So Lyndsey's comment in my previous post made me think about how and why we got into flyball.

I needed an outlet for Sophie's immense energy. I had seen a few flyball demos and was amazed at the speed and training of the dogs.

Sophie has been a retriever from day 1 (this is a few hours after we brought her home from the shelter)

She could retrieve all day if you let her. I figured what better way to tire her out and combine her love of retrieving. After our first day of class, I realized there is more to it than a dog who loves tennis balls. Your dog has to have great recall since you want them to return to you as fast as possible.

There are a few dogs on our team that our ball obsessed, so they race to the box and then dawdle back to their owner because they do not want to give up their ball.

I spent the first few weeks of classes working on Sophie's drive back to me since she already had drive to her ball. I experimented with different treats, holding another tennis ball and different tugs. During class I never did find something that made her fly back to me. She would come back but with much less speed.

After a short 4-5 month hiatus from class, Sophie and I joined a team. Someone handed me a tug with fuzz on it. I showed it to Sophie, who leapt on to it and proceeded to tug like I have never seen her tug before.

She flies back down the lane for that tug. She ignores other dogs running at her so long as she can see that tug in front of her. That poor tug is on its last leg and will need to be replaced soon.

My team and many people I have met in the flyball world feel any dog can be a flyball dog if they have some drive and stamina. We have a wide variety of dogs on our team, rescues, purebreds, small, big, young and old. I love seeing the different types of dogs all excited and happy to be playing!

Of course it also depends on your team. Some teams are very competitive and run some very fast times. Sophie is not the fastest on our team by any means. Normal time is 5.1, our fast dogs run 4.3 secs. I am fairly confident with some conditioning Sophie can run a consistent 4.8/4.9. But for our team it is more important to have fun! We do try to keep our times under 25 seconds so we can get points on our dogs but we aren't out there hoping to beat the world record.

So for anyone interested in flyball, I say get out there and give it a chance. Find a team willing to train you or a class. It is a lot of fun and addictive. We have no tournament until June and I am already counting down the days! :-)