Call for Motivation

I haven't done much training the past month. Yeah, yeah, I've been busy with the kids (school is winding down for the summer so there are lots of year-end activities), and mowing the grass and other outdoor chores are suddenly sucking my time, but the truth is I'm just not that motivated to train for flyball right now. The next tournament we're competing in is September (I think), and I'm more of a deadline-oriented kind of person.

Here's what my box looks like right now -- note the spiders who have taken up residence, and the thin layer of dust on the top:

You know what doesn't help? I train alone most of the time -- my team is several hours north, so I have no weekly practices to attend and nobody close by pushing me to do anything.

I did just read The Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson last week -- what an amazing book. She mentions flyball a few times, calling it an activity that "plugs into the predator in the dog" (like lure coursing, herding, and field trials). She meant this in a good way.

There is so much great information you can pull from this book to help you with flyball training (and maybe if I could get motivated, I'd try some of it) -- exercises for getting reluctant tuggers to tug, reluctant ball retrievers to retrieve, building great recalls, becoming the ultimate reward to your dog, etc. All with a very positive training style, with a lot of behavioral science to back it up, presented in a way that I could understand. Plus she's really funny.

I'm hoping that you guys can help me jump start things. Has anybody had a training breakthrough lately that they want to talk about? Or learned a cool new drill or trick (like the "hold your dog upside down to make him drop the tug" trick i learned a few months ago)? Or maybe a new training video of your dogs to share?

Flyball Pet Peeves

There are a lot of gushy warm-fuzzy things I love about flyball, but these aren't some of them:

Mad or distracted handlers who don't reward their dogs during racing. 

It really drives me nuts when people false start or bad pass, yell "ARRRGHHHHH" and slap their head, then proceed to shlep back to the runback area and sulk, while their dog tries to figure out what he did wrong. Or when people are too busy watching the other team race or talking strategy with their teammates to pay any attention to their dog at the other end of the tug (if they're lucky enough to have a dog that will STAY on the other end of a dead tug).

Teams that scream at each other during racing. 

It's supposed to be a fun game, right?

People that register their (known) mixes as purebreds. 

I know of three or four different people who have registered their mixes as purebreds. I'm not talking about somebody adopting a dog that looks just like a border collie from border collie rescue then registering it as a border collie -- I mean people who know exactly who their dog's parents are and lie when they register the dog with NAFA or U-FLI. I assume they're doing it to gain a competitive advantage in the Multibreed/Variety division (since you can only run one mixed breed on your multi team), but in some cases these dogs have also risen to the top of their "breed's" points lists. Come on, is the game really that important? I don't understand  how people who do this can actually take pride in their accomplishments.

My dog's stress diarrhea at tournaments. 

As if I need anything else to worry about at tournaments, right? I've discovered metronidazole and use it religiously, but it's not always 100% effective. I'd like to publicly apologize to anyone and everyone who has been hit by my dog's flying poop. 

Teams that intentionally freeze out other teams by making them wait in the lanes.

I know that most delays are caused by ring conflicts, general cluelessness, or innocent banter, but there are a few teams that make it part of their strategy to make other teams wait. At the U-FLI championships a few years ago, we sat in the ring for about 15-20 minutes waiting for the other team to show up (and they are notorious for playing the Wait Game). They had been racing in another ring so were given a little time to run and put their dogs away and give them some water, but they stretched it out an unbearable amount while our dogs sat in the ring and stressed out and barked. In fact, I ended up walking my dog all the way back to his crate on the other side of the building and waited there until I saw movement in our ring.

People who run their dogs with a collar full of jangling tags or restrictive harnesses.

I always feel so bad for the dogs that are struggling along in their Easy Walk harnesses or have a bunch of metal tags hitting them in the face the whole way down the lane. How are they supposed to run well like this?

Dogs that are impossible to corral in the runback area.

I had one of these myself (he pounced on every ball that rolled by, and he wasn't a graceful dog) and he was a pain to run. I had to come up with a little system for how to catch him and hold him in between heats. So I'm totally sympathetic to those of you who have a similar challenge and are trying to get a handle on it. But if your dog is zooming around the runback area, chasing anything that moves and causing a safety hazard, you need to work on this! And judges, you need to warn them! It seems like when it happens in the runback area, it doesn't get enforced that much.

People who don't say "Good race" afterwards (unless they win).

If you're on the sidelines struggling to hold your dog and put his leash on, you get a pass, but you can still call out "Good race!" in the other team's general direction. 

Not setting your jump heights until AFTER warmups.

I'm sure all the teams I've run with have been guilty of this numerous times, but it's annoying when somebody else does it. 

Overuse of NAFA's registered trademark symbol.

It's one thing to use it next to the NAFA logo (appropriate) or in the first mention of NAFA's name in a press release or something (appropriate), but it's totally distracting pretty much everywhere else. I've seen NAFA documents where there was a ® symbol next to the word NAFA every time the word appeared. Ok, ok, we get it! You're registered! 

Clueless box judges and line judges.

This one is tough, because at least the people in the chairs are volunteering and helping out. But if they don't know what they're doing, it can cost you the race.

Hotels that charge pet fees (especially fees PER DOG).
I've been hit with pet fees the past few tournaments that have added $20-30 to the total cost of my room. I crate my dogs in the room and am really careful to leave the room nice and neat, but it doesn't matter. Those are the times I wish I had an RV...

I'm sure I'm just scratching the surface here. This might be a 10-part series. ;)

What sorts of things drive you guys crazy?

NAFA's Board Meeting Tomorrow - What They'll Be Talking About

The NAFA board of directors is having an in-person meeting tomorrow, and they'll discuss what's in the following agenda: http://www.flyball.org/minutes/050810-meetingagenda.pdf

I don't know where the meeting is, I couldn't find that info in the agenda or website. But it's an in-person meeting, which is good, because a lot of work usually gets done in those.

Some of the things I found interesting:

Prohibiting balls with noise makers
I'm really glad they are talking about disallowing these. My Jack Russells, who are usually little flyball machines, completely lose their brain when they hear squeakers in the ring. I actually thought squeaky things were already illegal, based on this rule on page 12 of the NAFA rulebook:

Section 8.3 - The Heat
(g) Distractions. Team members shall not distract the opposing team by any means, nor throw any object for their dogs (i.e. balls, toys, Frisbees, dummies, gloves, or treats).


Double running of dogs
Looks like NAFA won't be making any changes to this rule, and I don't blame them. It's really just too subjective to spell out in the rulebook. I've seen dogs out there who had no business running full time on ONE team, and I've seen other dogs who could run all day on 2 teams with no problem. It does make me totally crazy to see people run their dogs into the ground in the name of points, though. This topic is probably worthy of a whole separate post, you guys probably have some strong feelings about it.

The Rules Committee is recommending a change to the Code of Ethics text in the rulebook, though, to try to address this. The bold red text is what they want to add:

Section 5.1 – Code of Ethics (page 23 of the current rulebook)
(d) Misconduct shall include, but not be limited to, abusive or foul language, demonstration of dissatisfaction with a judge’s decision, inhumane treatment of a dog, racing a dog who is not in adequate physical condition for the number of heats the dog is asked to run, demonstration of poor sportsmanship, willful violation of the rules with the intent to gain an unfair advantage, or any other behavior or altercation that would leave a spectator or exhibitor with an unfavorable opinion of Flyball.

Pay attention to this fact. There is nowhere in the whole Chapter 5 - CODE OF CONDUCT (NAFA rulebook, page 23) wording that says that NAFA, the RD, or the judge is going to take action when it comes to a Code of Ethics violation (as far as I can tell from the wording in the rulebook). It looks like it's up the to clubs to do that, by filing a formal complaint:

(f) Any individual or club in good standing with NAFA® may file a protest or prefer charges against another individual or club for alleged misconduct, in or out of the ring, prejudicial to the best interest of flyball as provided for under Section 5.2. Protests filed during competition should be done in such a manner as not to bring discredit to flyball.

This costs $100, by the way, and if the board doesn't agree with your charges, you'll forfeit that money.

So I would think somebody would have to be really obviously running a dog to death before anything would truly be done about it.


Use of shields/wings on the side of the box
This one is my personal favorite, because I submitted it.  :)

Long story short, clubs have been using plastic shields on the sides of their box all over the country for a few years now, including at the NAFA CanAm tournament last year (in Regular Division 1).

My club, Carpe Pilam, used an identical shield on the side of our box at a tournament in January, and the judge told us to remove it because when one of our dogs (ahem...my dog) was bumping into it, the shield was actually extending outside the dimensions of the box. I can't remember what happened -- I think we may have lost that heat? And we were told to remove the shield for the rest of the tournament. In fact, we haven't used it ever again, because all the other judges/clubs in the region who saw that are now probably going to say "Hey, that shield was illegal last time you used it, what makes you think you can use it now?"

So I asked the board for some clarification around the wording. It didn't seem fair to me that some clubs could use it and others couldn't, just because of different judges' interpretations of the rule.

I'm glad the board chose to address the issue, but I'm not really feeling very comforted by the wording they came up with (see page 5 and 6 of the meeting agenda). It seems to me like it's still all left up to interpretation, and there are also no clear consquences spelled out -- does the judge have to see the dog bump into it each time for it to be illegal? What happens if it's bumped -- does the team lose that heat?

Hopefully the board will ask all these questions in the meeting and come up with some better wording.


Minimum runback
This one addresses an issue near and dear to many of us. My teammate Kristie Pope wrote a guest post about this very issue back in March, about a building in our region that's too small to play flyball in.

The Rules Committee is actually unanimously recommending that the rule be changed so that the minimum runback will be increased from 29 feet to 50 feet. YES!

Farther down on the agenda was also a request to better define the word "runback", so that when a club is sanctioning a tournament, they have to put down how many feet of runback is actually MATTED (in indoor buildings or outdoors on concrete). Hooray! It's ridiculous to say you have 60' of runback when you only matted 50' of runback.


Clubs electing into adjacent regions
This issue plays out in my region, and I'm sure it plays out in others, too. There is a club that hosts one or two tournaments a year in another region (where the club owner lives), but since they elected into our region, those tournaments count for our regional points. It's an 8+ hour drive for many of us (it's actually 9 1/2 for me). Personally I don't think the out-of-region-but-technically-in-region club has bad motives, they have a good building to use up there and I've heard their tournaments are great and attract a lot of clubs from both regions. But it does suck that their tournaments count for our regional points.

Somebody from my region requested that a mileage cap be added to the rule, so that any tournament held 60+ miles over the regional border would count for the geographical region it's being held in versus that club's elected region. I really like this idea, it sounds fair to me. Several members of the Rules Committee seemed to like it, too, although it sounds like they want to increase the actual mileage from 60 miles to something more. We'll see how that plays out.

There are a few other things on the agenda, but I don't really feel strongly about them one way or the other. Feel free to post a comment if you do, or if you have comments about anything mentioned in this post.

-------

Added on May 14:
Thanks Dave Collett for sending me a drawing of a box with shields/wings on it. Here it is. The shield we used was very thin plastic so it only added centimeters to the width of the box (but that also made it floppy and easy for the dogs to bend out if they bumped it).