Duncan's adorable! I forgot how cute he is. You two look like you are having lots of fun. Maybe I should try flyball with Buffy. She loved the jumps in agility. I would just be concerned about her focus. She has a tendency to get sidetracked by shiny things (can't blame her, I'm like that too) but she will work for cheese. And toys.
I worked on making Duncan ball-crazy early on, so once he is committed to the lane, he is awesome. But when there are dogs flying everywhere, barking, yelling, bandana waving, he needs some encouragement. "Go get your ball!" seems to work best because he's like, "Ball?!?!? BALL!?!?! YESSSS!!!" When he is nervous, his ball-drive drops considerably, but we just worked through it.
In my inexpert experience it varies by dog on the challenge of flyball. If I remember Chelle's posts with Duncan it was the box (though he looks great on it now) with Sca it was the concept of going and getting a stationary item. Sure there are other challenges but in Sca's case once he could run down on command he started to improve fast. He is still slower on the way down than once he gets the ball to come back.
And explain this "T" please
PS Sca said to tell Duncan, Pierre and Ms Abigail hello.
They say hi back to the Border Collie!! Hahaha...
Yes, it took Duncan about 8-10 months to truly master the box and we still do work on it so that we don't backtrack. His issue was extreme trigger-shyness. He HATED the noise at first and wouldn't voluntarily throw himself onto the box. So we had to train him to throw his weight into the box.
We did this with a tee. A T is a "T" shape that looks like a low jump with a support coming out/away at a 90 degree angle. We put this against the box, and I released Duncan, encouraged him to hop onto the box, turned and treated for correct turn and returning me the ball. We also would play a game where I would say something like "paws up!" and he would pounce on the box and right back off and I would treat him. I think these games helped him overcome his fear of the box and make it VERY fun.
He looks gorgeous, WTG Duncan!!
Thank you! He's my little spitfire.
Oh, I was hoping the lanes were made of something else because I don't kow how you could get good traction on cement! Thanks for explaining!
Yeah, cement would be terrible.
Wow, must have been so much fun! I really wanted to do flyball but there JUST arent any places around here
I LOVE the sheltie 'bowling' one HAHAHA great shot!!
I had to really search for a flyball place. It's a lot of work but SO much fun. I highly recommend it.
In his last class there was one dog that barked.... and barked... and barked 
