The club secretary Heather Turpie said the canines on show do plenty of amazing things, but watching scent work is a highlight.

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"Watching them using their noses, I think is quite a fascinating thing," she said.

"But just watching dogs work with their owners, you know, happily heeling next to them and doing what they're being asked to do is great.

"It's all through positive reinforcement."

This weekend 42 handlers will be displaying their dogs and these fantastic skills, and despite the cost of fuel the competition will still host people from around the state.

In contrast to recent dog show weekend at the showgrounds, in which Ms Turpie was also involved, this collection of hounds will focus on obedience and performance sports like agility, rally and tracking.

So, what does it take to compete with the best?

Ms Turpie said all breeds can compete but hard work is necessary.

"We get all breeds and we get crossbreeds," she said.

"You get from little papillons up to Leonbergers and to Great Danes.

"Some people are very competitive and they work very hard at it but it does take a couple of years to get them up to that standard to be really good.

You can enter before that in some of the lower classes where it's not not such a tough competition, but it takes you a couple of years usually [to train the animals up]."

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Some of the tasks on display will require all that training and more. In the higher levels of obedience the scene discrimination segment will ask the dog to identify a wooden or metal strip handled by their owner from among a pile of identical objects.

"There's another one when they do a heeling pattern [including potential directions to sit, stand and do figure eights] as they're walking around, the judge walks behind them and and drops an article which the handler has put their scent on," Ms Turpie said.

"And then at the end of the healing pattern, the person turns around and sends the dog back to go back over where it's walked looking for this one object on the ground."

The rally will take place on Sunday at Finn Street Recreation Reserve, White Hills, from 9am to noon.

"There will be two obedience rings running together and three rally rings running together so it'll be quite a lot of action going on."

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