect more fun matches to pop up in the next year as people try to make up for the loss of club events. We’ll see though.

How did you know you were ready to start trialing Cam?

I brought him to a CPE event last summer and ran him at Level 1 (no mandatory weaves or teeter) treating it completely as a fun match and not expecting him to qualify, because we were far from a place I felt would be trial ready and we had not attended any fun matches. I learned a lot just from bringing him there, like how he runs in extension, how he runs in grass, and how he runs in dirt. The Novice level courses are very open and it was different than what we were learning so I started adjusting my timing and practicing distance and independence with him after that match. He NQed most of his runs and even took the teeter the wrong way, although managing to qualify in a points game, but it was less important that he did that and more than I got so much information as to how he was managing the space and where our training had holes in it.

Besides Fast CAT which has no threshold for entry, I just can't figure out when a dog would be ready for a trial of any kind.

I mean, it's really a "try it" sort of thing and it is completely dependent on your process. It's okay for your dog to not do well -- most people really struggle at their first Rally fun match or trial because even though their dog is flawless in their training building, the behavior hasn't been proofed for other areas. That's a big reason they have an "A division" in AKC for most sports, so that newbies don't necessarily have to compete against experienced people for placements.

Cherry, my terrier, was my first A dog in Rally and Agility. I noticed that everything we'd enter would be outside, so on top of the skill work we did, I also brought her to an outdoor Rally class, and took intermediate pet dog (pre-CGC level) obedience at a local club that trains outdoors at a busy park, even though she had already passed her CGCA. It gave me an understanding of which environmental distractors she could work through and which were a challenge for her.

Same thing for Agility, which we started doing fun matches a year later. I started doing drop ins at other facilities and also running her on grass at a few local fields when they opened up fun matches, so when she got to her first trial, while I had never trialed her in dirt, she had realized that Agility was something we did no matter what surface we were on.

For Cam, who has different pitfalls than Cherry and in certain ways that are a detriment to dog sports is more environmental, I've literally just gone very slowly with him and worked on his foundations over and over. He was already at a sequencing level at his first facility before we had to move on since we couldn't run him on the floors there anymore, and instead of going to a "harder" class elsewhere, or even a similar-level class, I brought him to a very, very basic "foundations" class with a different instructor, which is what we were doing until COVID-19 hit. The class is still doing really, really basic stuff like wing wraps and starting contacts, but it's outdoors in grass and also around other dogs who are very distracted so it's still very valuable and I don't really care that we've gone so far "backwards" at all. He had a sequencing class lined up which is postponed unfortunately but at least we worked out his relationship running on grass before hitting the new class.

u/stormeegedon is right, fun matches and CPE is a way better intermediary to trialing than ACTs, although it would be nice to have ACTs around here more often to at least earn easier titles or have something in-between for people to do. We already have it pretty difficult because we have zero indoor trials in the entire state for the most part, so any dog that wants to run agility competitively will need to learn how to run on grass/dirt.

I’ll preface by saying that we’ve never taken in-person classes and we didn’t do any foundation work before we started rally. I signed us up for Rally Skillbuilding 1 at bronze from Fenzi Dog Sports Academy in August of 2018 and we were competing by late October. We’re not a high-scoring, flashy, precise team but we’re now competing in the master class and halfway to finishing our title

Most shows say not to bring unentered dogs, but if you’re training as if you were warming up to compete and don’t advertise the fact that you aren’t entered, it’s likely fine. Dogs absolutely should not greet each other at trials, they shouldn’t be anywhere near each other. You shouldn’t hang out ringside or be near any competitors really.

If you scope out trials in your area, you can usually get a feel for how the venue works. I’d encourage you to attend trials without your dog first, and then bring him in if the space is good for it. But you can get a ton of trial prep just practicing in the parking lot/entryway, rehearsing ignoring other dogs and offering his attention to you.

You mentioned training classes, have you done any sport-focused training classes yet? If any of your instructors compete, they would be great resources to ask about options in your area.

I think the teamwork required for a Barn Hunt is often overlooked. It’s a really great sport for learning how to read your dog and communicate with them without physical contact. especially if you have a dog that is not naturally in intense indicator.