FlyballFlyball is a team relay race, with each team consisting of four dogs and their handlers. The object is for each dog in turn to negotiate a line of four low jumps, retrieve a tennis ball from a box at the end and then return to the start line with the ball. As one dog finishes, the next dog starts until the whole team has successfully retrieved the tennis balls. The winner is, of course, the fastest team.
Flyball is a comparatively new sport which came to the UK from North America around 1990. The main governing body for flyball is the British Flyball Association (BFA) and in more recent years, flyball clubs have appeared like mushrooms! It is now a massively popular sport in the dog world and is probably the fastest growing sport at this moment in time.
The Kennel Club run a flyball competition and the final is at the Crufts each year. Until recently, Crufts had slightly different rules, and used a completely different box but recently they have changed the box and rules to come more in line with the BFA version of flyball. Modern technology has also played its part Ð competitions are more sophisticated these days and timing at all competitions is generally electronic which is much more accurate and fair than timing by eye and stop watch!
Springers FlyballWe have been competing in BFA Flyball since 1999 but compete at only a few events each year. This is mainly because we have a very diverse club life and do not devote our energies to any single discipline. However, we are still generally very successful, and we enjoy the competitions we go to, which is the main object of the exercise!
We competed in the finals of the 2007 Crufts YKC Team Competition and finished in fourth place - a great achievement considering it was our first go! We currently have some very promising teams developing within the club. The fastest is our "Springers" team who won their division at their last competition. Not too far behind them were our "Zebedees" team who have suddenly leapt forward and won a very commendable third place at the same competition. We are now looking for greater things from our flyball teams in the future! We also include flyball demonstrations as part of our show displays and all of our flyball dogs do agility - but not all of our agility dogs do flyball!
