Entries from August 2007 ↓

I’ve been reading about Texas’ new Lillian Law, which allows prosecutors to push for the steepest penalties in the nation against owners of dogs that bite and severely injury or kill someone.

The law was named after Lillian Stiles, a 76 year old woman that was killed by a pack of mixed breed dogs. The owner was found not guilty because it could not be proven that these dogs had previously attacked anyone before. This is referred to as the “free bite” defense.

While many cities, states and countries have pushed for breed specific restrictions which attempt to ban dogs belonging to breeds that are thought to be dangerous, it seems that the Texas legislature is heading in the right direction. You cannot put the blame on the breed. The best defense against breed specific legislation is to put the blame on the owner. If your dog bites, you should be held accountable.

I’m not sure if this law goes far enough (or too far), I’m not a lawyer or politician. But it is time for Breed Advocates and Victim Advocates to get on the same page and work together to fight against irresponsible and dangerous owners.

It’s these people that are giving bad names to some of the most loving and loyal dogs. Pushing for stronger legislation against these owners seems like the best way to save the breeds. I’d really like to hear everyone’s opinion.

To read more see: New law on vicious dogs gives officers tools to pursue owners

Robbie

The candidates for the three open NAFA Director positions are:

• Zachary Chernik (nomination letter)
• Alisa Romaine (nomination letter)
• Dale Smith (nomination letter)
• Scott Stein (nomination letter)
• Chris VanWert (nomination letter)

The Executive Director is running unopposed:

• Sam Ford (nomination letter)

If you have not done so, I encourage everyone to read the nominees nomination letters. Additionally, you should try to find out where each of these people stands on the issues that are important to you. I have personally met three people on this list, but I do not know how they stand on things that I find important.

When elected, these people will be on the board for three years, which in flyball time is a long time because things are changing so rapidly. Just look back at what happened over the last three years. U-FLI did not exist three years ago, jump heights have changed, the four-month rule changed to 90 days and is now 87 days, there were breed specific legislation issues, region assignment rule changes, the veterans class was introduced, the pick-up team concept will be put into practice on October 1st, and on and on and on. You can do the research and you will find that many things were voted on by the board over the last three years, and some things are still just as much of a problem as they were three years ago.

I have addressed some of the things that I see as still being a problem and you can read about them on this blog.

• Measuring - Do the nominees even see measuring as a problem? I think that measuring will be addressed in the not too distant future. The people that are voted to the board this term will more than likely be dealing with measuring in one form or fashion during their terms.
• Bureaucracy at its best - Height Cards go hand in hand with measuring. As long as measuring stays the way it is this issue with the height card and challenging will be an ongoing issue in my opinion.
• Flyball, a four letter word? - NAFA is starting to think more about image but a lot more can be and should be done. In some segments of the dog world, flyball continues to be a bad word and more needs to be done to educate people that do other dog sports. We need someone to champion the sport and publicize it more to the general public if we want continual growth in our sport.
• Focus on the Championships – Divisional championships have been addressed by U-FLI with their championship system and this should be addressed in NAFA. I know that Chris VanWert has put forth a proposal to the board about this issue but nothing has been done by the current board. Recognizing the rest of the flyball community that does not run in Division 1 is long overdue and needs to be addressed.

I have just listed four things that I find important to me but I know there are probably many other issues that you find important that I have not thought of. Please let your thoughts and questions be known, and make sure these nominees address them before casting your vote.

If you are anything like me, politics is not your favorite subject. However, everyone with a delegate vote should take notice, get informed about these nominees, and send in your vote. The future of NAFA flyball depends on it.

Thanks and Happy Racing,

Larry

You Make the Call

I was boxloading for a team during the U-FLI Southeastern Qualifier and made a stupid error during a key race. The two teams racing were vying for 1st and 2nd place and this one key race would place the teams. To keep the teams anonymous, I will just call them team A, which was running in the right lane and team B, was in the left lane. I was boxloading for team B and the racing format was 3 of 3.

Team B was just a little faster than team A, but sometimes the faster team doesn’t always come out on top.

Heat 1

Both teams ran clean and team B easily took the win.

Heat 2

This is where the boxloader, me, made the stupid mistake. The first dog in the lineup on my side consistently pushed off the box very hard causing it to be very crooked. Both the first and second dog took the ball from the left hole so they turned the same way. I didn’t want the box to be that crooked for the second dog because I thought that he might bobble the ball or it might hurt his turn with the box that crooked. So I loaded his ball, a small ball I might add, and nudged the box to straighten it. The dog was a almost to the box when I did this and the ball rolled out of the large hole, down the front of the box, and rolled out onto the mat. The dog didn’t miss a beat, scooped the ball up off the mat, did a perfect box turn, and returned to his handler. I did not see the box judge raise the flag nor did the head judge see the infraction. The third and four dogs completed their runs and easily took the win.

I looked over at the box judge and there was no reaction. However, there was some stirring from team A - someone had undoubtedly seen what had happened on my side and told the head judge. The head judge came back to the box judge, asked if there was a flag and the box judge said that there was, and told the head judge what had happened. I could hear the head judge ask why the flag wasn’t raised but I didn’t hear the answer.

The head judge went to team B’s captain and explained what happened and gave the win to team A.

Heat 3

Both teams ran clean but team B’s last dog had a late pass and team A took the win.

Controversial Call

As you can imagine, there was a lot of controversy over the call. Did the head judge make the right call in this key race? Since the head judge didn’t see the fault and the box judge didn’t notify or tell the head judge right after the heat that there was a problem, should the heat have been rerun?

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You Make the Call - Would you like to have your questions or problems answered in the poll? Just send me the all the details using the contact form and I will do the rest.

Larry

I promised to write an article about starting your dog against the U-FLI lights when I wrote about the NAFA lighting system. It had been a while since I had raced against the U-FLI lights and I didn’t trust my memory to give an accurate description of the lighting system. So, this past weekend we had the opportunity to play in a U-FLI tourney and I think I can give everyone a little insight.

On Saturday morning I wasn’t doing too well. My starts were all over the map, so to speak. I was watching for the blue light, but my brain wasn’t quite engaged enough before the first yellow would come on. Late! Watching again for the blue light, brain anticipating, early! What is the matter with me? About an hour into the afternoon it dawned on me. There are three little green dots at the bottom of the light tree. When the judge starts the race, the three lights go out! Blue light comes on. Yellow light comes on. Release! There it was all along. My Ready, Set, Go was there all along and I just didn’t notice those three little lights before.

So, as with the NAFA lights all you need to get a great start is to set your cadence. Little green dots go out, Ready! Blue light comes on, Set! First yellow light comes on, Go! By now you already know how to find the right spot on the floor so I won’t go into all of that again. If you missed it you can look back at my previous post of “Great Starts” to find out where to be on the floor. A great start is easy to get once you know what to look for.

Have fun everyone! I’m still trying to get those perfect .000 starts.

Fay

Photo by Willie Moore, wmConsulting.

Bobbling at the box can be caused by a number of factors and some of the ball catching exercises may help with bobble problem. However, many times it is because the dog is not in the correct position to catch the ball. “Ideally, you want the dog’s front feet and shoulders over the ball when they catch. If they are too far to either side of the ball, the body has to adjust by using the box as a walk way to get to the ball.” Sonya, Sure Shots .

I have found that most of the time, if you have used the Flyball Training Manual to train your dog, you will not have a problem with this. However, if your dog is having problems being in the correct position on the box, one way to correct this is with target training.

Target Training

You can use a piece of duct tape for this or anything that will stick to the floor, chute, and box. You will need to start by training your dog to touch the target (i.e. tape). If you are familiar with Clicker training you should not have a problem with this. Once they are consistently touching or jumping on the target you will need to transfer the target to the chute and/or box. You can follow the training in the Flyball Training Manual for Lessons 4 and 5 for chute and box training. In place of the hit-it command, you should use the command “touch” or whatever command you used when training the dog to touch the target.

A Word About Retraining

If you are retraining a dog that has been playing for some time, this could be a long process. I am sure that you have heard of dog muscle memory. This is something that is rather hard to overcome. Just think of retraining in this context, if the dog has hit a flyball box 1000 times you will need to have him hit it 2000 times correctly to change his turn. This means that you will need to pull the dog from all tournaments and just work on him hitting the box the correct way. For dogs that have been playing for some time, it may not be possible to correct the dog’s turn. You may improve it but may not ever correct it completely.

I welcome your input and any other suggestions that you have for correcting ball bobbling and box problems.

Larry