What is Canine Musical Freestyle?
Canine freestyle is a musical performance choreographed to display the dog and handler’s talent, creativity, enjoyment, and bond that the team shares. It is a fun sport for the dog and handler, and audience. Freestyle is all about showmanship and giving the audience something enjoyable to watch!
The object of Musical Freestyle is to display the dog and handler in a creative, innovative, and original dance, using music and intricate movements to showcase teamwork, precision, artistry, costuming, athleticism and style in interpreting the theme of the music.
Heelwork-to-Music incorporates traditional dog obedience and the art of dressage and dance elements with an emphasis on non-standard obedience movements.
Both Musical Freestyle and Heelwork-To-Music routines should create a visually exciting display that is enjoyable to watch and which is equally enjoyable to dogs and handlers executing the programs. Canine freestyle is a showcase that truly demonstrates the joys and fun of bonding with your pet.
The foundation of the performance is traditional obedience exercises used in combination with the dog’s natural behaviors and movement along with innovative moves that captivate audiences and give the illusion of dance. Every movement is accomplished through subtle use of verbal cues and body language. The team present themselves as partners but the dog is always the focus or star of the show!

The many benefits of Freestyle:
• Cross training for Agility, Obedience, Rally-O, and any other sports.
• Attention, drive, and motivation building.
• Teaching snappy heelwork and proofing solid sits and downs.
• Game playing and having fun!
• Going beyond your basic tricks.
• Learning body language between you and your dog.
• Bonding.
• You can take this sport with you anywhere!
• Take your dog to a new level of training where creativity is limitless.
• Use it in your dog therapy program in nursing homes, hospitals, schools, etc.
• Use it for warm-ups in other sports.
• Low impact sport for when your dog is recovering from an injury.
• Keep your dog’s mind and body active when you have to stay indoors.
• Builds confidence in your own training as well as the confidence in your dog.
• Great outlet for energy!
• Take it to performance demos for dog fairs, fun meets, parades, etc.
……and of course, either video or live Freestyle competitions and who knows? Maybe your dog will be the next Super Star with all those new tricks they’ve learned!

Thank You!