Weekdays, Michael “Mac” McCluskey, 50, works as a manufacturing engineer technician at Pratt & Whitney in North Berwick, but his days off are spent perfecting the art of “sic” time.
That’s when McCluskey can be found wearing a French linen suit, frequenting sporting clubs and taking lots of out-of-town trips with a group of trained professionals who know at least two languages, obey orders without question and attack perceived enemy targets on command.
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The subject is French ring sport, a highly disciplined European form of dog sport.
McCluskey, of Lebanon, is a trainer and sometime breeder of Belgium Malinois dogs that participate in three classes of ring sport: French, Belgium and Mondio ring.
“Ring sport is a European dog sport born in the early 1900s and designed as a breed suitability test for the Belgian Malinois shepherds,” said McCluskey. “Ring sport consists of jump and agility work, precise obedience work and protection work. The Malinois breed is often associated with K-9 police work. “
In ring sport, dogs compete in obstacle course, and field events. Dogs must first pass a test, called a brevet, qualifying them to compete at three successive levels of competition. Each new level challenges a dog’s endurance and temperament with increasingly difficult elements.
In ring sport, mental acuity is as important as physical prowess.
“Each dog enters the contest with 400 points to keep or lose depending on their performance,” said McCluskey. “Handlers are judged on their knowledge of contest rules and execution of them on the field.”
The handler-dog bond is key in ring sport. The pair takes to the competition field as one unit, performing a series of heeling patterns that are punctuated by judges’ commands and signals that cue the dog when to begin and stop each exercise.
Dogs are judged for their prompt responses and ability to fulfill a required task, whether that is being asked to scale an 8-foot wall, clear a long jump or take down a perceived mark. For the latter, dogs are trained to “sic” a target and hold a bite until signaled by judges to release their grip.
Perhaps the most difficult phase of the contest is called a refusal exercise. That is when a judge deliberately baits a dog by tossing a piece of meat or cheese at them that they have been commanded not to touch. One lick equals a 30-point deduction.
McCluskey and wife, Joyce, who introduced him to the sport, train four of their five shepherds for competition. Their oldest dog, Tibet, age 9, is an award winner, one of the only Malinois in the U.S. to be titled in Belgium ring, French ring and Mondio ring competition. Tibet is now retired and used exclusively to train decoys and handlers for the sport.
McCluskey dons his French linen suit to begin decoy work, training the dogs to bite the heavily padded suit for the protection-work segment of competitions.
“Decoys don’t need to wear gloves or headgear,” said McCluskey. “The dogs are trained to attack the suit, not the man wearing it.”
McCluskey also trains the human decoys who put the dogs through their paces during competition.
“While we train the dogs to push through perceived threats to hit their target, we train the decoys to prevent dogs from making contact at all,” said McCluskey. “Which is difficult to do when a dog is charging you from a distance of 50 to 70 meters.”
Ring sport is new to the United States within the past 25 years. The McCluskeys are members of the Mainely Ring Sport Club, and the Patriot Ring Club of Boxford, Mass. They train their four competing dogs most weekends and participate in up to three trials each year.
“Right now, we are preparing for the NARA (North American Ring Association) East Coast Championships in September,” said McCluskey. “There isn’t really any money in it and few rewards. What we are really after is the judge’s signature and a qualifying score in our scorebook.”
Staff Writer Deborah Sayer can be contacted at 791-6308 or at: dsayer@pressherald.com
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