I received a photo of a dog with a large chest and short legs that drives home my point on how the wicket penalizes such dogs. The photo below pictures a Labrador/Corgi mix, which weighs 60 pounds and measures 16 inches in NAFA and jumps 12-inch jumps. In U-FLI the same dog would jump 6-inch jumps. Even if NAFA adapted the 5-inch vs. 4-inch calculation, the dog would still jump 11-inch jumps.

For all of the wicket advocates out there, tell me how this is fair. I will concede that jumping 6-inch jumps may be too low but 11 or 12-inch jumps are too high for this dog. Every dog with this same make up that plays in NAFA events is being unfairly penalized.

Larry

The 2007 NAFA Regional Champion winners have been selected and announced but has anything changed from last year or the year before that? The Regional Champions race against other clubs in their region but isn’t the outcome pretty much assured from year to year? The same club is selected year after year and all of the other clubs are left with nothing. If there are several fast clubs in the region, they may switch back and forth each year but for the most part club placement is pretty static.

I wrote about this before on my post, Focus on the Championships. I still think that NAFA should look into this so more clubs get a share of the recognition. After all, there are more clubs out there than just Division 1. The people that race in other divisional levels need a larger share of the recognition. After all, they pay the largest percentage of the bills and deserve a chance to win at their racing level.

I know that people have proposed this to NAFA, yet nothing has been done. Did this just die or was it buried. What happen to the suggestions submitted to the BoD on this?

Cynosport® Flyball Championship

The Cynosport Flyball Championship that NAFA has supported over the last couple of years is a meaningless championship. Sure, it’s a good way to promote Flyball but is it worth the cost? Could the money spent on this event be better utilized by some other advertising means?

I say that it is meaningless because the only clubs that benefit from this tournament are the clubs that can afford to attend the event. Winning means nothing, because it does nothing to change the outcome of the Regional Champions and overall Champion and the cost is way out of proportion to what is provided to the Regional Champions.

Cynospost vs. Regional Champion Cost

Any club fortunate enough to place first in the region for Regular and Multi Breed is awarded a plaque that cost $25.00. Only one plaque is given per club. If other members in the club wish to have a plaque, they can purchase one at the cost of $25.00 per plaque. The cost for Regional Championship plaques for 2006 came to roughly $750.00 (30 clubs x $25 = $750).

Now let’s look at what NAFA spent for awards (Shirts and Ribbons) at Cynosport. For 2006, NAFA spent $2928.37 for awards. They had about 24 teams (some from the same club) for a total of around 13 clubs. So let’s figure it out, for simple numbers lets just say there are 5 people per team, times 24 teams, for a total of 120 awards. Therefore, $2928.37 for 120 awards comes to an average of $24.40 per award. If you look at the overall cost of Cynospost, NAFA lost $7,038.63 in 2006 for this one event. I’m assuming this year, 2007, it should turn a small profit because of the 50-team entries but we will have to see the numbers when they are published.

For a meaningless event, as I explained above, it seems there’s a large disparity. The clubs that raced all season generated much more money for NAFA throughout the year, yet this one event (Cynosport) garnered a significant proportion of the award money. It doesn’t seem fair to me. Could the money lost on this event been better utilized promoting NAFA Flyball in another way?

Larry

Note: Information used in this post was obtained from the NAFA Profit & Loss Sheet.

I’m back and I would like to take a few minutes of your time to look at the measuring issue from the other side. Well, if you’re a speed-reader it may only take a few minutes. I want to make it clear I am not worried that the dreaded NAFA Board of Directors is going to come after me and as such, I am back peddling from previous posts. I don’t believe Tony Soprano is a board member, at least no yet. Until then, my concern that a member of the board is going to come after me, in the dark of night, to break my kneecaps is pretty minimal.

I just don’t see the BoD getting together ringing their hands, with sinister laughs, and thinking if they could just shut Mike up they could easily implement their evil plan. (I almost wrote twisting their handlebar mustaches but then I thought one or two board members just might go Tony Soprano on my posterior. It’s up to you to decide which members might.) Also, my ego is not so large that I believe that I am having a significant impact on the outcome of this issue, or any others. I know this article is going to sound like I’m a schizophrenic with duel personalities after my previous posts. Who among you can say that I’m not? Really, I’m just struggling with the viable alternatives for a difficult issue.
Continue reading →

So after my rant yesterday, what can we all do to make communication better? I know that the NAFA Board wants to be open to a certain extent; after all, they did create the leadership chat, which very few people participate. What can they do better to keep their participants informed? How can they tell us how they feel about different issues and still maintain their objectivity?

For those that don’t know, all NAFA board meetings are open to the Flyball community. The date, time, and location will be published on the NAFA web site. I encourage everyone that can to attend these meetings if one is held in your area.

Responsibility

I talked about responsibility yesterday and more that anything else it was out of frustration. I want to keep this forum open to discussion for the benefit of everyone in the flyball community and we have people that want to abuse this gift. You can still maintain you anonymity without using a fake email address. I am not a big fan of rules but in this case, I need to put some in place when making comments.

1. You can use any name you would like in the name field as long as you don’t try to impersonate someone else. Use your dogs name if you want I really don’t care.

2. Use your own email address and don’t make something up. If I find that you have entered a false or invalid email address, I will delete your comment(s).

3. This one falls on me. I will make this promise to you that I will not reveal your identity and your email address will remain confidential.

4. Make valid comments. Don’t trash anyone on the blog and keep your comments non-personal and I will do the same. If you see something that is offensive please bring it to my attention and I will either delete the comment or strike the offending words even if I’m the offender.

My Goal

I created this blog to keep everyone better informed of Flyball issues and it is a permanent record for everyone to look back on. Please try not to abuse this gift.

As you may know, I allow other contributors to make post on this blog to allow for a broader perspective of the issues in the Flyball community and also that you hear from someone other than me. I would like to do more in the training, nutrition, and conditioning area so if you know someone or you yourself, that has good knowledge in these areas and would like to make post about these topics please let me know.

Larry

This syndrome is the fear of actually having to answer questions in a public forum. It is sometimes displayed by people not wanting to be accountable, hiding behind someone else’s name, or using a false name when commenting on public forums such as this.

A good example of not wanting to be heard actually answer questions in a public forum is displayed by almost all that sit on the NAFA Board of Directors. God forbid, they might actually say something in public that some people might not agree with; or they might slip up and we in the flyball community might actually find out how they feel about an issue. After all, they wouldn’t want everyone to know what they are thinking.

The only time that you will find anything about what any of board members are thinking is to find some obscure line in board meeting minutes or buried in some chat transcript. I am glad to see that they are announcing on the NAFA web site the date and place of the next board meeting. I hope that people will actually attend but I doubt it. The apathy in the flyball community is staggering.

Apathy

You would think more people would be willing to stand up and actually say something. You can see by the 2007 NAFA Organization Update below that many people are participating in NAFA events. So why is there such a lack of concern in the flyball community when rule changes are being discussed, as on this blog? Of the 39 comments on my post Subtracting 5 Instead of 4, only 10 people carried out the discussion, and 1 of the 10 used a false name and email address; or, how about the lack of returned ballots when a delegate vote is called? I know this is just a dog sport but I’m sure that of 5,697 dogs that participated in NAFA flyball events last year there are many people out there that care about this sport. There is no excuse for just 56.81% of the ballots returned from a vote. We are not talking about individual people here we are talking about clubs, 358 clubs participated in NAFA tournaments. There should be 100% participation. If the clubs owners don’t care, they should pass the ballots out to the people that do.

2007 NAFA Organization Update

• During the 2007 racing year, NAFA had 342 tourneys hosted by 137 host Clubs and entered by 8360 teams from 358 Clubs
• 5697 different dogs participated in NAFA flyball events representing 146 breeds and earning a total of 14,096,020 points toward NAFA titles
• 3321 dogs earned 6079 titles during the racing year
• NAFA Flyball was played in 37 different states and provinces including the first tournament in Wyoming
• 16 Clubs hosted their first NAFA flyball tournament during the 2007 racing year
• Veterans was successful once again in its 2nd year during 2007 with 731 dogs running on 415 teams in 146 different events

Here’s an excellent example of apathy from people you wouldn’t expect:

Back before the candidate voting took place, one of the candidates sent out an email on August 2, 2007 to all of the NAFA Judges, wanting inputs from them. Here is a snippet…

… I would like to be better informed from all parties regarding what you experience over the years and what direction you would like to see NAFA move towards in the future. This would be helpful leading into the candidate web chats and leadership chats.

Each one of you, being a Judge for NAFA flyball carries a great responsibility of our sport. Without you, we would not have flyball. Your dedication to this sport is vital, no question about that. So, I’m writing to all the judges to get your individual insight about NAFA flyball….

The letter ended as such…

I understand that since I’m not a NAFA BoD member there might be some reservation. I promise that each one of your individual responses/discussions will be keep private, just between you and myself, as I value your trust and respect.

This seems like a reasonable request to me. Can you guess how many judges replied? Of all the judges, only 3 responded. How is that for apathy?

Responsibility

No one wants to take responsibility so he or she will use someone’s email accounts or make something up. They want to take cheap shots but don’t want to use their real name doing it. After all, what would their teammates think? It goes right back to the Flyball Paparazzi Syndrome. Stay anonymous at all cost because you wouldn’t want anyone to know how you actually feel about an issue. God forbid that someone might find out that you would like to try a U-FLI tournament or you might prefer one organization to the other. What would people think?

Larry