Flyball Classes

[Tanya]

The first class was rough (constant "top level" distractions for pen, non stop barking and lunging, I wanted to cry haha). But turns out it helped us in a lot of ways. thankfully by class 4 we were down to only 4 students - perfect. Penny took to her tug amazingly and rather than bark and lunge as other dogs did recalls by us, she put all taht energy to the tug.

It's pretty nice to have a class that gets a dog so physically and mentally tired. Pen was panting 15 mintutes into the class! Gotta love that. I did learn the hard way that lots of tugging apparently leads to immediate need to poop though!

So it was great work on managing her thru distractions. She was doing a box turn by the end. we didn't get the ball in. She would do four jumps to the box (teacher released penny - i was at the box with the command to "hit it").

She did not do well on passes, we didn't do much of then as the four class dogs were all pretty high energy and needed more space to start off with for passing (and possibly more handlers to help haha). This would be the hardest part if we ever get back into the sport, passing and keeping to her task (get the ball, come back to me with the ball).

Classes are done. We start up indoor agility in 2 weeks. Should be interesting (pen has only done outdoor agility and the other classemates were not too close so this will be interesting).

[Annette47]

Sounds great!

[Jeff]

You will get there. It sounds like you both have done a lot especially since you got started not long ago. Eventually they get focused on the ball. We have a new dog that is ready to practice passing on which is causing some issues. She is a border collie, which are herding dogs. So if Hemi is right after her, she runs gets her ball comes back. I release Hemi and he zooms right past her focused on the ball, well she thinks she needs to herd him up and starts chasing him trying to bring him back. We found if she is the last one in rotation then she is fine but if she is first she wants to herd everyone.

It is a lot of fun and really wears them out though. Great exercise for both of you. It is for me and Hemi.