Entries from July 2007 ↓

The most important thing in flyball training is laying a good foundation from which to build upon. Just as with building a house, this process should not be rushed because everything that comes after will use this foundation.

Many people just entering the sport want to see results too fast and when they don’t see them they get discouraged and quit. A 6 or 8 week flyball course is not enough time to have most dogs trained and running in the ring as most new people expect. Six to 8 weeks may not even be enough time to achieve a good solid foundation and this is where many trainers fail.

Training Pitfalls
New people entering the sport by taking a flyball training class should be prepared for slow results. Like agility or obedience, mastering flyball may take several classes before a dog is ready to race. There is really no point in wasting your time and theirs if they want instant results. The new people seeing this sport for the first time only see dogs running, jumping, and retrieving a tennis balls. They will tell you that their dog loves tennis balls. Any good trainer will tell their new people that it takes time and they should not rush these newcomers just so they can get new people and dogs in the ring. Trainers do their trainees and their dogs a disservice by taking this approach.

Best Approach

Take as long as it takes to train the dog to be the best they can be. Getting the dog in the ring as soon as possible is not listed as one of the training goals in the previous chapters. Use the lessons in this manual and do not bypass any of them especially the first two. They are by far the most important and ones that are frequently missed by many flyball trainers.

Motivation

Developing a good motivator for your dog is one of the most important things you can do for your dog. The traits most often displayed by the truly exceptional flyball dogs are motivation and drive. Their owners and handlers, through positive training and motivation techniques, have been able to tap into them and bring out the best and that desire to please and to give 110%. You have the power to do the same thing with your dog.

Obedience Training

Much of the things you were taught in obedience training you don’t use when training a flyball dog. Flyball training is not obedience training and some things taught in obedience training have no place in flyball training. Discard all negative training techniques and only use positive motivation. Granted, some breeds required a more forceful approach at different times, but as a general rule the positive approach will produce the best results in the long run.

Retraining

Avoid retraining at all cost and train right the first time. I know that mistakes can and will be made but don’t let bad training or unwanted behavior continue. At the first sign of unwanted behavior, backup and redouble your efforts to remove it before moving on.

Retraining is much harder than training right the first time. Dogs are creatures of habit and training out bad or unwanted behavior is much harder than training in good ones from the start. A very good example is letting a dog hit a flyball box before a proper box turn is taught. It is very difficult to retrain a good box turn after the dog has found his own way and most owners will realize this when it’s too late

Training Manual Information

This is a series of articles that I will post about Flyball training. I would ask that you please try to keep your comments to the specific topic of the each article, for there will be many others. You can see a high level outline of the topic to be covered in future post by viewing the Training Manual. Keeping the comments specific to each article will help future readers.

Please keep in mind that there are numerous methods in use but these are the ones that I use and they are some that work for me. If you have others that you would like to share, please post your comments.

We have a black Labrador retriever and I have enjoyed looking at the photos on the Labster.com web log. If you love labs or just like looking at neat dog photos checkout the site.

I bet you guys can’t do this!

The Yawn, originally uploaded by Mr.Martee.

I think that both flyball organizations know what the stakes are in this business called flyball. You can choose to bury your head in the sand and try not to believe it but it is a business now.

Just a few short years ago NAFA had a monopoly on flyball and the NAFA Board of Directors (BoD) could make or change rule(s) without much regard to consequences. Please believe that I am not suggesting in any way that the decisions they made in the past were not clearly thought out. I think that all members of the BoD, current and past, have and had the best interest of flyball in mind when all decisions were made. I maybe a little naive in that thought but I think that I’m right. I know there are many dedicated people who serve in those thankless positions and I believe that at times it is hard for them to make the right call.

Now there is U-FLI and everybody gets what they want in either NAFA or U-FLI. Everybody should be happy. …but, they’re not. Why can’t U-FLI be what it is to those who want it AND NAFA be what it is to those that want that? Why can’t both organizations have a peaceful “co-existence” instead of “competing” interests?
Comment by Chris on Bureaucracy at its best.

Things have changed and it is more important now than ever before that the NAFA BoD and the delegates make the right call. Neither organization can sit back and rest on their laurels. Now it comes down to who can win over the most fans, is the easiest to use, and provides the best customer experience.

No matter what you think or you choose to believe, these two organizations are in competition. I think that both organizations can peacefully co-exist but the one that most meets the needs of the flyball community will win out in the end. I don’t see either organization going away any time soon but it could happen. I’m sure that NAFA has already experienced a decrease in revenue now that U-FLI is on the scene. It shows by what has taken place over the last year. Jump heights have been changed and the pickup team concept is now being discussed. These things were discussed a few years ago but nothing was done until now.

It is more important now than ever before that NAFA be more responsive to its customers’ needs or risk losing its customer base.

Larry

Jump heights go hand in hand with measuring and this time I think that NAFA has this one right. Unlike measuring, I can’t sight any objective reason why I think this but to me it just feels right. I have a height dog that jumps 8” in NAFA (would probably jump 7 but why subject myself and my dog to the stress of measuring) and 6” in U-FLI. I think he may be just a fraction faster over 6” jumps but not really any big noticeable difference. I don’t have a problem with 6” jumps for the smaller dogs but I think 12” is not high enough for the larger breeds, and 14” seems like a better height.

I could only find one article on the Internet talking about the optimal jump height for most dogs. It is titled, Jump heights in Flyball and is found on the Dogs in Canada website and written by Heather Lawson. I have no idea by what authority or expert knowledge the author has in this area. It may not be anymore than I have, virtually none, but her argument is persuasive.

The best jump height for a fast and safe run is 10 inches. The height dog should be 14 inches high, large enough to easily handle the length between each jump. The ideal height dog would have most of its height in its legs to make the 10-inch jumps comfortably. A Flyball player for 12 years, Angela Stefanac from Winnipeg agrees. “By raising the jumps to 10 inches, these dogs need to push a little harder to clear the jump, putting more power into their stride, without having to arch their backs.”

I really have nothing to dispute this assessment because the last team I ran on had a 14 inch height dog and my Border collies smoothly took the jumps with no problem.

The maximum jump height in U-FLI is 12” and is probably a little low for larger dogs so I think the 14” height settled on by NAFA is a good height for larger breeds. Ideally, if NAFA changed their measuring method to something similar to U-FLI, lowered the minimum jump height to 6”, and adjusted where each dog fit into each height category they would score big within the Flyball community. This is my opinion what is yours?

Larry

Have you seen the latest Height Card Challenge Rule and Forms from NAFA? What a bureaucratic nightmare. Three complete pages and two forms all talking about Height Cards and Challenging, why am I not surprised by this? Because that’s what happens when you have a questionable or subjective rule - you leave yourself open for it and you need more rules to regulate it. Just read my other post about measuring and why the NAFA method is antiquated or maybe a better word to describe it, obsolete.

They have created this whole bureaucracy for an obsolete measuring method. The built in animosity factor for this has to be off the charts, and all of this for a dog sport that is supposed to be “FUN.” It says in Section 7.1 (d), “A height card is not subject to challenge except as provided below:” and then it goes into 5 long sub-paragraphs of how it can be challenged.

When you look at the challenge review process, it gets even better; six paragraphs and multiple sub-paragraphs covering a page and a half. The owner of the dog being challenged has x number of days to respond to the challenge and has to submit a video containing a judge measuring the dog. The funniest part of the video requirements is that the judge measuring the dog has to list the height to the nearest 1/16 of an inch. After the committee receives the video, there is a whole other process that covers actions by the Board of Directors, the Executive Director, and Judge’s Committee. All for one height card that may not be worth the paper it’s printed on or reprinted on whatever the case may be.

If you had a Club Owner from a competing team that didn’t like you and they had a $100 (cost of a challenge) they could make your life hell at least two times a year (maximum number of times a Club Owner can make a challenge per year).

I guess the worse part about all of this is that there has to be a rule for it. Let us all pray that NAFA sees the light soon and moves to a better measuring method.

Larry