out and about
What is Flyball?
Flyball is the fastest growing dog sport in the world. Started in California in the late
70's Flyball is continuing its spread across the United States, Canada and several other
countries. New teams and clubs are sprouting up all over.
Playing the Game!
The name of the “flyball” game is teamwork, speed, and precision. Flyball is a
four-dog relay race between competing teams. The Flyball course covers 51 feet in length
and consists of four hurdles leading to the Flyball box. Each dog must jump the four
hurdles, retrieve a ball from the box, and return over the hurdles and cross the finish
line. When the dog crosses the starting line the next dog goes. The first team to have all
4 dogs run without errors wins the heat.
Tournaments are usually organized in either a double elimination or round robin format.
Double elimination is usually best of 3 or best of 5. Round robin is usually best 3 out of
5 and the first team to win 3 heats receives 1 point towards their standing in the
tournament.
The hurdles' height are dependent on the height of the dogs in the team -- 4" below
the shoulder height of the shortest dog. 8" is the minimum height and 16" is the
maximum height.
Each dog must be highly trained to work on a team with three to five other dogs and be
highly focused amid great distractions. The world record time for four dogs to complete
the course is 16.06 seconds.
The Trick!
One trick to flyball is that you have to send in a seed time and they place you into a
division with teams of similar seed times. In order for people to be persuaded not to send
in slower times so that they can "clean-up" in a lower division there is what is
called a break-out time. In our case the break-out time was 21.40s. If a team "breaks
out" 3 times they are disqualified from the tournament.
One races each team in their division once. In order to win the race, you have to win 3
out of 5 runs. Each run (4 dogs down & back without faults) is timed and that is how
the points are awarded.
If the run is under 32s --> each dog receives 1 pt
If the run is under 28s --> each dog receives 5 pts
If the run is under 24s --> each dog receives 25 pts
What Do Those Funny Looking Abbreviations Really Mean?
Titles are awarded as follows:
20 pts FD - flyball dog
100 pts FDX - flyball dog excellent
500 pts FDCh - flyball dog champion
5000 pts FM - flyball master
10,000 pts FMX - flyball master excellent
15,000 pts FMCh - flyball master champion
20,000 pts ONYX award
30,000 pts FGDCh - flyball grand champion
Gage - Pit Crew's Height Dog
(Photo courtesy of Tiffany Salmon.)
Who are these 2 teams from the Afterburners Flyball Club in Ottawa, Ontario -- Formula 1
and Pit Crew? Find out here.
What is Flyball? Find out more about this interesting sport by clicking here.
A view of the world from the eyes of a border collie continues on the next page...
Keep an eye open for different topics of interest such as: profiles on
people and their dogs, to name but a few interesting topics...Also, have a look at what Rita Susanto and "Justin" have been up to these
days.
Why not be part of "out and about" and send in your canine
companion's accomplishments to us. To do so, please send us a brief description of how you
both did in the event(s) along with the location(s) you and your canine were both in to:
NK Concepts - Dog Supply Training Specialist.
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A View of the
World Through a Border Collie's Eyes
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