[AgileGSD]

I just started Whimsy in Flyball a couple weeks ago and my hubby started his corgi Ziggy. This is the first time our all breed club has offered it. Any Flyballers here? There are two GSDs in the class too

If anyone is curious how it's trained, I'm going to try to get video of our progress each week. This is week two and it's mostly the same stuff in week one for our dogs because they already know jumps and tunnels. The dogs who don't are working on those things separately. We start with a couple restrained recalls, then restrained recalls over jumps, then over jumps into the tunnel and back. Separately we worked on two dogs running lanes of jumps side by side and having the dogs go over the jumps gets the ball and come back. We haven't gotten the the box work yet, just picking the ball up off the floor. The box will be taught separately and only added to the lanes once the dog knows it. Until then, the lane work is practiced with tunnels in place of the box.

Running the lane - jumps into tunnel and back:

Get the Ball! Over Jumps and Back

So far the dogs are doing well. The person who took the video asked if Whimsy's done it before, which she hasn't but the foundation for the other things I do allowed her to take right to it. Ziggy also has done agility and is very good at the speed, enthusiasm and jumping aspect (he is a pretty intense little dog) but needs work on carrying the ball back over jumps.

 

[Stosh]

Stosh would LOVE LOVE LOVE this! He's a frisbee maniac and would be so good at this. I've got to show this to our training club, thanks for the video

 

[Cassidy's Mom]

Awesome! That's something (in addition to agility) that I'd like to try with Halo. Our trainer thinks she'd be a natural, so now I just need to find a good class.

 

[Jason L]

Great videos! Ziggy would make a good height dog for your team. Pretty fast for a corgi!

Dottie trained in flyball for awhile but I ended up switching her to agility because I was starting to lose my hearing in training (oh, the barking!)

 

[MaggieRoseLee]

Thanks for posting the videos and I'd love to watch the updates! Too funny when he drops the ball on the way back. And of course I'm loving the use of the agility tunnel initially!

 

[elisabeth_00117]

I've always wondered how those who are in the sport train - very interesting!

I bookmarked this thread to keep looking for updates! Thanks for this!

Very cool videos!

 

[FG167]

Wow! That is so interesting!

I am in Flyball with Madix and we didn't start out anything like that at all! I'd never even heard of this method with the tunnels.

 

[AgileGSD]

Great videos! Ziggy would make a good height dog for your team. Pretty fast for a corgi!

Dottie trained in flyball for awhile but I ended up switching her to agility because I was starting to lose my hearing in training (oh, the barking!)

I thought you'd probably like Ziggy

And as for the barking, I'm thinking I'll bring ear plugs when it gets bad LOL

Stosh would LOVE LOVE LOVE this! He's a frisbee maniac and would be so good at this. I've got to show this to our training club, thanks for the video

If you want to try to get your club interested, another thing to mention is that dogs don't have to be crazy fast to compete. Teams compete in divisions against teams with similar speeds. So anyone interested really could give it a try, even if they don't have the speediest dog.

Thanks for posting the videos and I'd love to watch the updates! Too funny when he drops the ball on the way back. And of course I'm loving the use of the agility tunnel initially!

Wow! That is so interesting!

I am in Flyball with Madix and we didn't start out anything like that at all! I'd never even heard of this method with the tunnels.

It's funny - this is the only team I have seen training, so I thought the tunnel thing was the norm. I posted the vids on another forum I'm on and several people remarked about the tunnels there too. Now I'm kind of wondering how most train beginning flyball LOL

This is the team at the U-FLI Tournament of Champions in October.

 

[GeorgiaJason]

that looks like a ton of fun i mean a ton

 

[FG167]

It's funny - this is the only team I have seen training, so I thought the tunnel thing was the norm. I posted the vids on another forum I'm on and several people remarked about the tunnels there too. Now I'm kind of wondering how most train beginning flyball LOL

We back-chained it with Madix. He was in agility from a young age so the jumps were fine - didn't have to teach that.

So we started with someone else holding him at the box, then I would call him down by the last jump and he would race over them - reward with tug. Then we started him at me, he would run down, get a ball from the ground by the box and then race back to me.

We worked the box separately. We started out boxwork by having someone standing in the middle of the lane, with their foot on the box - so he would have to go over their leg/foot to succeed. We did that behavior over and over (to build muscle memory). Then we added the legs of the run in.

Madix is SUPER smart and a decent problem solver so it only took 3 times of all three things together for him to "get it". We still need something in the middle of the box to remind him to do the swimmer's turn (we've gone from a person to now just a cone sitting there) AROUND the center thing instead of ramming it center-straight. We're now starting to add in a dog sitting beside the lane and a dog jumping up and down and barking off to the side - he's a titch reactive so this is just to get him used to the atmosphere (he doesn't care b/c he's WORKING LOL). So far, so good. Here's a really awful video - if you slow it down and look closely, you can see a woman standing in the lane, step out of the way after he does the correct turn on the box (this is from awhile ago).

 

[stacey_eight]

Thanks for posting this! I was literally just trying to pick our next class. Flyball on Saturday nights or Rally on Mondays. Zeke could probably use the obedience training of Rally, but Flyball looks so freakin' fun!

 

[MaggieRoseLee]

Thanks for posting this! I was literally just trying to pick our next class. Flyball on Saturday nights or Rally on Mondays. Zeke could probably use the obedience training of Rally, but Flyball looks so freakin' fun!

You kidding me?

FLYBALL!!!! :wild:

 

[AgileGSD]

Week 3 (very short):

Week 4 - you can really see the progress the dogs are making in this video. A little bit of everything - running lanes, retrieving turns, etc. This is the first week they practiced the box turns in class:

 

[elisabeth_00117]

Excellent videos!!!

Looks like soooo much fun!

 

[Caja's Mom]

I have been doing flyball for a few years and I have never seen the tunnel used. It is probably a good idea for a big dog like a GSD. We had a hard time with Fyurie coming off the box and going wide around the jumps. He was just to big to make the turn. He is one of the fastest dogs on our team now.

 

[AgileGSD]

This video shows a bit of everyone in class (including Callista the GSD ). All the dogs are at different levels of training so it's kinda fun to see how things progress.

 

[FG167]

Here is our training last night

 

[AgileGSD]

Cool! It's fun to see other dogs practicing It's so quiet though! How long has Madix been doing flyball?

 

[FG167]

Cool! It's fun to see other dogs practicing It's so quiet though! How long has Madix been doing flyball?

We kennel the other dogs in another room - well I kennel Madix outside actually. We started at 6 months, then took a year long break and just got back into it again recently. Probably solid for maybe 3 months? Once a week training.