Does your area have a lot of dog events?

Conformation shows, agility/rally/obedience trials, lure coursing, IPO, etc etc.

It'll be a while until I move, if I ever do (I love CO) but when/if I do, I definitely want to be somewhere that has a decent amount of dog stuff going on. The Denver area is okay for it... there's only one large conformation show every year, with one or two very small ones scattered through the metro area, and a few other large shows in the state but not terribly close. There seem to be a bunch of agility trials down in Castle Rock, but I think it's just one club that always holds them. Lure coursing is sparse (at least all-breed LC is) and there are a couple of IPO clubs, but I haven't checked them out yet. I don't think there's much UKC activity though which bums me out.

What's it like where you live? Would you recommend your city/state for dog people?

Wisconsin in general is very good for dogs. Lots of stuff, mostly AKC. There are more events in more venues as you move closer to Minnesota. The town I live in now has a kennel club that puts on 5 obedience shows a year, four agility trials, and two conformation shows.

And it's 5 minutes from my house

And Toller Nationals are there in 2015

In a few years I hope to move to Columbus, OH though. Because Posidog.

I live in Middletown, NY and there are only few events for pets. I take my pet to every event and prepare him well before the event.

I know there's at least 1 trial per month at the local agility place. And there's probably more hosted by other groups.

I've been told that flyball matches and obedience trials are quite popular here as well, I'm just not as into either of those sports enough to know for sure.

There was also the "dog cafe" a few weeks back, and there's a food sale going on by a rescue, a dog 5k.... there seems to be quite a few things. Once I have the money I'll probably get more involved

I live in the same area as ozfozz, so... my answer is just to parrot what she said.

I'm only really familiar with a few sports. I know that on just about any given weekend you can find an agility competition within a 1-2 hour drive (and sign up for it last minute!). Flyball happens once a month or so. I think OB/rally competitions happen around once a month or so too. Disc happens pretty regularly. I hear that coursing happens a few hours outside of the city but I haven't attended. I think conformation shows are around every 1-2 months but I'm not so sure.

We have Woofstock, the All About Pets Show and other dog-friendly and/or dog-focused events.

Generally ok. My house is 90min north of NYC and there is no shortage of dog events within a 2 hour drive. New Jersey and eastern PA are huge for dog shows, though they are a bit of a haul (anywhere from 1-4 hours). There are things in CT too. I wish there was more stuff going on right in my town, but being able to make a day trip to a number of venues is pretty awesome.

I do have trouble finding training facilities. My main place was close but it was the only option, and agility was an hour away. I'm still trying to figure out what's available up here in Saratoga.

Saratoga is definitely more pet dog friendly, with dog friendly stores and pet events, but a lot less shows within an hour or two (and the ones they have are small)

Middletown has a fantastic agility facility with many trials ever year.

My town itself has a handful of competitions (OB, rally generally) but within a 2 hour drive there is probably some dog sport trial every weekend because I am 90 mins-2h from two large metro areas.

Only all the time.

Dog sport events are pretty common here depending on what you do. Mostly AKC, UKC. Smattering of other venues -- Int'l confo, ASCA, CPE. Virtually no NADAC, APDT (or whatever they are called now), or USDAA...they effectively do not exist here unless you are a road warrior.

Within the common venues there are a lot of local sport options: obe, rally, agility, conformation, upland hunt tests (need to travel far for retriever tests unfortunately), tracking, earthdog...barnhunt and nosework are just getting started. Not much in the way of dock diving. Not sure whether we have much of a IPO or coursing community as those are not my worlds.

Dog-friendly, though, not so much. Dog are banned from many many places and there are few and poor non-competition dog oriented sites (banned from hardwares, even outdoor cafés, public transportation, etc.).

My island has one confo/ rally show a year ..

The closest agility trial to my house is 3hrs but I regularly drive 5 to get to my fav trial location. Every agility weekend is an expensive one. Lol

Hahaha no.

It's Oklahoma.

There's some AKC and a surprising amount of TDAA (9 trials a year within 40 minutes). USDAA just started last year and there's 2-3 trials a year. We're on like.... #4 for the state. Ever.

There's a few flyball teams. Nosework classes but no trials. Driving 8 hours to a nosework trial is a 'close trial' Some UKC stuff. No dock diving. Some disc but it's far between I think. Rally and obedience is pretty much impossible to find a positive trainer for. Theres a couple AKC herding places. Not sure of other venues. Barnhunt just came this last winter when we had a judge move here that used to train with my agility trainer. We have not actually had a trial yet though, just workshops.

Oklahoma does host a surprising amount of nationals though. We've hosted AKC agility nationals a lot and do again I believe in 2016? We also host a lot of breed nationals and my training club hosted AKC lure coursing nationals this year.

And sadly one of our sports trainers in the area passed away in 2012 so that did not help.

I saw that a trainer here is actually holding a class for potential trainers to learn to train agility and learn how to set up a school with all the required insurance, etc. There's way more potential students than classes at this point. I may actually go even though I wouldn't imagine I'd teach for another 5-10 years. When I first moved back I found one trainer and she doesn't hold classes when /where I could get to them. But that was it and I couldn't find anymore. I only found my place via word of mouth. There are more trainers here than I thought but it takes a lot of 'being in the know' to know... and that's hard for newcomers. My trainer is 15 minutes away which is awesome. And she's a great trainer too, I wouldn't go anywhere else.

So basically there's an amazing group of people working very hard to start some very neat things here. But it's all just at the baby stages. Kind of cool to get involved when there's so many new things starting out.

There's a woeful lack of dog sports in my area. Any place I want to go is at least a 2-3 hour drive away, minimum. So a weekend of agility or w/e would require 12 hours driving. Ick.

Closest sport trainer (non-basic obedience) is 45-60 minutes away.

But we do have a lot of places locally for off leash, dog parks, hiking trails, and so on. So there's that.

Lol. We literally have everything. USDAA/WCRL, NADAC, CPE, UKC, AKC, UKI, TDAA, uhhh what am I forgetting? So, agility, obedience, rally, tracking, conformation. I know we also have French Ring and IPO and herding though I haven't really participated in those things.

And living where we do now, there is much agility in our backyard. Well, if we had a backyard that is.

ETA: How did I forget ASCA! Lots of ASCA!

Yes. There is conformation just about every weekend within a 40min-3 hour drive. Obedience, rally, agility. I've heard it can very difficult to get into agility trials though. Fun matches are getting popular. Lure coursing is around but you have to really look to find it (there are 2-3 clubs, one in MA and two in CT). There is more IPO heading out towards Boston. We have AKC, UKC, USDAA, WCRL. Herding events. Flyball is around. Nosework is around. CDSP obedience is catching on. Barn hunt you can catch a trial within a large radius, maybe once a month or every other month.

There aren't very many trainers though...mostly the trainers do "FOR FUN" agility or "manners" obedience. Clean Run is up the road and they only train Masters level dogs.

In my town itself there's a club that does three agility trials and three rally/OB trials every year, they also still do earthdog and tracking if I remember right but not QUITE so frequently. Less than an hour away is a club with a building not quite big enough to host an agility trial, but they do host fun runs, and they also do some obedience and just started doing barn hunts.

I'm pretty much in the middle of Chicago, Indianapolis, and St. Louis, so there's lots of big cities within just a couple/three hours and there's plenty to do in each place. There's also a few clubs within another two-ish hours that are doing stuff more frequently now. Springfield has a big confo show several times a year and once a year it lines up with an agility trial. So there's lots within just a couple hours drive. During the summer I could theoretically do agility every single weekend and never have to drive further than three hours of any of it.

Mostly there's a lot of AKC, CPE is also popular. USDAA used to be popular and I believe still is down in the St. Louis area, but it's not as common as it was when I was starting with Auggie. Flyball is not super common, neither is dock diving unless you're down by the St. Louis area, and herding you have to basically drive to Purina Farms for. Many years ago the state fair had DockDogs but they of course haven't had it again since I've been wanting to do it. =P

OTOH there's also lots of dog "events" like dog walks or runs, bark-in-the-park type stuff. Fun things for casual owners to do.

We had a boarding facility in Boston and a Bass Pro at a football stadium both hosting DockDogs for the past few years, but they decided not to do it this year . My own store is hosting it this weekend, but it seems to be really dropping off. It is expensive to host.

Yes and no. Depends on what you like. There's a good bit of confo, obedience, and rally, a fair amount of agility, a little bit of dock and coursing. No bitesports within a 2 hour radius to my knowledge. I haven't found much in the way of nosework for trialing, but there are trainers for it. People LOVE their dogs here, but the vast majority just love them as pets. There are quite a few pet events.

There's an amazing sport training facility about 40 minutes from my house that I've been going to since I was about five, lol.

I only really do AKC, but there's a lot of stuff. If I wanted to, and were willing to drive 3-4 hours, I could trial every weekend. Realistically I'm willing to drive 1-2 hours, and I could trial every couple weeks if I wanted to.