Another championship season has come and gone and is now in the history books. Unfortunately, I’ve missed both the NAFA and U-FLI championships but from reading about both events, it sounds like everyone had a great time. It seems like I will be reading more about the events that I miss than having firsthand accounts of the ones I’ve attended, for I don’t really have a team right now. I mean I own a team but there are just three of us.
I’m sure that I’ve written about this before somewhere, I think it may have been, “Flyball, a four letter word?“
The three of us have always traveled to teams outside our area about 100 miles away, and it’s not as if we haven’t tried to start a team in our area over the last 7 years because we have, numerous times. Two of us are burned out from trying, and I am one of the two burnouts. Not only are we tired of trying, we are tired of traveling the 100 miles to play which is one of the reasons why there is just the three of us. Our teammates from the north didn’t want to travel to us and we were tired of traveling to them. Since they made up the majority of the team, they split with us to start their own team and I can’t blame them.
We split up on good terms and they agreed to help us at tournaments but I know that it’s a burden on everyone. One of my current teammates works in a hospital and has a very inflexible schedule and weekends are involved. It seems like most of the tournaments we would like to attend are held on a work weekend, which leaves just two on a team of three. Finding two people to help is bad enough but finding three is a lot more difficult. Then you run into the problem of being in the same division as the people that are helping you and this creates a bigger problem. Additionally, there is the fact that you can never get better because there is no consistency. You can’t run your own dogs and that’s no fun. It’s just a shame that Flyball is a team sport. I’ve heard it said that the best and the worse thing about Flyball is that it’s a team sport.
With that said, I sure do love running on a good team. There is nothing better where everyone is working together, making those tight passes, and the excitement of a team that is running in sync with each other. I do miss it.
The Path of Least Resistance
I could follow the path of least resistance and hang up my tug and the only thing keeping me from doing this up until this point has been my dogs because they do love the game. However, some of them are young enough and we could take up Agility, if I lost about 50 pounds. I guess I would lose some weight by just starting Agility so maybe it would be a good thing. Keeping them busy and losing weight too. On the other hand, maybe I could turn them all into Disc Dogs. Most of them like to play with the Disc and is one of the games we play to keep them in shape. Yea, this sounds even better. I can keep my 50 pounds and they can get the activity they need to keep me sane.
The Flyball Blog
I’m still looking for more contributors to keep this blog going. I’ve heard from a few people and if they could step up to the plate soon it would help. I think this is a valuable resource for the Flyball community and I would like to see it continue.
Happy Racing Everyone,
Larry
Related Post:
13 comments ↓
Larry, I feel your pain. When I moved to SW Missouri, I tried to start my own team…I did, and it was myself and my husband - we borrowed handlers, but it was hard. So, we joined forces with a team in IL - we never practice together - and meet up at tourneys - which makes our 16.13 best time all the more exciting. I train our dogs at my home, which is hard, as I don’t have the help of anyone by my 5 and 8 year old boys. Side by side work is non-existant! My green dogs usually see another lane for the first time at tournaments!
I have to say this works for us. We are all good handlers, and make adjustments as needed. Between my captain and our house, we make up for the majority of dogs (I have 12 trained dogs and 3 in training). It is hard, but, I love my teammates, and look forward to spending time with them at tourneys. We all have a good time, enjoy each others company, have the same attitude about the sport.
So maybe, look for a team that shares your philosphy, and join forces? Meet up at tourneys, but keep your training up with the three.
That is the hardest thing about finding new persons that are as devoted (crazy) to the sport as we are.
Jackie
Thanks for the encouragement Jackie. We have many dogs too and some of them, even when we were running with a team, never ran much. They are the slower dogs but are solid good running dogs but there was never enough room for them. We still practice with them and keep them in shape.
It is hard finding new people as you say and you can go through 10 or more to find 1.
Well this comes back to my idea. Unfortunatly I don’t have any computer skills so if some benevolent person would like to create this web page please do as it would benefit the entire community. If we had a site with forums by region so people could leave their name, info, training phil, etc. in the hopes of matching up with people for pick-up teams or long distance team arrangments it would really help out people. It would cut right through some of the main conflicts people face on teams by stating preferences right up front. So essentially it would be the match.com of the flyball world.
I have something like that on my Info i-Flyball site but I would probably need to add a couple of additional fields to the Clubs form. If we had enough interest I could write an additional program for pick-up team sign up.
I started such a forum organized both by Region and type of team. Example, there are seperate sections for Open Class, Veterans and Performance.
So far, it hasn’t been visited very much but, that could be because it is a new message board and not many people know about it yet.
You can access it here:
http://www.freewebs.com/chrisvanwert/nafaflyball.htm
Thanks for the link Chris. That’s pretty much what I had in mind. I’ll link it off our regions facebook and club sites
Larry…do you really need your sanity? I mean if you’ve been doing flyball for a long time clearly it’s not an essential thing for your life.
It’s a bummer to be burnt out on flyball, but you certainly have a harder time participating than I do for sure! You know it’s okay to take a break from a sport. Sometimes it’s just what you need mentally. I really enjoy agility & herding, but when I do those things it often makes me really miss flyball. Partially for the team aspect, partially because it takes a whole lot less thought on my part to run flyball vs agility/herding. Having said that we’ve nearly quit flyball entirely twice, primarily due to that dirty word “team”. Or more specifically people who don’t understand that “team” doesn’t mean “dictatorship”.
You’ve talked a lot about the stress of trying to grow your team and that may color your recruitment efforts. Great I’m talking to another person who probably won’t do flyball, why bother. Not the most appealing attitude. I think people often get involved in dog sports b/c they are looking for friends, friends who like dogs are even better. Especially for people new to an area, dogs are a great way to break the ice & make friends. Not sure how to target that kind of demographic. Many of our team members fell into flyball by accident, someone saw their dog & suggested it to them as somethign fun to do, or they saw it somewhere and thought my dog can do it. I know it was 2 years from when I first heard the word flyball before I heard it again, this time with info on how to check it out. So your efforts may not yield immediate results, but keeping flyball alive in your area might!
Our best tool is offering short beginner class for people to try out flyball with no commitments. I think the beauty of that is that people can spend 5 classes seeing if they like it, if their dog likes it, and not feel like they are a failure if it doesn’t work out. We of course give lots of praise to dog & handler!
Enough babbling/sunshine blowing from me.
Thanks for you input Jayne. I think you are right and maybe I do need a break. You are also right about training new people. From my experience, I put a lot of effort and time into training new dogs and people only to never see them again. I would much rather them take a couple classes and tell me “it’s not for me” than spend a month or two and then never see them again.
I know that I’m not the best people person so I guess I need to leave me and my attitude at home and let my wife handle the people aspect of it. Thanks again.
I have recently left my second team. I left the first one because of a job-realted move. I made the decision to leave my second team because of another person who thought “team” meant “dictatorship.”
All the time, I was on my second team, however, I was holding “free for the public” Flyball classes every week at a small training facility. I began these classes mainly because I had a shy dog in training and I needed somewhere to practice this dog outside my house and with other dogs around besides the one he lived with. It worked out great - in fact, still works.
Every week, I stop by for an hour with my practice equipment and dogs, teach a few dogs Flyball, get my dogs their weekly skill practices, and leave feeling much happier than I arrived. (My job is stressful!) I’ve been doing this so long now, I have a few regulars. I even have a green dog prospect who’s been to a few tournaments.
I seriously believe this way of “weekly, open to the public classes” works better than the “sign up for an 8 week class” idea. Sure, I get some dogs who stop by once or twice, then disappear, but I also get a lot of people who come as they are able, twice a month or so, learn about Flyball, see others dogs at different levels doing things, and find they enjoy the sport.
The people aren’t forced into a set 8 weeks schedule that may or may work depending on other plans, but feel free to miss a class here or there and catch up later. No one is slighted that their dog isn’t progressing as quickly since everybody is working on different skill levels.
Additonally, I get the extra benefits of exposing my own dogs to many other people and dogs. I take volunteers to run my dogs in practice heats and use their new dogs as distractions. Its great! The new dogs learn to focus on their owners, the seasoned dogs learn to ignore everything but the lane.
* This final paragraph rings true, since I, myself, have done the majority of my dog’s training myself in my living room.
Sorry,
I also meant to add that I’ve recently been approached to start my own team in the area (along with a few others from the team I recently left) and am looking forward to seeing how the addition of a “team” practice will effect my weekly open classes.
How many of you hold two separate practices for seasoned and in-training dogs?
My wife has been talking with the manager of a Pet Supplies Plus in our area to do something similar. We will probably start doing this sometime after the holidays. Thanks for the suggestion.
Ellie- our club holds 1 practice per week with the first hour is devoted to the green dogs and the second hour for the racing dogs. *Of course the green dogs ALWAYS run well over that first hour… but if we can gain a team member or 2 over the course of a year we are more than happy to oblige. All the seasoned dogs on our team can run the course forwards, backwards, etc. and I find most of the Sr. members of the team really like working with the green dogs. It seems to revive us!
It seems as though most people want to do ’something’ with their dog and flyball sounds like fun! Once they realize the dogs don’t learn this overnight and as a team sport some level of commitment is required, many of them don’t return. But we are always willing to have new people come and check it out and try it with their dog because every once in a while you do find one of those ‘dog crazy, have no social life (outside of dog sports that is!), kids are grown and/or gone, willing to travel anywhere’ kind of people that meshes well with the team and becomes the next flyball addict.
I think what you are offering is a great idea and know of a facility up in NH that does the same and it’s a great idea for people who want to try the sport.
With my last team in San Diego, we had three practices a week. One was for green dogs; one for box work and one full team practice - which we just did drills and stuff for the already racing dogs. Things to improve their go out, return, etc. We were quite a devoted bunch, and I miss the structured practices. We could usually weed out the non-devoted ones, since they did not want to commit to that many practices. We would ask that they do green dog practices and then the full practice so they could learn to handle the trained dogs, and help with the trained dogs. Everyone trained everyones dogs, not just yours - so they were truely “team” dogs.
Leave a Comment