My New Chimerical Kit

This is Part 1 of a multi-part series on the game of Flyball.
A good friend of mine recently wrote a blog post on the merits of training an appropriate retrieve in relation to learning flyball.  You can read about it here.

If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed that this weekend there were quite a few posts with #flyball in them.  And if you don’t know me in “real life” you might be very confused.

Flyball has nothing to do with baseball.  Nothing to do with a ball being batted into the air.  It is a sport, though.  And it has everything to do with dogs.

Some Basics on the Game of Flyball

There are two organizations that govern flyball.  The first, and most common in our area, is the North American Flyball Association, or NAFA.  The flyball club that I belong to is affiliated with NAFA and we currently only compete in NAFA tournaments.  The second is called U-Fli.  For the purposes of this article, I will only be discussing NAFA Flyball, but I wanted to mention that U-Fli is out there and well distributed across the country.  I have no personal experience with U-Fli.

Flyball is a team sport for dogs.  And, yes, I know how crazy that sounds.  But trust me, it gets crazier.  Here’s a rundown of what happens in a flyball touranment:

Flyball is a relay race with 4 dogs on a team. The course consists of a starting line, 4 hurdles spaced 10 feet apart and a box. The first hurdle is 6 feet from the start line and the box is 15 feet from the last hurdle for a 51 foot overall length. The dogs jump the hurdles and steps on a spring loaded box that shoots out a tennis ball. The dog catches the tennis ball and then runs back over the 4 hurdles. When the dog crosses the starting line the next dog goes. The first team to have all 4 dogs run without errors wins the heat. Tournaments are usually organized in either a double elimination or round robin format. Double elimination is usually best of 3 or best of 5. Round robin is usually best 3 out of 5 and the first team to win 3 heats receives 1 point towards their standing in the tournament.

The hurdles’ height is dependent on the height of the dogs in the team — 4″ below the shoulder height of the shortest dog. 8″ is the minimum height and 16″ is the maximum height.

From Flyball FAQ – Flyball Home Page

Quick rundown of the different types of divisions there are in flyball:

• Regular Division: The team is not required to vary the breed of the dogs on the team.
• Multi-Breed Division: The dogs composing the team must be of all different breeds.
• Open Division: This is new as of the 2008 tournament season.  Dogs on an Open team can be comprised of varying breeds or the same breeds and can be from different clubs, whereas previously dogs switching clubs had a mandatory waiting period before switching.  This allows dogs to be shared if they’re unable to run with their parent club for whatever reason, and generally allows for more flexibility in the sport.
• Veterans Division: All the dogs on a Veteran’s team must be 7 years or older, and as with Open, can be composed of dogs from different clubs without completing the mandatory waiting period that is required with Multibreed or Regular.  Typically, Veteran’s teams run fewer races and heats than the other divisions.

Each division type is additionally broken up according to seed times (or the time that your team consistently runs, not exactly the average time but sort of) so that you’re not racing against teams that are simply going to blow you out of the water every time you go up against them.

The Titles and the Glory

Now that you know the what you are probably wondering the why.  I mean, you could find other more productive things to do with your time, right?

It’s for glory of course!  The magic number in flyball is 23.999.  23.999 seconds, that is.  If your team is able to complete a heat in under 24 seconds, each dog running is awarded 25 points towards titles.  Completing a heat in 24-28 seconds will result in the award of 5 points to each dog running.  Completing a heat in 28-32 seconds is worth just 1 point, and if the team takes more than 32 seconds to complete no points are awarded.

What does 23.999 seconds really mean for the team? It means that each dog on the team must complete the entire course in less than 6 seconds, or you have to have a combination of super fast dogs and a couple of slower dogs.

The current world record is held by SpringLoaded from Michigan and is 15.22 seconds for a Multibreed team and 15.32 seconds for a Regular team.  Our team was lucky enough to actually see SpringLoaded race at a tournament in 2007.  They’re amazing.  Totally amazing.

Now that you know the scoring for title points here are the potential titles:

The Joys of Teaching Flyball — A.K.A. Problems with training

So there you go, a relay race!  Is it clear as mud yet?  What this little blurb doesn’t tell you are the types of obstacles that you have to overcome.

1. Dogs will be able to return faster if they make a “swimmer’s turn” on the box. This can be particularly difficult as many dogs don’t know they have a rear end.  Know how dogs chase their tails?  Well that’s because they don’t know that it’s back there!  Teaching dogs that they have a back end is essential for the swimmer’s turn so that they able to swing their tush around and use their back feet to push off on the return back down the lane.
2. Dogs will be dogs. And this primarily means that dogs love to sniff other dog’s butts.  It’s their handshake.  Problem with that is, greeting / shaking hands with the other team during racing isn’t allowed.  That’s called a cross-over and if it happens often enough or aggressive enough a dog can get expelled from the active tournament or even from the sport all together.
3. Balls are meant to be delivered to the hand of the handler. Well, I suppose that they don’t have to be delivered all the way to the hand, but it helps.  A ball dropped too early (i.e., not completely across the finish line) is a fault (or flag) and if the team is to complete that heat, the dog will have to rerun the course and bring the ball all the way across.  Easiest way to ensure this happens is to teach the dog to bring the ball all the way back.
4. Recall, Recall, Recall, Recall, Recall. And just for good measure, I’ll say it one more time — recall.  A reliable recall is essential to this game.  Your dog simply must come tearing back to you (preferably at mach 5) no matter what is going on.  Teach that and you’ve won half the battle.
5. The quickest distance between dog and treats is not over the jumps. Sorry to break it to you, but the minute your dog realizes that you’re gonna give him treats, he’s gonna want to get to you as fast as he can.  And as fast as he can does not involve going over jumps!  “We don’t need no stinkin’ jumps!”  Except we do.  Unless we want to get flagged.  So, it’s essential that the dog learns that treats only happen when the dog goes over the jumps and brings the ball back.

The point is, flyball is complicated!  It takes a certain type of dog and a certain type of person.  If your dog loves to lie at your feet and look up at you adoringly, your dog is not built for flyball. If your dog wakes you up at the crack of dawn by depositing a truckload of tennis balls on your bed, dances around making play gestures, and then plays ball in the back yard with you in any kind of weather (rain, sleet, snow, shine) then chances are, flyball might just be the sport to run off all that energy.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more on Flyball!  I’ll be posting a typical day during a flyball tournament.

Related Posts

• March 4, 2010 -- It’s all about the Malinois
• February 5, 2010 -- [Material Girl] Feet, the way God intended them
• June 22, 2009 -- In flyball, it’s all about the Box Loader
• March 3, 2009 -- A Day in the Life of a Flyball Dog
• December 3, 2007 -- Flying Dalmatian #2