Dog Community

Flyball Anyone?

Posted : 2/4/2011 9:38:46 PM

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?

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIfN1V4ARpc&hd=1

Get the Ball! Over Jumps and Back

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf9PlOiKz1c

So far our 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.

griffinej5

Posted : 2/4/2011 11:00:54 PM

Glad you're having fun! I wish I could, but the only place that offers it around here doesn't fit my schedule.

tiffy

Posted : 2/5/2011 5:20:26 PM

Gotta love the Corgi bark, huh? Stick out tongue

AgileGSD

Posted : 2/5/2011 11:16:50 PM

Ha he gets a little bit excited ;) He's the most vocal dog we have as far as play and excitement goes. The Belgians have their moments of noiseyness but Zig can't play or get excited at all without telling you about it.

Liesje

Posted : 2/5/2011 11:47:24 PM

I'm not really doing any training, showing, or competing right now (for non-dog related reasons) but when I do, Nikon will probably start flyball. I have a new friend that does it locally and has invited me to training. We were going to go a few weeks ago but I pooped out b/c of snow. She thinks Nikon will be great because he has already done agility, he is mature and listens to me, and he understands having to do a behavior chain to get a reward. The way she explained it to me is that the ball is not the reward so it doesn't matter if the dog cares for the ball or not, only that they are motivated to go out, get the ball, and come back for the reward YOU have. I've already trained Nikon some fairly complex behavior chains using a toy reward so we'll just approach it from that angle. I was concerned about his size but she doesn't think it will be an issue because he is fairly compact for a male GSD of his lines and bone (about 75bs, short coupled, moderate angulation).

AgileGSD

Posted : 2/8/2011 9:05:01 AM

Some of the flyball dogs are ball driven, some aren't but your friend is right it isn't totally necessary. Most of the dogs are more tug driven than ball driven and come racing back to get their tugs. Quite a few of the dogs actually have to be trained to retrieve the ball. In this class, it is obvious what an advantage dogs who already do agility, already have a solid foundation in other sports and already know how training works have in flyball training. I bet Nikon will catch on very quickly!

I found this to be a useful guide: http://www.flyballblog.com/flyball-training-manual/

AgileGSD

Posted : 2/21/2011 9:55:54 PM

Starting to really see the progress in Week 4. This video shows a bit of everything - lanes, turns, get the ball!, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt7VgTctcPM&hd=1

And a quick clip from Week 3 of the dogs running while other dogs run in the next lane:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWEg4DLa8iU

AgileGSD

Posted : 2/24/2011 8:53:24 AM

Video of the whole class working on various things: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B42QFLXvo3s&hd=1