Judges' Biographies
Phil Rustad — Rally
Phil Rustad has been involved in Dog Sports for over 30 years. His first dog was an Irish Setter named Gretchen, which he trained himself for hunting with the help of a book. His first formal Obedience training starting back in 1986 with a Brittany named Pepper. One thing led to another and he wound up showing in formal AKC Trials with Pepper. Over the years he has taught Obedience for the St. Paul Dog Training Club and for the Animal Inn Training School, and Agility for St. Paul Dog Training Club.
Phil currently has two Shetland Sheepdogs. His older Dog, Nike, (OTCH Hobi’s Walking On Heir UDX8 MX MXJ NF Can CD U-CD), was just retired from competition at the age of 13. Nike is a 4 time invitee to the National Obedience Invitational where his best finish was T-21st and became one of a very small handful of dogs to compete in both agility and obedience on the same day when he competed in the 2006 National Agility Championship.
His new dog Trip, (U-Ch Hobi’s Xtrem Trip Bluebanner UD RN U-CD), is working on his AKC OTCH. Trip is expected to make his agility debut late in 2009.
Phil has been an AKC and ASCA Obedience Judge for over 13 years. He has judged Obedience outside the U.S. in the Bahamas and Canada. He is a member of many local dog training clubs and AKC Clubs. He is a past board member of the Minnesota Agility Club, the Anoka County Minnesota Kennel Club and has served as a trial chair, trial committee member and steward for numerous local Obedience, Agility and Conformation events. He is the current President of the St. Paul Dog Training Club. Additionally, he occasionally presents seminars on obedience handling from the judge’s point of view in which he emphasizes the importance of exhibitors knowing the rules and taking control of the ring in order to get the best possible performance from their dog.Recently Mr. Rustad added the title “Author” to his resume when he completed his first novel, titled Dart, published in May 2009. Dart is a murder mystery set in the Twin Cities and elsewhere in the U.S. Not surprisingly, one of Dart’s main characters has a Sheltie. It is available at PhilRustad.com. A sequel is in the works. When not showing, training or judging dogs or writing novels, Phil is a full time Realtor with Edina Realty in Plymouth, Minnesota.