Joined: 03 Feb 2008 Posts: 1130 Location: Land of the Giants and Jets (East Rutherford, NJ)
Fur Kids: Blue, CPX (that\'s couch potato excellent) and
June. Both rescued Weims
Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:26 pm Post subject:
what exactly happens in flyball? Do they have to drop it? Cause Junie can run and catch but she's not into frisbees or dropping...
I always thought the ball shot up out of the box when they hit it. Zoe might be good at this, when it comes to chasing tennis balls at the dog part we havent found a dog that can out run her yet... Riley tries, but she is still learning how her feet work, or lacks motivation... when it comes to a sprint for the ball, Zoe makes most dogs look silly... shes the Michael Phelps of tennis ball chasing. I think she would much prefer a ball that jumped up at her from the box - she likes them in the air. Tennis balls and flys
Joined: 18 May 2008 Posts: 466 Location: Marlton, NJ
Fur Kids: Windy\'s Amazing Grayce (Grace)
Weimaraner
Title: spoiled brat
Nell
Maine coon
Title: dogs pillow
Bella
Long haired cat
Title: dogs toy
Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 8:01 am Post subject:
I did a flyball class with Grayce and she was great at flying over hte hurdles..so much so that the trainer asked if Id be interested in joining her flyball team after 2 classes...welll than we added a tennis ball into the training and everything went downhill. Grayce would FLY over the hurdles at super lightning speed, get the tennis ball, than she would jump over the side lane barrier thy had set up for the training class and sprint around the room doing zoomies with the tennis ball in her mouth playing keep away haha
I could not seem to train this out of her...it was hilarious to watch but she would not get the ball and bring it back for some reason.
Joined: 03 Feb 2008 Posts: 1130 Location: Land of the Giants and Jets (East Rutherford, NJ)
Fur Kids: Blue, CPX (that\'s couch potato excellent) and
June. Both rescued Weims
Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 11:16 am Post subject:
AmazingGrayce wrote:
I did a flyball class with Grayce and she was great at flying over hte hurdles..so much so that the trainer asked if Id be interested in joining her flyball team after 2 classes...welll than we added a tennis ball into the training and everything went downhill. Grayce would FLY over the hurdles at super lightning speed, get the tennis ball, than she would jump over the side lane barrier thy had set up for the training class and sprint around the room doing zoomies with the tennis ball in her mouth playing keep away haha
I could not seem to train this out of her...it was hilarious to watch but she would not get the ball and bring it back for some reason.
Joined: 07 Jun 2008 Posts: 1034 Location: Pacific Northwest
Fur Kids: Taren- (Rhymes with Karen) Weim, spoiled and loving every minute of it.
Lola- Himalayan Cat, a.k.a I think I am a pretty pretty princess, just ask me.
Siah- (See-uh) Persian Cat, shedder extraordinaire
Wickan-Fat, lazy, alley cat.
Posted: Fri Aug 29, 2008 11:28 am Post subject:
I agree with everyone else, wow that looks fun! Off to read up about it. Could you tell us a little more about how you got involved and what the in's and out's are?
Coder LOVES it and it's a great way to burn some of his energy. Here's the definition of flyball from the North American Flyball Association site:
Flyball races match two teams of four dogs each, racing side-by-side over a 51 foot long course. Each dog must run in relay fashion down the jumps, trigger a flyball box, releasing the ball, retrieve the ball, and return over the jumps. The next dog is released to run the course but can't cross the start/finish line until the previous dog has returned over all 4 jumps and reached the start/finish line. The first team to have all 4 dogs finish the course without error wins the heat.
Factor in dogs dropping balls in the other lane, the excitement of a hundred dogs barking in the building, the urge to chase.... It's pretty crazy. Actually one of the funniest thing Coder did was stop half way to the box and stick his nose in the air smelling. They were cooking BBQ in the back of the building for lunch and he caught a wiff of it. lol
The funny thing is he would never retrieve a tennis ball before I started training him to do it. If you look at the video in my initial post, he's not pulling a ball. I hadn't worked on that yet. Here's a link to my blog explaining what I had to do to get a ball retrieve. I'm bad and haven't updated it in forever. http://nybblecoder.blogspot.com/
If you want to see what can go wrong when you train your dog to get any ball and not the one on the darn box, watch this video. I can look back and laugh now but by dog it was embarrassing when it happened! This was his first tournament. He wasn't hurt and ran back to me with that Weim "I meant to do that!" face.
Grayce sounds hillarious! I bet she could do it though if she's a cheese fiend like mine is.
This is how it's supposed to go but at a practice not a tournament. Our passes are horrid because we were working on my friend running Coder and me running Nybble (my boston) in the same lineup.
I should add, there are only 77 Weimaraners registered with NAFA. If you look at the list, many are retired, inactive or deceased. It's really sad because they seem to enjoy it! There are three running here in Florida and it's awesome to watch them.
