A Noob's Guide to Flyball: Chapter 3: Letting Him Fly a guest blog by Matty

The hardest part for anyone running a dog in flyball is trusting your dog to do his job.  This can be twice as challenging (i imagine) if you haven't participated in or witnessed the training process and are running someone else's dog.

Ok so for the third installment of my noob's guide the executive decision was made (Lex) that I should talk about “letting Dem fly” … which is still something I have to actively think about during tournaments. In a nutshell what this consists of is that while I am lining up with Demo and waiting for my cue to send him on his way, I hold him by the hips. It’s the easiest spot to hold the kid for how he lines up. What my horrible habit is with this is that when I let him go I don’t just let him go, I push him a little bit too.

Now the initial thought here is one of a push start, like an extra boost for him. Bueno, right? WRONG. What it does in all actuality is it slows him down because while I AM pushing him forward I am also holding onto him that much longer than I should be and that in turn slows him down and adds time on to our starts. No bueno.

One of the peeps on the team, Lori, told me I was doing this and told me how to release Dem properly. Essentially it was as simple as actively thinking about what I was doing while I let him go. I wasn't supposed to be pushing him, but just pulling my arms away from him so I could “let him fly” as she said.  So its something I have to constantly work on whenever I get the chance to with him.  It’s one of those things I have to mentally check myself on every time we race (one of many) and if I push him then either Lori and/or Lex will for sure call me out on it. I don’t think I've ever had a race where one of them wasn't present.

That’s a shot of me letting him fly,  and as you can see Demo is a good 7-8 feet away from me already and I’m taking off at my jog/sprint after him. Zoom zoom.  

I wish I had a picture of me pushing him from when I starting this addiction but I didn't have anyone to take pictures then and I really don’t want to have to push him on purpose just for photo’s sake.

For those of you who are proponents of the “push” method and not the “fly” method, please consider this. You wouldn't push a car while the driver is flooring the gas pedal would you? And yes, Demo IS that fast… I mean his name is Demolition for a reason, come on.

A Noobs Guide to Flyball: Chapter 2: Box Loading Where Right is Left and Left is Right.... Right? A Guest Blog By Matty

Welcome to our second installment of a Noob's Guide to Flyball. Boxloading is probably the most important and least talked about aspect of flyball. After all, you can't play flyball without a boxloader. It takes a lot of guts to be the boxloader, I mean, would you like to face this coming down the lane at you

(and Trophy is my most mild running dog!) Here to tell you all about it from the perspective of "hey, you've been to one practice and we need you to boxload this tournament... here you go!" Take it away, Matty! 

Ok so this time I’m going to talk about box loading. Oh the joys of box loading, its kind of a scary and daunting task when you think about it. I mean you have to realize that the dogs are trained to turn off one side of the box. So you must know which way the dog will turn so you can put the ball on the correct side of the box. And if you screw this up or totally forget to even put the ball in the box, then congratulations! you have probably given that heat of the race to the other team. Both of which I have done, and cursed myself out in my head for. 

Now the prime example of me doing comes from the most recent tournament, Lex was starting with Pan and in the second heat Lex nailed a perfect start! She also did this squeee thing she does when she gets excited. And I, being the curious turd I am, directed my eyes at the clock. 0.000, and in the moment that it took to complete that I had completely missed reloading the box and Trophy had come and hit the empty box. Since I had forgotten to load the box, Trophy didn't have a ball and we took a no finish for the heat and the perfect start didn't count. And if you are on a team like mine that is about running clean heats and less about being the fastest then it might not be the end of the world but let’s be honest, we all have that little bit of competitive spark that flares up sometimes. (Mucho props to Lex for not killing me on the spot, there will be many white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies from me in your future!)

Now from my understanding the dogs turn either left or right (as the box we use only has two positions, one on either side to retrieve the ball from). What that means is that the ball either goes on the right or left. So the dog either turns right or left, feel free to say “duh”. What needs to be explained after saying the dogs turn right or left is that if you are box loading that you need to reverse the right’s and left’s because you are facing the dog. What that means is that when the dog is running toward you and he or she turns to the left, it means that he/she is actually turning to your right. WOMP WOMP!  

[Lexi's note: Pretty clear as mud, right? Basically you have to think of things in terms of DOG'S left or right and BOXLOADER left and right - they are opposite. If the dog turns left it means BOXLOADER right. Still clear as mud? Welcome to boxloading :)] 

 So how does anyone keep all this info straight? I personally keep a list on my phone that I copied from Lex of the dogs and which way they turn (from the dog’s point of view). It can be confusing if you don’t know the point of view. But once you have the left’s and right’s down you should probably think about having a few extra balls.I personally like to carry two extra of every ball for each dog. Everyone bust out your calculators and do the math, that’s eight balls in whatever holding place you happen to find on your person. I personally like me some comfy cargo shorts, the pockets hold my extra balls pretty well. But to each their own, I have seen fanny packs, back pockets, front pockets, hoodies, and even seen tennis balls held in the small of the loaders back. So your results may very.

What do you do if the dog in your lane bobbles the ball and pretty much has no chance of finding it, but will not return to the handler because it's a dog on a mission and will not be deterred? As i found out this past weekend, you can just drop a ball for that dog to find so that he/she can get it and just get out of there before they run off or steal the other teams ball, which could lead to even more problems. 

Another good thing to remember is that you DO NOT LEAVE YOUR POSITION UNTIL THE HEAT IS OVER. And since I sometimes can’t hear the judge due to barking or even see who’s who down at the other end of the lane because the light outside could rival the sun itself, I usually look for the other box loader to step off and then follow suit, or if they don’t move and I can actually differentiate people on the other side I will look to see if anyone is running their dog or doing anything resembling what happens during the heat. 

My last point is going to be about calling the dog from the box. Since I am paranoid as all get out I usually keep my mouth shut unless I’m told to say something. And with that, it’s story time. During the tournament over Memorial Day weekend one of my team mates asked me to call her dog, and I just immediately blurted out the dogs name. Which would have been a fantastic thing, if we had been running the heat. Alas, we were in between heats and the dogs were lining up. So I yelled, “Dodger!” and Lex comes back with a, “When he’s running”. Dodger was third in the line up. Big duh on my part, but that’s what I get. Sometimes I get wrapped up in my head when I’m trying to make sure I have the lineup for the heat correct. 

[Lexi's note: we have run into this twice with Demo. He will NOT come back if his ball gets lost. Twice he has technically crossed over, once causing a very clear interference, and the judge did not whistle the heat dead, Demo then jumped over the back boards to hunt down his ball - there are props and spare tubs of balls and god only knows WHAT back there, not to mention the wires for the lights.... so it was a really dangerous situation and I was pissed SO PISSED at the judge for not calling the heat. That is when we found out if the boxloader just "accidentally" drops a ball for the dog it's just a re-run for the dog and hopefully the next time it happens we can avoid Demo trying to kill himself!"]

 Next time: Trusting your dog and letting him fly!

A Noob's Guide to Flyball: Chapter 1: From Fly Fishing to Perfect Starts, A Guest Blog by Matty

Note: while I try to keep the language of this blog pretty PG, in real life my friends and I swear like sailors. As this is written from the perspective of my friend, I have not edited language.

Introduction:

At Saturday's flyball practice my friend Matty, who has been running Demo for me at recent tournaments, said he is going to write a book about flyball and he has already picked the title.  From Fly Fishing to Perfect Starts.  This made me laugh as it is Matt's first two flyball tournaments in a nut shell.

In March I put out a call on my facebook page that I needed someone to run one of my dogs in a tournament in April because two of my dogs would need to be on the same team and I can't run two dogs at the same time.  Matty, who had been to a tournament in Januray for a few hours said "That sounds like fun, I'll do it!"  He made it to one practice, the week before the tournament, where he learned the basic mechanics of how flyball runs: releasing Demo, when to call him, how to catch him and get the hell out of the way of the other dogs.

His first race was... interesting. We were almost late and almost missed warmups. It was less than ideal, but we survived. Matt survived, and is now excelling at starting Demo.  

As a semi-regular feature we will be sharing Matty's story.  Which is the story of flyball from the perspective of a total noob.  Flyball from the perspective of someone who was just about thrown into the ring blind.  Someone who went from fly fishing with a tug, to having a perfect start in just two tournaments.  Take it away Matty.

That's Matt in the Blue, and Jbiz running up the lane.

H'ok so, zees is muh story...

As Lex said, I knew the basics of how flyball runs, and let me stress this, I knew BASICS. I knew on which light I should let go of Demo, I knew roughly where I needed to run up to with the tug that Demo loves so much and I knew to run back and get the hell out of the way of everything else. So we go in and the warm up timer is counting down so we make a mad dash to the box to do run outs and and get that out of the way [Lexi's note: Just so you get the amount of pressure we were under, all three of my dogs ended up on the same team due to a last minute lineup change where one of our team members pulled her dog. I was coming off of an injury where a dog had bitten my hand and I had to fight off a huge infection, and I had JUST been cleared to full use of my hand the day before - it was still VERY sore. We had two green handlers, Matt running Demo and Jbiz running Trophy and I was running Pan.  Jbiz had some more practice time under her belt, but we don't practice with as much runback as in a tournament so this was her first time doing actual passes... and we didn't have a practice run. We had just enough time for a run out, but not enough time for a full warm up run. AGAIN: We had a run out... and then game time.  Talk about pressure, there was a lot of it riding on their shoulders. My account of this first tournament can be read here.]. An experienced flyballer would have known what was going on and that time is of the essence here. And there was moi, so being the noob that I was (am?), I just tried to keep up with everything. As anyone who isn't normally in these situations can attest to, having someone yell at you can be a bit startling so when they yelled "RUN!" at me it took me a second to process. but after a moment I kicked it into gear and away I went down the lane.

Now, there is something I was told after that first race. When I am being 'yelled' at, its not yelling per say. No one is necessarily mad at me and pissed off. They are yelling for a few reasons. Mainly its loud and people need to be heard so they have to yell. Also, they need to emphasize speed is of the essence and you need to move fast because I swear everything at a flyball tournament is on a timer.

So my very first race: there I am, lined up with Demo, kinda half squatted half crouched over, waiting for the the lights to start the count down. I believe I was somewhere around the 48' mark... or something close to that. The lights start and I see, one yellow.... "Demo readyyyyyy".... two yellow.... "Go!" and away he went, doing his thing. I take off after him doing as I was told. Running down towards the start line I pull the tug from around my neck, Demo gets the ball from the box and that's my cue. I swing the tug down on the ground and begin to run toward the back of the lane waiting for Demo to grab it. Now two things happened in the whopping 2 seconds from me swinging the tug to Demo grabbing it that I did wrong. First off, what I had thought was perfectly fine tug swinging mechanics, was actually a laughable imitation at fly fishing as the rest of the team described it. I got up to my position and (as I was told later)  "gently tossed the tug up and out in an arc, then gently swung it down with a flourish and ran back".

VIDEO PROOF of Matt's horrible Tug skillz at 0:06 seconds. ;-)  Compare to Deb's Tug skills at 0:16seconds.

It became quite the joke around our camp site for the weekend. Eventually I even got on board with it and said I just needed some glitter on the end of the tug to complete the look. That was the first thing I did wrong. The second was that as I ran back with the tug I  pulled up on it as I anticipated Demo grabbing onto it. This little tiny action causes Demo to jump up and grab the tug higher up. Higher up in this case was my hand. I got a good chomp from Demo and thank goodness I had a glove on because even though Lex told me that if he managed to bite flesh he releases immediately, it hurt like a bitch. Didn't break the skin though, so I just suited up and got back in line for the second heat. I wasn't mad at Demo because that whole bit was my own fault and I knew going in that it could happen.

Just before the fly fishing began...

So I was one heat of my debut flyball race in and already I had been made fun of, and injured. Both of which I fully deserved.

Pausing for a moment to clarify, MY TUG MECHANICS DON'T LOOK LIKE THAT ANYMORE! The advise given to me from the all mighty flyball teacher known as Lex were to "take all your demons out on that floor" so I tried that. My mission was to beat the floor into submission and my weapon of choice was a 4' long fleece tug.... Bring it on.

It was raining Sunday, so we carried Pan and Demo to the
building and back to try to save their boots.

So, that was the highlights. The rest of that weekend went pretty smoothly. I had clean starts save for one or two. My typical starting time for the first while was on average .100 ish. now once I started getting into the groove of things with starts and the timing of the lights, I asked Lex if I could start moving Demo up a bit to tweek our starts and she let me. Slowly working start times down and getting better starts.

I am going to say that first initial time I was allowed to move Demo forward and try some starts on my own with where I placed him is the moment I caught the flyball bug.

From there I became all about getting the best start for my team. It clicked with me that my starts are my contribution to the team and that is what makes me feel apart of the team. Cue the mushy gushy stuff.

Moving on to the second tournament that I had ever participated in. With one practice and one tournament under my belt I naturally felt like a pro. This tournament brought out more members of the team than the previous tournament, so I got to meet more people; and let me tell you something, the peeps on this team are hil-freaking-larious. Better still, Lex decided to take a backseat at this tournament and let other people run all 3 of her dogs. Most importantly, this meant I got to run Demo a lot. Like, A LOT A LOT. Lex ran Demo for two of the eleven-ish races he ended up running in that weekend, one because he did something we can't remember but she wanted to run him to try and fix it and the second was because he was going to get his FDCH-G. She's sentimental like that.  But all the other races, that shit was all me. [Lexi's note: Demo got so many races because we ended up pulling Pan from a few as she was having major problems on the box - her back feet slipping off and such so to save her body we gave her a rest and put Demo in.]

We did pretty darn well all day Saturday, the average starting time was .0 something something and I was quite pleased with myself. We ran fast and we ran clean. You couldn't ask for a better tournament!

Snuggling before Sunday Race Day!

Then shit got real on Sunday. We're in the middle of the day (it's about here that my tug mechanics make the transition from fly fishing to demon killing). We had been talking about perfect starts earlier that day and Lex made a comment, "There is nothing worse than a -.001 start." and what do I do? I nail a frustratingly imperfect -.001 start. So I make an annoyed grumble and get Demo back in line to try that again. He was doing spectacular, bobbled a few times but made a good recovery. Now a couple races down the line, we get to the second or third heat and by now I've got my routine down. Demo and myself had moved up to roughly the 43' marker and we had fantastic starts from there, false starts if we moved up any more and slow starts if we moved back. So 43' it was. Now in the middle of this race, we do our thing. I had stopped even looking at the time clock at the end of the lane because we had plenty of people to take times and box load and call passes. So I get Demo on the tug and Kandice comes back with Malley who ran second and passed into Demo and she's yelling "Dude, you got a perfect start!!"

Me: what?!

Kandice: You got a perfect start!

Me: Seriously?! Awesome!! I didn't even look at the clock!!

Dude from other team: It doesn't count if you don't see it, haha!

Me: I'll take what I can get...LEX!!!! I GOT A PERFECT START!!!! (She was calling passes that race so she wasn't tooooo far away and ran back and gave me a high five)

While all this is happening on the outside, on the inside I am all "BOOM BITCHES!!! I GOT A PERFECT START MOTHERFUCKERS!!! POINT ZERO ZERO ZERO! FUCK YEAH!"

After the race the guy from the other team bro fisted me and we got Tasha's reaction to it (she was taking down times so she was too far away for the initial celebratoriness between heats). She said "I was taking times and then I saw 000 and I thought it was broken. I looked at it, then I looked at the other side, and I just decided oh well and just wrote it down."

That pretty much sums up my second tournament, we got some schwanky glasses for being there, I got two because I ran Demo and box loaded. But we'll save box loading for chapter 2...

Matt out!

Matt will be back (hopefully) soon with Chatper 2 and how we literally threw him into boxloading, in the mean time show him some love by commenting on the blog and sharing it with your friends!  Maybe we really will publish it some day! ;)