Can't Touch This (14.923)

This wouldn't be a very good flyball blog if I didn't talk about Touch N Go breaking the U-FLI record again. They ran a 14.923 on Sunday in California Utah (!).

Holy crap, right?! I'm always thrilled to look up at the digital display and see 16's or 17's when I race.

(One time we did run just three dogs because of a flag and looked up to see 14's on the display, and did a happy dance pretending that we broke the record. What a trip it would be to look up there and see that time for real.)

Touch N Go did it with four borderstaffies: Chef, Urgent, Warrant, and Reflex (7 1/2 year-old height dog).

Here are the stats from the run, quoted directly from TNG's Facebook page (thanks for permission to use this stuff, guys):

• "Chef 3.633 (remove start time of .073 for a line to line time of 3.560)"
• "Warrant 3.762 (remove 2 feet of passing error for a line to line time of 3.696)"
• "Reflex 3.843 (remove 2 feet of passing error for a line to line time of 3.777)"
• "Urgent 3.685 (remove 2 feet of passing error for a line to line time of 3.619)"

"Actual time run was 14.923 and the line to line time was 14.652."

Here's a link to the video on their Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1419629257159&ref=mf

A few things that come to mind as I write this post:

Touch N Go is a very talented and dedicated group of people.

Regardless of your politics, you have to admit that it's an incredible feat to run a 14.92. Although there is a ton of training behind it, there's also an extra magical component of synergy. It's not just about having fast dogs and great handlers -- all the planets have to align for all four dogs to be running in tip-top form with a good start and tight passes, all in the same heat.

It takes so much work to compete at this level of flyball. Several practices a week, consistent training methods, teamwork, discipline. It takes great boxloaders and pass callers and in some cases great handlers willing to run somebody else's great dog with the same amount of attention and enthusiasm that they would give to their own dog. There's no just-going-through-the-motions when you run a 14.92.


Borderstaffies rock.

There is something really special about borderstaffies. Almost every one I've met has a happy biddable temperament packaged in an incredibly powerful body...they were truly born to play flyball.

Here are TNG's four borderstaffies from the 14.92 run:

(P.S.: My borderstaffy, Punk, is Warrant's littermate. :))


Records aren't celebrated like they used to be.

It's sort of disheartening to me that records like this aren't celebrated like they used to be. Remember the old days on the flyball list when Spring Loaded was breaking records, and everybody was talking about it?

Is it that politics have gotten in the way now? Is it that things have become very regionalized and we don't really notice what happens over in California if we're on the east coast?


Why hasn't anybody in NAFA set a new record now that the jump heights are lowered?

NAFA lowered the jump heights by an inch a couple of years ago, and I haven't heard anything about anybody really threatening to break the NAFA record, which was set by Spring Loaded back in 2005 (a 15.22).

2005?? Really? Nobody has been able to beat that in almost 5 years? With lowered jump heights, new training methods and equipment, and the ultimate secret weapon -- borderstaffies??

The Ball Obsessed Dog: Update #2

Now that it's springtime, I've moved my training set-up outside into the garage. (Plus, my boyfriend got back from Florida a few days ago and frowned when he saw the flyball box and props sitting right next to the dining room table where we eat every night. I figured for the sake of domestic peace and harmony I would move it before he asked...you can't say I haven't learned anything from two marriages/divorces! ;)).

I actually love the new garage set-up. I taped down some short pieces of matting and wedged a wooden jump upside-down behind the box, a la Rocket Relay style, so now the box doesn't rock back or budge one bit. I also taped the halves of two jumps together and added a few inches of slats to make a taller prop. There's more room to tug and play out there, and nobody can see laundry in the background of my videos anymore.

As you'll notice in the latest video below, Rooster is still ball obsessed, but he's making some good choices. You can see how he clearly watches the ball on the ground but chooses the frisbee over it several times. I have a feeling this is going to be a long project. But damn, these hit-its look so much better than that old tournament turn of his. It inspires me to keep working on him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zL0rqX4v_U

I love your observations and comments, so feel free to weigh in.

The Spitter

Meet the Spitter.

Kraken is a 3-year-old Border Collie who has been in flyball training for, well, three years. :)

He didn't really like balls, didn't really like tugging, but he sure did like to herd other dogs. Plus he was very sensitive to negativity -- one time he scraped a carpal pad (no blood! just a skin scrape) on a prop in front of the box and promptly went into the kitchen and lay down on the floor. Game over.

It has been a challenging and entertaining three years but the payoff is finally in sight...he is now able to race in a tournament setting, his box turn has held up without props, and his drive has really turned on. He's a giant giraffe of a border collie barking and spinning and lunging in the lanes ready to go.

Here's how it played out this past weekend. I would eagerly wait till it was our turn to run, then let him go and watch him race down to the box, execute a happy-snappy turn, then run back to me (TO ME! Yes!!) -- and then...wait...where's the ball...my heart sinks a little bit...crap. Where's the ball?? I tried to stay really positive and upbeat (because he shuts down if you don't), gathered him up and sent him back down for the rerun (if there was time and if it made sense). His ball made it over the line about 50% of the time. When it did, there was a party in the runback.

Krak had to be clicker trained to even pick up a ball, so it's not like this ball dropping thing is a huge surprise. A while back my friend Barb kept him for a long weekend when I was at the beach (Barb has Kraken's brother, Twyst, so she has a soft spot for the big goofball) and she worked a lot on it. She put the ball in a nice stinky chicken treat bag and left it in the refrigerator in between training sessions, and worked tirelessly clicker training him to first acknowledge it, then pick it up, then bring it back to her. Later she was also the one who put the ball in the box and persuaded him to get it -- before that he would just do a box turn and let the ball shoot past or hit him in the head.

So the fact that the dog now runs down to the box, catches the ball and brings it even partway back is a huge deal. I'm proud of him for that much progress. And for the past few months, my priority has been getting him to run the pattern and come right back to me instead of looking at any other dogs running by, so I've been rewarding his focus above everything else. But it's time to take it to the next level.

This weekend when I raced him I used a squishy ball for max catchability, left the tug on the floor in the runback so that he couldn't even see it, and stopped calling him at all while he was racing because as soon as I did he spit the ball. I still ran away from him when he was on his way back, though, which was probably a bad idea.

I have another dog who occasionally spits the ball right at the line when she gets tired. When she does this, I use what we affectionately call "The Potted Plant" method (coined by my old teammate Jenny), which is essentially letting her go, then staying waaaaay back in the runback and facing her while clapping and calling her name, but not moving my legs at all and not reaching for her frisbee (tucked in the back waistband of my pants, where she can't see it). That works really well most of the time.

But Kraken isn't spitting the ball at the line. He's spitting it at the box, or in between jumps.

So this week I embarked on a "Bring it" campaign, where I am teaching Kraken to bring the ball to my hand. Every morning I sit with his bowl of kibble on the couch, roll the ball around the room, then click and treat him when he brings it close enough to my hand that I can touch it without getting up. I'm working up to having him put the ball right in my hand. It's tedious, but I'm really motivated now...he ran a 4.2 this past weekend from 30 feet without a tug or me calling him. I really really really want to be able to run this dog in a way that will let me be really exciting in the runback area -- running, calling, dragging his tug, etc.

If anybody out there has had success fixing a spitter, I would love to hear about it.

Race Tracker Web App (aka Andy McBride is a Genius)

Carpe Pilam wasn't late to any races this weekend.

People, I can't begin to tell you what a miracle this is. Just 3 tourneys ago we had to forfeit a race because we were so late getting into the lanes.

Several people on the team camp in RVs, so the whole team usually ends up parking over in the RV area. We set up ex-pens and coolers, and hang out there in between races, versus crating inside or parking near the building. We are a chatty bunch, with some ADHD here and there, and we get caught up in the conversation and forget about racing...plus we usually enter 4 or 5 teams. Can you say disaster waiting to happen?

We had been talking about buying a web camera to set up in the building so that we could check on the ring from the RV.

Those little radios don't work because it's so loud around flyball...trying to listen to something (that already sounds sort of garbled) is frustrating.

And then Andy McBride, flyball geek extraordinaire, rode in on his white horse and saved us.

Andy plays on Go Dog Go!, who was hosting the tourney in Wilson, NC, this weekend.

He wrote this awesome little web app that tells you what race is in the ring, with a timestamp for when it was updated, that you can check from a laptop or cell phone with internet access. Here's what it looks like on my teammate's iPhone:

(p.s. I know the phone says 7:23 pm but just ignore that - we were back at the RV on Saturday night drinking beers when we thought to take this picture).

The app updated every 5 seconds, and Go Dog Go! was religious about updating it as soon as every race was over.

I have no idea how the app works, or how much trouble it would be for other teams to incorporate it for their tournaments, but I really hope it takes off. I saw lots of people walking around looking at their phones this weekend, and I think they were looking at the app, not just Facebook. It was one of the most efficiently run rings I've ever seen -- we were finished racing by 2:30 pm or so on Sunday.

Great job, Andy. :)

Anybody else out there have great ideas/apps like this that save time and make tournaments better?

The Ball Obsessed Dog: Update #1

I've been working with Rooster this week to overcome his ball obsession (basically playing frisbee with him every day, keeping it short and crazy), and yesterday afternoon I put him on the box to see how it was going.

He was looking so good that I decided to videotape it. I love analyzing videotape -- it helps me see what the dog and I are doing well and what we're doing wrong.

Here's a link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwzhC8jmkWk

Some things I noticed when watching the video:

• My house is a mess. Please excuse the laundry on the couch.
• The box is rocking back some when Rooster hits it, I probably need to put something behind it to keep that from happening. He isn't easily bothered, but I don't want to introduce any new bad habits, either.
• Did you see how the first time I put the ball in, he totally ignored it? Whoohoo!!
• Did you see how the second time I put the ball in, I acted like a total dork and said "Ball" and pointed to it. Argh! That's when he blew me off and picked the ball over the frisbee. At least he came back to the frisbee pretty quickly.

Overall, I thought his hit-its looked really good. The fact that I was able to put a ball in and have it totally ignored is huge progress, I still can't believe he did that. I think I'm on the right track.

We're going to a tournament this weekend, but my team captain (one of the coolest people on earth) is supporting his retraining effort, so she reshuffled everything so that Rooster wouldn't have to run. He's got a warm-up spot, just for box work. He'll be a warm-up dog until we feel good about his box turn and recall. Luckily (?) I have 5 other dogs to run in the meantime. I think it really would be hard to sit your dog out for retraining if he was your only one competing (but I guess you'd also be reeeeeeally motivated to fix him).

Thanks to everybody who has offered advice and encouragement so far. :)

How Passing is Like Target Shooting

My boyfriend is a Marine, so he taught me how to shoot a gun last year. The only time I'd ever shot a gun was when I was 12 years old at my uncle's farm. My dad and uncle lined up cans and let us kids shoot them, and I have no recollection of how I did at it. (However, I was pretty good at Quake a few years later. ;))

Anyway, my boyfriend and I went to the gun range and rented a 9mm Sig Sauer, and he taught me the way the Marines had taught him. We had a lot of fun. So we each bought our own gun (mine is a Ruger Mark III, all black nothing fancy but sooo pretty) and started going shooting together regularly.

Every time I'm at the range, I think about flyball passing.

It's a very similar concept. You're pumped up, a little nervous, sitting there holding the gun just-so and looking down range at the target. You regulate your breathing (I usually hold my breath right when I pull the trigger so that I don't move the gun at all), line up the sights on the gun with the target (I try to make the red dot of the target look like a lollipop on top of the sights), and pull the trigger.

We buy those cool stickers that you can put on targets that show you exactly how you shot each time -- they're black and when the bullet goes through it makes a yellow hole. So I can look at that and adjust what I need to for the next shot. I have 10 bullets in my magazine so I shoot 10 times, then reload.

When I pass a dog in flyball, it's really similar. I line my dog up just-so every time. With Punk, for instance, I make sure his front feet are on the 54' line and hold him by his hips so he can't lunge or buck around too much. I am not one of those people who can start a dog off their body. My knees suck so it hurts too much to spring up off the floor all weekend long. Plus my dogs always gouge my legs when I do that. Ouch! So I just crouch over them.

I have this passing window that I'm looking for. It's like a little photograph in my mind of what I want to see when I let my dog go. For me, it's usually when the dog in front of us is on the box -- the dog has just gotten the ball and has rotated on the box and is centered over the lane. That way I can be sure he has the ball in his mouth so I don't cause a collision (if he hesitates, or chases after a bobbled ball or whatever).

For dogs with a crappy wide turn (like whoever has to pass Punk), I wait a tiny bit until the dog has centered itself back into the lane before I let go.

For dogs who are just so inconsistent that I don't trust the pass off the box, I wait until the dog in front of us has started back over the jumps (1st jump after the box or 5th jump, whatever you want to call it).

My mental picture is always the same for the dog in front of me, it never changes. The only thing that changes is where I line Punk up in the lane. 54'? 53'? 50'? It just all depends on how my pass was.

When the pass caller tells me I had a 3 foot pass, I do not move up 3 feet. For some reason (somebody with a better grasp of the mechanics of this stuff may want to comment here), a 3 foot pass DOES NOT equal moving up 3 feet the next time. You will bad pass! I usually move up about 1 foot for every 3 feet.

You also have to be aware of how your dog is running and how the dog in front of you is running. If it's the first race of the day and they are on fire, they are going to be faster, so you're going to have to give it a little room. Later in the day if one of them is lollygagging a little bit, you're going to have to scoot up a foot or two to make up for the difference in time.

If you see the dog in front of you stumble in the lane at all, or bobble on the box at all, hold up your pass a bit.

Once you get the basic idea, it's pretty easy to adjust when you run other dogs or pass other dogs. With pretty much every team I've ever been on, I haven't known who I was going to pass until the weekend of the tournament, and half the time I've never passed that dog with my dog before. Sometimes I run 4 or 5 of my dogs in a weekend, so I may have a bunch of new passes to learn. The first few heats are usually a cluster as I try to figure out what I'm doing, then it starts to fall into place. I write down where I need to stand with each dog on my BlackBerry so I don't forget (that way I can refer back to it months later too, if necessary). Or on my arm.

It is essential that you have a good pass caller. Otherwise it's just guesswork. To some extent, you can figure out your own pass based on the digitial display if you know what your dog usually runs line to line (for example, if Punk's time was a 4.2 and his turn looked okay, I know my pass was big), but if your dog is faster or slower than average that day, you won't know that and be able to compensate.

The newest trend in pass calling, which I love, is using a digital camera with a video slow-motion playback. If your pass caller isn't that good at eyeballing a pass but they're good at seeing the pass in slow motion on the camera screen (and they can operate the camera fast), they will be able to tell you EXACTLY what your pass was in between heats. If you don't have an extra person, you can videotape the start line, then watch your passes after the race. At least that way you can adjust in time for the next race.

It also helps if you can actually see the box from the runback area. Flyball is not a time to take off your glasses, people.

The other thing that seems to help me, in both passing and shooting, is paying attention to my mindset. If I catch myself getting really stressed out I take a deep breath (or two or three), then smile and think about how much fun I'm having doing what I love. If I'm playing flyball, I focus on my dog and get them revved up by saying things like "Are you ready? Are you gonna get that ball?" Focusing on them takes the pressure off a bit.

A couple of weeks ago, my boyfriend and I took a shooting test to qualify for the new high tech 25-yard pistol range at the place we love to go to, because their other pistol range is usually really crowded with long waits. In order to qualify, we had to shoot 20 rounds at a target and hit every one of them on the paper. 25 yards = 75 feet, so it was similar to passing a dog from 23' when the dog in front of him hits the box.

The range was freezing cold, and we had to wait a long time in there while the range instructor went in and out a few times trying to fix a piece of equipment. It was nerve-wracking, because I knew I was going first, and the instructor was going to watch me shoot. I was jumping around trying to keep warm so I wouldn't start shaking. Then finally, it was time, and I stood there while the instructor ran the target 25 yards away and gave me the okay to shoot. My gun misfired 3 times out of 20 (funny, because it hadn't misfired at all the last time we shot), so I had to reload 3 more bullets at the end of the 2 magazines and shoot them, too. And the whole time, there was this guy in the next lane shooting some Dirty Harry sized gun (the range is loud, just like flyball!). With the distractions and mishaps, it felt like the range was trying to freeze me out.

The whole time I was shooting, I was thinking about how I did stuff like this all the time in flyball. Psyching myself up, saying "No biggie, you've been here before, it's fine," making myself smile and relax. I hit all 20 (not just on the paper, but on the silhouette!).

I wish my flyball passing was that accurate, but it's not. Too many moving parts, literally.

But you can be a good passer if you master the basics: pick your passing window (mental picture) and stick with it, then just move up a little or back a little depending on your pass. Get a good pass caller. Wear your glasses. Relax and have fun.

(The cool thing about flyball is that there are so many different ways to train/do things and get good results -- anybody have a different technique they'd like to share?)

"Safety First" (Guest post by Kristie Pope)

Guest post by Kristie Pope, club owner of Carpe Pilam
Our team jokes a lot of the time that our motto is "Safety First," you know, the kind where your second start after a false start is a .2 something. But lately "Safety First" to me means not getting to play flyball at all. In our region, of the tournaments being held currently (between October 2009 through June 2010), 33% of them are being held at Durham Kennel Club.

Durham Kennel Club (DKC) is a small building that used to be used for tournaments that were called "no frills" and "warm up for..." The venue does not have ample runback (it has 46 feet) and several teams, ourselves included, are very limited on what dogs we can run at this site. Some of the faster teams don’t go at all because of the runback. People face their dogs sideways and backwards to try to start on the second light and someone is constantly swinging their dog into other teammates or other dogs. Usually after a tournament there is at least one hole in the wall in the runback. The last tournament there were two, one in each lane.

The DKC also has a huge problem with ticks. Last year we had one dog diagnosed with Erlichea, one human diagnosed with Lyme’s and another human with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. We have several children on our team who we have to worry about as well. The ticks there are the very small ticks that are impossible to see on your dog. There are regular brown ticks as well, but at least you find them in the next few days to remove. The ticks I have had resemble freckles. My teammate's tick that carried Lyme’s was under a small scab where the spot had been itching. It took a doctor with a scope to find it. And when I say ticks, I mean a lot of them. My husband will pull at least a dozen off each day.

Each time I have brought up the ticks I have been told, "Just stay in the parking lot like we do, and don’t walk your dogs in the grass." DKC has very limited parking and unless you are there super early you have to park in the grass and along the perimeter of the grounds, where the ticks are rampant. Now I realize dogs can pick up ticks anywhere, but if I hear of a park or walking trail that is heavy with ticks I will not be walking my dog there. Why? Safety!

I have boycotted tournaments at this site for about a year now. A few of my teammates will go with a small dog or an old dog that they are trying to rack up points on. I have loaned height dogs to a few teams playing there in the winter months but will not be letting my dogs run there during the warmer months. Because of this I am now missing out on many of my regional tournaments.

I figured the solution was to find a better site and host our own tournament. The only problem is, when? With DKC tournaments stuck in every vacant spot I don’t see a feasible time for our team to hold a tournament without going into the summer months, which would raise a whole new safety concern (it gets really hot down here, and a lot of the flyball buildings are not air-conditioned).

I doubt the hosting team is interested in finding a new site. DKC is cheap (I am sure it is a fantastic money-making tournament as the entry fees do not reflect the low cost of renting the small building) and the hosting club is used to the space, it’s where they practice weekly. Out of the twelve tournaments currently listed in our region, four are at DKC and one is an eight hour drive away in York, PA (yes, I am region 9, NC, SC, VA, WV). That leaves seven out of twelve tournaments for me and my team to attend.

It is my understanding that at the last tournament held at DKC there was a pretty intense dog fight in the runback between two seasoned flyball dogs (with seasoned handlers, for that matter). I can only assume that the tight runback space contributed to the fight (these dogs are housemates and although one has been involved in an altercation at a tournament before the other has not that I am aware of). There were holes knocked through the walls of the runback in both lanes, even though they had covered the walls with padding to try and prevent it (it’s not the first holes, by any means). Clearly this tells you that there is not enough room in the building for flyball!

So currently my dogs will not be in the highest earning dogs of the year, my team will not win a regional even if we won the tournaments we went to (which we always come in third anyway!), and I will find myself seeking out U-FLI tournaments for the first time ever to find somewhere safe to play. Our club will probably host our first tournament ever with U-FLI. It stinks, I have been with NAFA for 10 years and am a little attached to them, but how can I continue to play in a NAFA region where tournaments are held at a venue that I truly consider unsafe for humans and dogs? Of course, I could travel 8 hours away...

Just Call Me Lady Gag(a)

Well, another NAFA Leadership chat has just come and gone. If you weren't there, you didn't miss much. It was the same as pretty much any other Leadership Chat. A few people asked a lot of pointed questions (mostly about NAFA's CanAm tournament), and Lee Heighton (Executive Director) and a few of the board members responded to them. Answers ranged from vague to reactive to everything's-awesome!-but-we-can't-give-you-details (or we'll have to kill you).

I'm not going to quote anything from the chat in here, I'll just let you all read it for yourselves in the transcripts, which they say will be posted to the NAFA website in 48 hours.

I didn't post during the chat because it was all just so frustrating. I know I keep imploring you all to get involved, but today I just couldn't do it -- I had little confidence in getting any response other than the party line.

Actually, I did try to chime in once (somebody asked when the bid request was posted to the NAFA website for the judges videos that are finally getting made -- it was 2005, by the way, when they first decided to make those things) and when I tried to reply I was censored and placed on gag status because I didn't sign in to the chat using my first and last name. I know...I'm not Madonna or Cher...it was silly of me to think that LisaP would suffice. It was sort of funny, though, that they let somebody else with their first name and last initial post something POSITIVE -- i guess gag status is just for the negative crap.

Anybody else have any impressions of the Leadership Chat? Maybe different impressions from my own? I might just be old and jaded, or in a particularly cranky mood because of my new low-carb diet.

The Ball Obsessed Dog

Since all nine of my dogs are either playing flyball, training to play flyball, or retired from flyball, I've seen my share of quirks over the years. I've trained dogs that don't like balls, dogs that don't like tugging, dogs that spit balls during racing, and dogs that chase other dogs (actually, I have one dog who does all of those things!).

The one quirk that's really driving me nuts right now, more than anything else, is my border collie Rooster's obsession with balls (here he is with -- what else -- a nasty old ball he found in the yard during this photo shoot).

Rooster's breeder watched him race in January and made the following observation: "Rooster has two speeds." It's true. Rooster hauls ass down to the box. He's a flying little red tornado. Then he hits the box (in sort of a 3-footed awkward crunch turn) and comes back with his ears up and his speed down. 

He actually used to run right past me and circle around the runback area before eventually making his way over to see what I was up to. I'd be screeching and dancing around the runback like an idiot, trying to make the tug the most exciting thing in the world, and you could see the wheels in his head turning while he watched me. Finally something would click (you could see it happen, like he was thinking "Oh, fine, I'll take the damn tug") and he'd drop the ball for the tug and then tug like a crazy dog, growling and twisting. He really does love to tug. He just loves balls more.

He has always always always loved balls. I recognized it very early on and stopped playing with balls with him, in fact stopped acknowledging balls altogether. He didn't care. He was never one to bring it back, anyway. He would take his ball waaaay out in the yard, far away from me, and toss it around like a cat does with a mouse, making crazy little noises the whole time.

He has gradually gotten better. I switched to squishy balls (he doesn't like those as much as regular tennis balls) and to a big pink and green floppy frisbee as a reward (he likes that even better than the tug), and he is now coming back to me and spitting the ball, but it's a delayed reaction. He's not running TO the frisbee and spitting the ball along the way in his quest to get to it. He's coming back, staring at the frisbee with ball firmly grasped in jaws, then making the decision ("Oh fine, I'll take the damn frisbee") and spitting the ball.

Very frustrating. Not so much the stuff in the runback, because I'm dealing with that and I've seen improvement every tournament. No, the part that really gets me is his box turn. It looks nothing like what I trained. Once the ball went in, the whole turn changed completely.

Here is what Rooster looked like when I was first training him on the wall about a year and a half ago (he turned 2 in January) -- what a nice snappy boy (here's the whole video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e84p94J7sO4).

I don't have any photos of what his box turn looks like now with the ball in there, but take my word for it -- it sucks.

Right now he's running around 4.4 with this turn, with a best time of 4.2. I know he can be 4.0, probably sub-4, if I fix the turn. He's a quick little bugger.

I'm just making it worse by running him over and over again with the bad turn in a tournament setting. Although we try to work his box with a prop during warmups, then run him only the first 2 or 3 heats, he's still dropping his back legs on the box and doing his back-archy-crunch thing during actual racing, so that's the muscle memory I'm really building in the dog.

What I really need to do is stop competing with him and start over. I need to rework his priorities and make the tug/frisbee the most important thing in his life. It's hard to do that, isn't it? Remove a "solid" dog from competition and start over? 

I'd be interested in your comments and suggestions. 

A Cool Puppy Practice Drill from Slammers

I was watching a video that Slammers posted of their new borderstaffy, Hazard, yesterday morning, and loved one of their practice drills. I asked Craig Knowles if I could post it here (thanks, Craig!) because I had just written about practicing in another blog post, and thought this would be a cool drill to share with others.

Here's a link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnOKiwI0TW4

Go to about 2:10 into the video to see the recall drill shown below.

I've done lots of recalls with puppies, but never with a dog racing in the other lane like that. Duh. Why didn't I think of that? 

Watch how good their timing is, too -- Craig runs when the other dog is hitting the box. 

The puppy is really focused, not even paying attention to the other lane. Working a puppy this young next to another dog probably goes a long way towards preventing chasing issues in the future.

(As an added bonus, watch how crazy the puppy is when the person at the box is holding him for the recalls -- good thing he's only about 15 pounds right now! He he he.)

The Project Dog

I'm in the process of training my young borderstaffy (she just turned 1 in November) and thought I'd invite you along on my little journey. This blog has been a good training motivator for me...I've got flyball on the brain again.

The borderstaffy's name is Fringe, here's a picture of her (pretty cute, huh :)).

As I've mentioned in other posts, I took a little break from flyball (zero practices and maybe 3 tourneys for almost a year), which sadly coincided with when I needed to be training this dog. 

She is very happy and well-adjusted at home (loves my kids, loves the other dogs, tugs, works great for food & clicker, chases me around the house and bites me, you know, the typical borderstaffy), but out in the world she's tentative and spooky, and not that interested in playing with me. MY FAULT. 

In fact, it's like deja vu. About a year ago, I had a young borderjack that I ended up placing with somebody else because she was almost exactly the same way. Back then, I didn't have the time or energy to deal with it, and I knew the dog had too much potential to hang out here on the couch. I wasn't ready for a Project Dog, I was just trying to get my shit together in the other aspects of my life. Luckily, the borderjack ended up with the greatest owner in the world and is now running 4.0's on the same team as her littermates and being dressed up in cute outfits for every holiday and seems very happy, which was my wish for her when I placed her. 

But I guess the universe figured it hadn't taught me a lesson yet, so it gave me almost exactly the same dog to deal with again.

I don't do very well with dogs that are spooky in public. I'm not a patient person. Give me a crazy independent high-drive dog like Punk or my Jack Russells any day over a weird spooky dog that needs coaxing and patience and baby steps. (Ironically, my boyfriend says that one of the things he admires the most about me is my patience, but I guess after him and the kids and my job and the house and all that other stuff, there's not much left for the dogs. ;))

My border collie Sky, now 9 years old, was a total freak when she was young. I took her with me everywhere, and made her walk through PetSmart while people offered her treats, and handed her off to people so she'd get used to it. We also practiced every week back then so she got tons of exposure to flyball situations, and she still wasn't ready to compete until she was 2 years old. Of course, once she got it, she really got it. She still runs 4.0's today, and anybody can take her out of her crate and handle her. Thinking about this motivates me -- this is what Fringe could be if I just put the time into her (plus one added benefit -- Fringe will actually be a height dog!).

This morning Fringe and I had a 5 minute tug session in the house and it was fun. She was really into it. In fact, here she is sitting right next to the cabinet where the tug is, whining at me while I write this blog post.

My boyfriend just left for Florida for 2 weeks, so I'm going to sneak the flyball box back into the den while he's gone and and work with her on that. We've done some basic box work with the prop in front at the team practice (luring her with food around my legs until she got the concept of putting all 4 feet up, and now she's popping off with all 4 feet on her own), so I want to continue that work but transition from food to the tug. 

I also need to take her out into the world and get her used to things. Unfortunately she gets carsick (sigh), so that's another thing we'll have to work on, too. 

Anyway, thanks for reading. All suggestions welcome. I can't wait till the day she's finally racing and I can report on the blog about it. :)

True Confession

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I hate training my dogs at home because I hate the noise and general chaos that goes with it.

I have nine dogs, so that means if I'm working with one, there are eight others in the laundry room barking their asses off and trying to escape from their crates. Two of my jack russells regularly bark their crates right off the shelf and onto the floor, and Punk, that gentle soul, eats his crate (see below).

It doesn't matter where I'm training -- if I'm in the detached garage with all the doors closed, I can still  hear the rest of the gang going nuts in the house.

I don't know what to do about it. My boyfriend thinks it's hilarious that I have 9 dogs and can't stand them barking. He says I should have known what I was getting into. 

Maybe I should wear earplugs.

Practice, Practice, Practice

You guys must really have practice on the brain (spring fever?), because several of you have emailed asking me to write about it and I've only been blogging for a week.

The irony is, I don't practice that much these days... Hopefully some others will chime in with their ideas, too.

Group Practices

About 10 years ago, when I first started playing flyball in Massachusetts, my club attended a Robbins seminar. (If you haven't been to one, I totally recommend it -- I've been to 3 so far, and always come away learning something new from Aaron and Kelly.) That seminar pretty much revolutionized the way we practiced and trained box turns.

Before the seminar, we ran lineups the whole practice (boring!), and used a chute to train turns (wide, 3-footed turns!).

After the seminar, we started working with each dog individually, usually for 5-10 minute sessions twice each practice. Everybody on the team helped with each dog -- you were either setting up props, boxloading, running with the dog, and/or cheering when the dog did something well. No more hanging out in little groups around the practice site, chit chatting and waiting for your dog's turn to run.

We usually started the practice with the puppies and worked our way up to the more experienced dogs so that we could do some pairs drills for dogs that needed work with passing, and if there was time left at the end (or a tournament coming up that weekend), we'd run a few lineups.

And we started using a basic prop (7" high, with a stantion on one side) in front of the box to get all 4 feet up. To teach the box at home, we trained our dogs to touch a target with their foot (using a clicker), then gradually moved the target up to the wall, then onto the box. I have to say...the 3 dogs I trained using this targeting method ended up with the best turns of all my dogs. I don't know if it's because I took more time with them (easier to train 3 dogs than 9 dogs, plus I didn't have any kids back then!), or if it had anything to do with the fact that 2 were jack russells and just had a really easy time popping off the box, or maybe I just grasped the concept of that method better than I do the other methods, but perhaps I should revisit it for some of my green dogs. Hmm...

Anyway, short individual sessions with each dog is a great way to run a practice, and pretty much every team I've been on since then has done things this way.

At our practices (with Carpe Pilam), we pretty much stick to this formula:

• Lots of close-up box work with props (oh, how props have evolved in the last 10 years), running, and getting the dog pumped up
• Focus work, where we'll tug and play with an easily-distracted dog next to another dog who's working, to help desensitize it to the rush-that-is-flyball
• Recalls. Sometimes power jumping recalls, and sometimes chase recalls (for the non-herders in our gang) where green dogs get to chase more experienced dogs through the jumps
• Side by side racing (with gates, if necessary) to get the green lookie-loo dogs used to running against another dog
• Lots of rock music, because flyball is always better with rock music

Practicing at Home

If you're lucky enough to have a box at home (or there's one you can borrow from the team till next practice), you can do lots of little 5-min box work sessions at home. You don't want to bore the dog to death, but you also want to build up some muscle memory for a correct turn (use a prop, all the time!) I had my box set up in the den and used it pretty regularly, but my boyfriend hated tripping over it all the time (and it did get annoying when the kids shot their toys out of it), so now it's out in the garage where I never use it.

You can also prop a piece of plywood up against your house or garage door and do hit-its off the ramp. Or you can use a wall and do hit-its off the wall. (Use a prop!!)

There are lots of things you can do at home to improve your dog's recall, drive, and the overall working relationship between you two, and you don't need any fancy equipment to do that.

I'm curious to know what you guys do when you're working with your dogs at home. Especially if you aren't able to practice with your team on a regular basis -- how do you train your dogs alone?

Removing Tugs from Bully Jaws

I learned a new trick in Talladega last weekend.

First, a quick description of the issue. My borderstaffy Punk really loves his tug. So much that he won't give it back, ever. Which gets stressful during racing, especially since he has the bite force quotient of a Tasmanian devil. I can pretty much forget running him as start dog or re-running him if there's a flag (unless I manage to yank the tug out of reach of his snapping jaws when he's coming back...but then he might get my arm or something).

What I used to do:  Yelled "Drop it!" (haha) and held onto Punk's collar and one front leg at the same time while trying to wrestle the tug away (which he probably thought was all part of the fun game of flyball). I practically had to choke the dog off the tug after every heat, which, of course, is terrible.

What changed everything: Then, in Talladega, I look over at the Gamblers (who have about 34 borderstaffies -- okay, just kidding, they probably have 10) and they have this great method of dealing with it. They just pick the dogs up by their hips and suspend them in the air until they drop the tug. Here's what it looked like:

At first I thought, this will never work with Punk. Because 1) He's too heavy at 38 lbs for me to pick him up like that, and 2) He's still not going to drop it. I mean, what's a little mid-air suspension to Punk?

In fact, I was so sure it wouldn't work that I didn't even bother to try it all day on Saturday. Then, on Sunday, in a fit of frustration I lifted him up by his hips and hung him upside down in the air (he actually wasn't that heavy, although I didn't get him as high as you see in that pic) and PUH! He spit the tug out. I think it probably fell out of his mouth while he was re-gripping, actually. And from that point on, I did it every heat and he spit it every heat. Eureka!

How NAFA Works

In light of all the recent discussions on the flyball list and the Flyball Blog, I thought it might be helpful to demystify NAFA for you a little bit.

I was elected to the NAFA board of directors back in 2006, and served 2 years before resigning a year early for personal issues (the stress of a newly divorced single mom, blah blah blah).

I learned a lot in those 2 years:

1. There is no NAFA conspiracy (when it comes to elections, measuring, or anything else). That would imply that everyone on the board is in cahoots and actually trusts each other. ;) The board is actually a lot like the U.S. Congress. That's why it seems like nothing ever gets done. Board members are elected based on their opinions, reputations, and where they stand on the issues, not for how well they'll work with each other. When I was there, the board was split into two pretty predictable groups as far as how we'd vote on issues (just like Congress). And there was a LOT of debate around the wording of rules (just like Congress). Hours and hours of it. I remember one meeting in Detroit where we were stuck in that room from 8am on Saturday to 1am on Sunday, mostly discussing the wording of rules.
2. The reason the NAFA board members rarely post to the flyball list or comment on blogs or anywhere else is because THEY ARE TOLD NOT TO. I remember the lecture I got in my very first board meeting about how individual board members were not allowed to speak on behalf of NAFA or the rest of the board (it goes back to the lack of trust thing in #1). This is an inherent flaw in the NAFA system -- board members are discouraged from speaking publicly, and NAFA has no official spokesperson, so nobody says anything. Which makes NAFA look less than forthcoming, when they really do want to be transparent. 
3. Maybe all the hidden agendas and good-old-boys-club stuff was so deftly hidden from me that I didn't pick up on it, but I found almost everyone to be fair, forthright, and professional, at least at board meetings and Cynosports (no telling how they acted in their own regions while racing with their own teams). So the rumor that the NAFA board is a bunch of crazy power-hungry egomaniacs set on ruling the flyball world (MWAHAHA)? False.
4. If you have a major beef with something, complaining on the flyball list, or to your regional director (RDs work for the ED, not the board), or to tournament directors, or to other competitors, or on a blog will probably not get much accomplished, at least where the NAFA board is concerned. Let me say that again: COMPLAINING DOESN'T HELP. Unless you do it in writing. To the NAFA board directly, via flyball@flyball.org. Some of the board members aren't even on the flyball list. The ones who are will read your complaints and make a mental note of them, and may even use your reasoning and your arguments when it comes time to vote on something, but 99% of the time they aren't going to do ANYTHING until you submit your ideas or complaints or whatever in writing and it gets onto the next board meeting agenda. That is the only way the board will officially recognize anything. 
5. The board is not a bunch of stuck up intimidating people -- they are just flyball competitors like you and me. So quit being such a scaredy-cat and send an email to flyball@flyball.org with your suggestions and ideas. Somebody suggested in a different post that you socialize your ideas on the flyball list first, before you write things up and send them to the NAFA board. I think this is a great idea. The more complete your idea is, the better shot you have at getting the NAFA board to buy into it. Offer solutions, and spell it out for them. The board is really overworked and they don't want to take on a bunch of extra work -- discouraging, but true. So you need to make it easy for them.
6. Board meetings are open to the public. Anybody can go to them. So nothing is discussed in there that the general public can't hear (unless it's in executive session, which is usually reserved for disciplinary matters).
7. If you think somebody on the board is cheating or taking advantage of their position, file a formal complaint (details are in the rulebook) and send an email to everybody on the board (flyball@flyball.org) and let them know about it. Just because somebody is on the board doesn't mean that all the others on the board are going to tolerate behavior like that (see point #1). 

NAFA's biggest flaws continue to be a lack of communication plus a tendency to spin wheels in between meetings. Meaning, not much gets done on a day to day basis. I was guilty of it myself. I got caught up in my "real" life and put NAFA stuff on the back burner a lot, especially right before I resigned. You really need strong leadership on a board like that to make things happen -- somebody to push the others along, hold everybody accountable, and institute deadlines. Somebody to schedule regular meetings -- LOTS of them (teleconferences would be fine). Somebody to MOTIVATE people. Because so much of what the board does goes unnoticed and you get so little feedback about it, you start to wonder what you're doing it for. Getting the flyball community more engaged (as volunteers, etc.) would help with that.

NAFA board members, if you're reading this (I know you probably won't respond -- point #2 above), please fix the way you communicate with the flyball community. In this era of email, web, blogs, Yahoo groups, chats, and all that other good technological stuff, surely you can find ways to regularly update and engage people. Posting meeting minutes a few times a year really isn't enough.

Also, about all the 2009 election stuff swirling around... I can see how the board might be slow to communicate changes to people, perhaps even drop the ball on some details because they are overworked and busy and things do get away from them. (In fact, my own club, Carpe Pilam, did not receive ballots for the past 2 years -- the club owner's address was outdated but nobody from NAFA contacted them about it via email, phone, or their regional director). But I don't believe NAFA would do anything improper where elections are concerned. I had so much respect for Dale (Smith, Elections Chair) when I was on the board -- I aspired to be as fair, open-minded, and ethical as he was.

Anyway, I hope this helped. The one thing I hope people take away from this is that you can't expect the board to read your mind (or the flyball list, haha) and fix the things that are bothering you. You need to tell them, in writing.

Splat

My borderstaffy's turn sucks.

I know it's my fault.

Ironically, he's the only dog I've ever sent away for training (other than the occasional spontaneous dog-trade with a teammate. You know how it goes: "Hey, I have an idea, let's switch dogs till the next tournament!").

When I was first training Punk's box turn, I was trying to do it myself at home and was having lots of trouble. He's sort of a maniac -- no sense of self-preservation and no respect for props. And he's a big maniac -- 38 pounds of borderstaffy. So I'd set the box up against the wall of my garage, with props all in front of it, and he'd just smash through things. The dog was too awesome to screw up, so I decided I needed help.

He trained with both the U-FLI world record team (at age 1) and the NAFA world record team (at age 3) and did great with both of them.

Then he came home to me, and his turn sucked again.

You know why? BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING.

When somebody else trains your dog, you have no idea how to fix things (or sometimes even how to recognize the warning signs) because you have no idea what they did with the dog -- what drills they did, how often they worked with him, what props they used, how they motivated him, what they asked of him, and what they chose to reward him for (I'm sure their standards were much higher than mine). Sure, they sent me video and emails and tried to talk me through it, but it's just not the same thing as being there day after day for months at a time.

And things are different back at home. We only practice once a month or so. It's hard to do much with him in warmups because other dogs on the team need warmup time, too, and Punk is difficult to work with in 30 seconds -- he flails around taking out jumps and light sensors and won't drop his tug. We never pull him out of the lineup if his turn starts to fall apart because we need him. Even with a crap-o turn the dog runs 3.8-4.0. Unlike the world record teams,we don't have an extra sub-4 dog  hanging around on the bench waiting to fill in as a backup when he starts to fall apart.

And so he just does his thing: Runs down to the box like a bat out of hell, splats, then runs back full-speed and tries to knock me down.

I'm sure this type of thing is really frustrating for the talented trainers out there who work with other peoples' dogs, then send them home just to watch all that work go to waste.

From now on, I'm just training my own dogs. I'm batting about .600 when it comes to box turns. I've tried several different methods, and have had success and problems with each one because every dog is different. For example, I trained 2 of my Border Collies at the same time and the exact same way, using a touch stick, then the wall, then a ramp, then the box (always with props). One dog looked amazing on the box until a ball went in -- he's ball obsessed. So the turn falls apart when the ball is in there. The other BC doesn't care about balls, he just wants to race, so his turn continues to look gorgeous.

If I fix BC #1's turn, I'll have the satisfaction of doing it myself. If I don't, well, I know exactly who to blame, and so does the rest of the world. If BC #2's turn continues to hold up, I can be happy with that little private victory.

It's also nice just being accountable to myself, know what I mean?

Move Out of the Way!!!!! (Honey)

So I was at a tournament this past weekend, hanging out with a few friends in between races, and the topic came up of playing flyball with your spouse/significant other.

We all agreed that it was pretty stressful, almost to the point of making flyball not fun. A few reasons why:

• When your teammate yells at you, "Move out of the way!!!" during a race, it's no big deal. You know it's just because it's loud in the building and everybody is pumped up. But when your spouse does it, it really pisses you off.
• You and your spouse usually disagree on how hard to push the dogs during racing. For example, I remember a few years back when my ex-husband (he isn't my ex because of flyball ;)) ran one of our BCs in start and false-started EVERY SINGLE TIME. The dog ran at least 10 times, maybe more because the other team may have false-started, too. It was all because he was trying to time his release so that it coincided with the light, versus just moving up a foot and waiting for the light. I tried to explain to him that the world record team probably waits for the damn light, too, but he would have none of it. Which meant that he was running our poor dog into the ground (and i'm sure the opposing team was thrilled, too). I don't think we spoke for the rest of the day after that. 
• You each assume (hope) the other is going to take care of the dogs in between races and at the hotel, and you start keeping score about how many times you have had to walk the dogs, give them water, etc. (It's even worse if you have kids with you!)

I know there are good things about playing flyball together - it's nice to be with somebody who actually doesn't mind you getting a 10th dog. And it's nice to have a boxloader when you're practicing with the dogs at home. 

But I've been playing flyball by myself for several years now, and I've gotta say it's pretty awesome to drive to the tournament by myself (I talk on the phone and listen to my ipod), stay in a room by myself, and do whatever I want all weekend without worrying about anybody else. Sure, I have to take care of all the dogs, but in some ways it's easier when you know there's nobody else around to help you - you come up with your own system for doing things, and you know for a fact when the dogs have been walked, fed, etc.

My boyfriend's hobby is skydiving, so on weekends he is either working (he's a tandem instructor) or practicing with his skydiving competition team. This means he will never be playing flyball with me, and I will never be going to the dropzone with him. We have our own hobbies, and I think that's great because we're both really competitive and I could see how if we were playing the SAME hobby, together, we may end up biting each others heads off. Instead, it gives us something fun to talk about, and it's cool to bounce ideas off each other (it's actually amazing how similar flyball and competitive skydiving are, except in flyball you don't usually die if you screw up).

Is anybody out there playing flyball with their significant other and actually loving it? Couldn't imagine doing it without them? What's your secret???

What We've Got Here is a Failure to Communicate

Sometimes it seems like nobody cares about Flyball anymore.

I know, I know, we post pictures and video of our dogs up on Facebook all the time, and on tournament weekends we entertain our friends with a running commentary of our escapades via our FB status, and our regional Yahoo groups are hopping with pertinent tournament details and "ISO" posts for dogs to run on open teams. Most clubs have a website and a Yahoo group these days. It seems like we talk about flyball all the time, right? 

I'm not talking about flyball with a little "f," though. I'm talking about Flyball – big "F" – the sport. I mean Flyball at the NAFA or U-FLI level, the big picture view across the U.S. and Canada.

We seem to have become very regionally focused. We've become a bunch of little flyball cliques. I never hear about how things are going up in Ontario anymore, or out in California or down in Texas. I have no idea what the NAFA board is thinking about, aside from CanAm planning. I've never known what's going on with the U-FLI owners. The only coverage of flyball on TV, aside from local news coverage of tournaments, seems to be clips from an outdoor tournament 10 years ago (in Las Vegas?). When I thumb through dog magazines on the rack at Barnes & Noble, there's no mention of flyball. There are no current flyball books, either. I just looked on Amazon, and the last time a flyball book was published in North America was 1997. 

It's sort of a miracle that new people are finding their way to our beloved sport.

I remember the old glory days when there were a hundred messages a week on the flyball list. Like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never knew what you were going to get. Maybe a training discussion, or a slew of tournament brags (usually on Tuesdays, after everyone had a day to recover), or an emotionally-charged debate about measuring, even the occasional accidentally-sent "Oops" posts full of good gossip. These days, there are about 2 posts a month.

We also used to get a NAFA News newsletter in the mail every once in a while. Yeah, it was old-school, but it made people feel like they were a part of something bigger than just their team and their region. 

And NAFA also used to host a Leadership Chat (with the Executive Director and various board members) 3 or 4 times a year. I think they had one in 2009?

Currently, NAFA's idea of keeping flyball competitors informed about the state of the organization and the sport is to post their board meeting minutes on the NAFA website a few times a year and start a new read-only Yahoo group (where they announce when the meeting minutes are posted on the website). 

U-FLI just redesigned their website, so it's fresher than NAFA's, but I can't remember the last time I saw an announcement from one of the U-FLI owners come across on the U-FLI email list (except the announcement of the new website). I don't really expect the same degree of accountability from U-FLI, though, since they are for-profit and privately held. 

I guess I just want to say WTF, NAFA and U-FLI? Is anybody out there actually promoting the sport to the public? Does either organization have a marketing strategy other than to run one really big championship tournament a year and hope for some media coverage? 

I realize that marketing a sport is a lot of work, and NAFA is a bunch of volunteers with full-time jobs and kids and real lives apart from flyball. Believe me, I get it – I was on the NAFA board for 2 years and head of the Marketing Committee when I was there. And it was HARD to get things done. There was no marketing budget and little support then, and I'm betting it's the same way there now. One or two NAFA board members may have the time and energy to market a TOURNAMENT (like CanAm) but they can't market an entire friggin SPORT.

But there's also something about the way NAFA does business that makes the competitors think their ideas and help aren't really welcome.

And so nothing ever gets done.

I just checked out the statistics from NAFA's 2009 Annual General meeting minutes, and 2009 was the first year ever that NAFA's tournament numbers didn't increase:

2009: 352 events

2008: 352 events

2007: 342 events

2006: 325 events

2005: 305 events
(statistics from 1999 to 2006 are available here on the NAFA website)

The number of newly registered dogs has been declining for several years, too.

I know we're in the middle of some tough economic times, but isn't that when we're supposed to try harder? Isn't that when we need to get creative and try out new approaches, versus just blaming everything on the economy?

Marketing the sport to attract new competitors (and to keep the existing ones happy) needs to be a priority for both organizations. It also needs to be important to us, the competitors. Otherwise our little sport isn't going to grow.

How can we, the competitors, make a difference?