Flyball • Flyball • Flyball

Susie coming back over the hurdle. She bounces over
these hurdles that are 10' apart in one big leap.

It's been too long since I've last posted. I've been busy with our new flyball team. If you don't know what flyball is go ahead and google it. Not many folks have seen it. It's a dog relay sport that was started in the 70s so it's a fairly new sport. It's not about the ball but how quickly your dog can travel down a 51' stretch of matting, turn on a box loaded with tennis balls, catch a ball and come back to you. It's a recall game really. A fast dog moves over this total 102' stretch of matting in less than 4 seconds. A really fast dog is closer to 3.5 seconds. Our dog, pictured here, averages 4.5 seconds.

Flyball is very different than agility or rally where you only have you or your dog to blame when things go south. With flyball, there are five other teammates working together to win the race (four dog handlers and a box loader) and because of this there's more room for errors.

We debuted in June at our first tournament. We were all a little nervous but things quickly smoothed out and boy did we have fun. As luck would have it, we placed first in our division. That was an amazing feeling. It took me a week to come off that buzz. Sure we have a few things to work on but overall we were all very proud of ourselves. We will compete next month in Athens, GA. I expect more laughs and good times from this dog crazy team.

More to come. Savor the details.