Reading a Dog Agility Competition Score Card

It isn’t just beginners that have difficulty understanding scoring and how it works in dog agility competition. In an attempt to help you understand what you are reading we are sharing some tips and pointers on how the game is scored. The following is an example card with fictitious numbers to give you an idea.

Distance: 177 yards SCT: 67 seconds Excellent A Pref 20 inch Judge: John Doe
Place Name Time TFlts RFlts WCFlts TblFlts E/F Score
Spot/L.Smith 60.21 0 1 0 0 2 Elim

After each course is set you will see the judge out on the course with a measuring wheel recording the yardages. That is what the Distance reading on the card tells you. It is the total yards the dog is running on that course.

The SCT:67 seconds is the Standard Course Time and refers to the time allowed to run the course. So in this example the dog has 67 seconds to complete the course before incurring time penalties.

Excellent A Pref 20 inch tells you that this dog was running the Excellent A Preferred in the 20″ division under the judge John Doe.

The first section of the score card is pretty easy to understand. It is the second part of the score card that gets confusing.  The middle row will have the headings: Place, Name, Time, TFlts, RFlts, WCFlts, TblFlts, E/F, and Score. Under the headers will be the information about the run.

Place tells if you ran a qualifying run and received a ribbon placing and would read as your actual class placement. In this example the dog did not place so there is no placing written down.

Name is the name of the dog and in this case it is Spot.

Time refers to the time your dog ran the course in. In this case it is 60.21

TFlts =Time Faults – If you go over course time this will have the amount of time you were over SCT time and in this example it is 0.

RFlts = Refusal Faults – any faults or refusals your dog had will be here. In the example there is 1 fault/refusal.

WCFlts = Wrong Course Faults – this is where you will see when your dog went off course. Again, this is a 0 for the example.

TblFlts = Table Faults – is where you find any faults incurred at the table.

E/F = Error/Fault – is the catch all for any errors or faults not in the other categories. This would be for dropped bars, missed contacts and the like. In this example it was 2.

Score = will tell you if you were eliminated (Elim), as the case with the example, or if you Qualified (Q).

Now you will be able to understand your scoring and will be a professional scorecard reader in no time.