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Beginning flyball tips?

3K views 6 replies 3 participants last post by  cdwoodcox 
#1 ·
Anyone have any tips for a dog beginning flyball. Rosko went to his first flyball practice tonight. They had us work on turns on a ramp, do speed circle jumps, and had me walk back a couple jumps and call him through them to me. I figure on practicing this stuff at home between practices so we don't have to spend months getting the basics down. Anyone have any tips to speed the process. Or is their an order of operations that make things go a little smoother.
Judging by the cheesy green he had on his face the whole 35 minute drive home I think he liked it.
 

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#3 ·
Yes, I do! There are many different philosophies in flyball training so the way I learned and the way we train green dogs may not be the same as other people. We tend to go very slow, making sure that the dog is successful at each level before increasing the difficulty. Some of the training you can do on your own, some is best done with experienced people who can tailor the training to each particular dog. I assume that the people that you're training with have already determined which direction your dog turns naturally. We do that with dead ball retrieves, where we toss a ball, wait for it stop rolling (go dead), and then send the dog to retrieve it. Most dogs will consistently turn in the same direction when coming back, but not all. If a dog sometimes turns right and sometimes turns left you'll need an experienced eye to see which seems more natural for your dog. In case of injuries people have successfully retrained a box turn in the other direction, but it can take a long time, and it's usually best to work with what the dog does naturally.

What you can do between practices if you have another person available is restrained recalls. That's one of the very first things we do - someone holds your dog, you rev it up and run away, calling it to you. If your dog will work for a toy, that's best. Tugs are ideal. If your dog is more food motivated at this point, that's fine too. Work with whatever is most rewarding for your dog. We start restrained recalls on the flat, meaning without the jumps, and with just one dog in the initial stages of training. The recall is basically the end of a flyball run, so by working on this you're backchaining, starting with the end of the behavior and working your way back towards the beginning. You really can't do too much of this exercise. If your dog will chase and retrieve a ball for a tug reward, you're golden! Some dogs will spit the ball early rather than bring it all the way back, so that's something else you can work on if you need to - training your dog to bring a ball all the way back to your hand.

The next step would be opposite direction flat recalls, and would require more people and dogs. Our club uses a low distraction dog - either small, or at least not super loud and drivey. If your dog is already pretty good about tuning out distractions to come to you, we would start the dogs at opposite ends of a field with a lot of distance between them. The first dog runs to their owner, and once it's engaged, the second dog goes. We alternate so sometimes the green dog is waiting while an experienced dog runs past (with 10 or 15 feet between them), and sometimes the green dog runs past the other dog. We gradually reduce the stagger so eventually both dogs are being released at the same time and pass each other in the middle. We only move to this more advanced step when the green dog is able to handle it. Once the dog is enthusiastically running to it's owner for a reward and doesn't care about the other dog, we start decreasing the distance between them. Again, this is done slowly, and tailored to the dog.

When the green dog can be released and run past another dog with very little space between them, we add the jumps. We start with a one jump recall, then 2 jumps, then 3 jumps, then all 4 jumps. This is without another dog in the other lane. When your dog can do recalls over the jumps, we may start with another dog out on the field, but not doing anything. If that's okay, we'll do side by side recalls with 2 dogs, but we start with the green dog so it's ahead of the other dog. We play with that scenario, so once your dog is okay with that we'll release the dogs at the same time, and if that's okay we'll do the experienced dog first and the green dog a second or two later, so it can see the dog in the other lane.

Once a dog is desensitized to a dog in the other lane and will stay in the jumps and not cross over and chase, (using increasingly more distracting dogs) we do passing recalls where both dogs are in the same lane. Again, we hold one dog at the side of the lane and have the other dog run by and be engaged with the owner before releasing the first dog, and then we switch so that the green dog is running past a stationary dog, who is released after the green dog is engaged with the owner. That stagger is gradually decreased so eventually the dogs are both running at the same time and passing each other as they near the start/finish line.

We train the box turn completely separately, at first without a ball. A good box turn is so important, both for speed and for safety, so that's something I wouldn't recommend working on at home by yourself. Ideally, you'll end up with a nice high, tight turn, with all four feet on the box. That's much more difficult for larger dogs since they have to contort their bodies in order to fit.

I was lucky that Halo was pretty easy to train. She was about 2-1/2 years old before we started taking classes and already had a solid ball retrieve. Spitting the ball has never been an issue for her, but I've seen many people struggle with it for a long time and it can be extremely frustrating. She also didn't care that much about other dogs, so I didn't have to work on chasing. The only time she misses jumps is if she bobbles the ball at the box and has to chase after it, and doesn't have room to circle back in time to make that first jump coming back. She knows her job, she loves her job and she always does her job. We use her sometimes with green dogs even though she's very loud and distracting because she doesn't care if other dogs chase her. She's been body slammed at practice, and chased in the runback area at tournaments but once she's locked on her tug she couldn't care less.
 
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#4 ·
Thanks for the advice. Guess we'll just take it slow. I went in half expecting Rosko to be making full runs within an hour. But everyone seems to agree that learning slowly is best. I'll "probably build a box so we can work on turns at home.! We done enough last night that I know how he's supposed to be performing on that. And since Apollo will be starting in on agility this evening I figure I will build some jumps out of pvc pipe. With him only being 6 1/2 months old his jumps will need to be low like the flyball jumps were so those could be dual purpose. I am out with the dogs for 25 minutes each night individually working on obedience. So if I switch between obedience one night then sport the next night the dogs won't get so bored.
 
#5 ·
Thanks for the advice. Guess we'll just take it slow. I went in half expecting Rosko to be making full runs within an hour.
:rofl: Sorry, but in our club we would have taken care of that misperception of the sport right quick! At his age we would be using 6" jumps and we wouldn't even start box training for several months. Box work is the most important thing to train correctly since there is a potential for injury, and a bad box turn can take a LONG time to retrain. It's better to take the time to do it right and have it stick than to have to pull a dog from racing to work on fixing a bad turn once it's already ingrained.

A high tight swimmers turn, especially with a big dog, can take months to train properly. From when I began classes with the club to Halo's first tournament was about 8-1/2 months, and that was fairly fast. But she was already an adult, and had a lot of prior obedience training by then.
 
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#6 ·
I think I posted this before, it's the last heat of the weekend at our club's tournament in August. Silver Streaks is our club (most of our members are now in California, but the club originated in Nevada and we still have two members who live there - the name is a reference to NV silver mines). We raced three teams, Halo was on Roadside Assistance, running in the second position passing into a border collie named Ninja. Both of them are experienced racers, but the next two dogs are fairly new. Voodoo has been to a couple of tournaments but usually runs 1/2 time, and we've been working on a chasing issue with her. Putting her in the left lane helps because she's turning away from the dog in the other lane. She got a nice tight pass into Halo, which is something else we've been working on. The last dog, Ruckus, has been in training longer than Voo, but struggles to bring the ball all the way so he usually doesn't do more than a few heats a day.



Halo usually runs full time, but she ran time and a half at a tournament last February. She did a total of 81 heats over the course of the weekend! You can imagine how hard on the body that would be if a dog does a two foot turn, landing with all the force absorbed only by the front legs and shoulders.
 
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