The secrets of the world's greatest canine obedience champions.

On a wet weekend last December, a pack of 25,000 humans and 4,000 dogs made its way to Long Beach, Calif., for the annual AKC/Eukanuba National Championship. There were plush blue carpets, fully stocked bars, and 100 vendors pushing crystal-fringed dog sculptures and custom canine earrings. While most of the spectators didn't venture upstairs, away from the classic breed competition, that's where history was being made.

On the second floor, in rings surrounded by white plastic fences and folding chairs, the country's top-rated canine obedience teams competed in the American Kennel Club's 14^th Annual National Obedience Invitational. Over an exhausting two days, the dog-handler pairs performed a strictly defined set of exercises: heeling patterns, figure eights, the retrieval of specific dumbbells from a pile, high and broad jumps. In one of the more stunning displays, the dogs would hurtle toward the handler and—on a hand signal delivered from a world away—come to an immediate stop and drop to the ground.

And then they did it all again. And again.

"At this level, you make a significant mistake and basically you're out," said the winner, Petra Ford of New Jersey, who didn't. For the second year in a row, Ford took the rosette with her black Labrador retriever, NOC2 OTCH Count Tyler Show Me the Money UDX4 OM1, called Tyler. Indeed, those who had the privilege of standing around the hushed finals arena enjoyed one of the most consistent performances the sport has ever seen.

In the final round, neither of them showed any signs of fatigue. If anything, they were in danger of committing errors of exuberance. Ford accidentally overthrew the dumbbell in the retrieval exercise, and Tyler denied his predictable canine urges in not bounding after it. Joyously wagging his tail during the heeling patterns, he was close to overtaking his handler—a serious mistake. As Ford herself admits, "[Competitions] are hard because they require the dog to overcome every instinct they have."

Competitive canine obedience may be tied with neoclassical ballet as the most neglected impossible athletic activity in America. It's a demanding sport populated by monomaniacs who spend good years of their lives looking for the right dog and thousands of hours training them for trials, where even a spectacular triumph like Tyler's gets the winning team little more than a $2,500 check, a couple of gift certificates, and an invitation to lose money again next year. Meanwhile, downstairs at the main event—think Best in Show—a cute Scottish terrier named Sadie earned 20 times more prize money for winning what is basically a beauty pageant.

Yet devotees will tell you that obedience is one of the most exciting spectator sports anywhere and that the absence of big paydays only adds to its spiritual purity. The best teams appear to perform a kind of interspecies voodoo as they glide through intricately choreographed rituals, attached by nothing more than mental moonbeams. The beams connecting Ford and Tyler are among the strongest in the obedience solar system. As a consequence, the dog-trainer duo is staging a quiet revolution on the circuit.

The most obvious quality they bring into the ring is glamour. Ford and Tyler are both, well, fetching in their own species-specific way—this in a subculture where it's not uncommon for handlers to spend hours grooming their dogs while forgetting to wash their own hair. The AKC is not superficial enough to mention looks in its regulations, but it's hard to believe Ford's flame-red toreador shirts have no impact on the judges, who tend to be distinguished gentlemen of a certain age.

More important is the team's athleticism. Ford and her coach, Linda Brennan, have built a systematic approach to dog training based in part on techniques imported from the world of elite human athletes. Most dog trainers focus on repetitive skill drills, called proofing, that can become a death march. Literally. "A lot of these top obedience dogs don't seem to live very long," one trainer told me.