I always thought 'oh yeah,can't be that hard,just send the dogs down a row of 4 tiny jumps,get the ball,and back they come,easy!'.
But for the past few months I've been reading a couple of flyball people's blogs,and got to thinking that the sending the dog down 4 jumps,getting the ball and coming back is the easy bit.
Keeping those dogs focused in that hyper stimulating environment,getting those box turns perfect,and matering the art of getting your dog to pass at the right time,now seem much harder.I hadn't even thought about those parts of flyball!
So I'm hatching a plan.I don't want to use any of the 'Dream team',(Shady,Mookie,Floozie) as they are agility dogs.Mindy can't go off lead in anything less than a completly secure environment,and that leaves...........Bug!
Bug,flyball?I'm not sure.
But he does like balls and tugging.I would have to build a working relationship with him,as he's Pete's dog really,but he has always been really responsive to training whenever I've done anything with him.
He's not a fast dog,Mookie kicks his ass when they do lure racing.But it will allow me to learn about flyball.
I think I'm gonna find out about some private lessons to start with.Before I inflict him on the public hehe.
Who wouldn't want this ugly mug on their team?
For sure give flyball a try! Though, I will say, there is no reason your dogs can't do both agility and flyball- a lot of flyball dogs I know also do agility, rally, obedience, lure coursing, or other dog sports.
ReplyDeleteI am going to,I'm excited,it'll be great to learn something new :O)
ReplyDeleteThe only reason I don't want to do it with my agility dogs is that I worry alot (too much) about breaking them!lol.
I find agility way more scary in the breaking-dogs department than flyball! (The tire scares the pants off me- I cringe every time my dog gets near it.)
ReplyDeleteI have found flyball far more interesting to teach than I ever expected just from watching it.
Yeah I don't mean I'd be more likely to break them doing flyball,I just mean that if I do both that increases the risk of injury too much for me to cope with lol.
ReplyDeleteThey also go hiking off lead each day and run round like crazy things,plus are 'loose' whilst I work each day,so exercising then also.
I just have too good a history of breaking them to increase their workloads.
I really think flyball is WAY harder to train than I ever gave it credit for.But then I thought agility looked pretty easy before I started training and competing in that too!