Dog Sports
Sometimes, your dog needs a 'job'. Something that will focus his or her energies, allow for plenty of training and playing opportunities, something you and your dog can do together. We think that the best dog jobs are really all about playing with you, and with a very active Portuguese Water Dog in our house, we found a job that suits us all perfectly: flyball.
In the spirit of fair play, we'd like to point out that there are numerous other popular dog sports, including agility, dock-diving and musical canine freestyle. And to further define what we mean by dog sports - it's an activity that involves safe and fun play and training, and the active interaction of both human and dog.
Flyball is a team sport, and here's how it works: four dogs run relay-team-style over a set course against another team and the race clock. On the green light, the first dog runs and jumps over four low jumps, executes a 4-paw box turn (like a swimmer's turn, only for dogs) off a specially designed box that releases a tennis ball. The dog grabs the ball in its mouth and then runs back over the same four jumps, crossing the line as the second dog starts its run. The team with the fastest time and clean runs wins the heat, and the team with the most winning heats wins the race.
The dogs work closely with their humans to start their runs at just the right time, and the reward for completing a heat is a big fun playtime session, because the goal of flyball is to have fun. Sure, getting a fast time is nice, and it's fun to win points and earn titles, but the biggest reward is how much fun the training and playtime are.
Another nice thing about flyball? Any dog can do it. While Border Collies and Jack Russell terriers are abundant, any dog that cares to train and run can be a successful flyball dog. We see dogs of all sizes, breeds, mixes and ages at tournaments and the one common factor is that they are all having fun.
Dog safety is a top priority too - the box turns are practiced so that the dog lands and turns safely, and dogs only run if they are willing and healthy: it's fine to have your dog sit out a race if he's tired or not focusing on the job.
There are two sanctioning bodies for tournaments, NAFA (flyball.org) and U-FLI (u-fli.org) and there are numerous tournaments across the US and worldwide.
Our team, Marin Running Riot, practices for 3 hours every weekend, and participates in about a dozen tournaments a year. When we're not at scheduled practice, we all spend time working with our dogs on training exercises that reinforce what we've learned in practice. In our own case, that means dropping everything for intense ball-playing sessions several times a day. It's part of what our dog-athlete happy and healthy.
