Can a cautious Sheltie do Flyball? YES!

M

Mikos_Mom

Forums Enthusiast
The blue merle at 3:01 makes me LOL everytime!!... He's so slow and cautious :biggrin2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQf38Dp92eM&feature=youtu.be

This is a video posted by the flyball club I'm thinking of joining. I'm no expert.. in fact I don't know a thing about it... but some of the turns I'm seeing look really bad to me. Is that something I should hold against the club or is it very much up to the invidual handlers to train proper turns?
 
OMG, the sheltie is wonderful, cracked me up!:lol: Sorry, I know nothing about flyball so someone else has to advise you on that!
 
They look fun. The turns varied but that is normal from what I have seen so far. There is differences in size, experience and even dog. Sca's girlfriend is the smallest BC on the team but you better be ready when she gets there as she blasts off the box with a great turn and wide open also. A couple of the little dogs need to bounce on the box just to trigger it since they are so light.
 
I had to laugh at that beautiful merle...can't believe he managed to get that many little strides into that tiny space! :lol:
 
OMG, that merle made me laugh, How cute is that.

The turns are quite variable, some are great and some are awful. Its very much like my club, at least with the older dogs, the training has changed in the last 18mths. A lot of the quality of turns is about how the club trains it, but if you are willing to do some training outside of class you can improve on it. I wish I had known the techniques when Tully had gone through. We trained at home but the focus was just on clean runs. I didn't worry about her turns until she started showing injuries. Now we practice turns at home but its a lot harder to break the bad habits of 3 yrs.
 
corbinam said:
I had to laugh at that beautiful merle...can't believe he managed to get that many little strides into that tiny space! :lol:
Click to expand...

that's what cracked me up about it too!! :biggrin2:

I want to join the club just so Miko can be-friend that adorable little blue merle.. (hahaha ... I was going to abbreviate "blue merle" to BM, and then I thought I might give you the wrong idea! :lol: )
 
I think it has to do with a combination of things. My captain encourages every member to focus on good turns before all else. But she can't force everyone to do it. There is a positive peer pressure point of view. When we are all doing box work, everyone gets a shot. And some practices are solely devoted to box work. I got lucky with Duncan - he does four on. Of course, that's the only way he can get his 9.5 lbs to trigger the box and it took 8 months to get him to trigger the box, but it was well worth it. I can run him often without worrying about the damage I'm doing to him. I wonder if the people in the video think of that.

Like Caro said, it is extremely hard to train out of the dogs once they get away with doing it wrong for a while. Letting a dog with a poor box turn compete is setting them back in their training because for one whole day, you praise them for doing it incorrectly. Then at practice, you have difference terms.
 
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