James,
stacking is the process of having a dog stand so that they show off their conformation, i.e. their structure. Almost every dog in the show ring is stacked the same way although many breeds look completely different when viewed from the side. Hand-stacking is just what the name implies: you place the dog's legs in the position you want using your hands. We train our show prospects to accept hand-stacking from the time they are 5 weeks old. Here's an example:



The good news about hand-stacking is that all the dogs are set up identically and you can compare them when they are standing all in a row. The bad news is that good handlers can hand-stack a dog to disguise many faults mostly in terms of fronts or rears.

So, many judges will also want to see how the dog sets up on it's own without the handler placing the legs. That's called free-baiting where the handler uses the bait to encourage the dog to place it's legs properly. It usually takes a while to teach a dog to free-bait properly and most judges will want to see it with seasoned show dogs showing the the more mature classes such as AmBred or Open and with the Champions competing in Best Of Breed and Group competition.

Max, despite being 4 years old, has never shown. When he's stayed with us, I've hand-stacked him and taught him to accept the mouth/teeth exam and I've taught him the basic movements such as down & back, triangle and going around. But I've never really worked with him on his free-baiting. On Thursday, his first trip into the ring, he had no idea what to do when Kimm tried to bait him into position so he sat a lot. But on Friday, he had a better idea of what was expected and on Saturday, he free-baited very well. Because Max is structurally correct, he stands the same when hand-stacked or free-baited and that's what the judges are looking for. As you can see in this image, the judge is looking at his rear which is very straight and not collapsing toward the middle (cow-hocked). That's correct rear structure.



As Max gets more ring experience, he'll be a better show dog. He has the structure. He just needs to learn how to perform in a way that says to the judge "pick me".

Jim