Tonight was night two of training sessions for beginners before the start of Summer Flyball for the next twenty weeks.

For the past two years, this is year three, I have run a Flyball Thursday from 6p.m. till 8p.m. through Daylight Savings time. It has a barbie sausage sizzle and costs $5 per dog. This year we have a committment from 16 dogs to complete the program.

My rationale for this training was that we always have Club members at different levels who seldom socialise or do things together. The Seniors train their dogs in their time and go off and compete at High levels of Kennel Club and Flygility Association, and when we host National things we expect our new members, juniors and regular non-competitive members to carry the can and work their sox off. New people have to feel part of the action to want to do this and fair enough too. I have been there and felt like I was never going to be part of 'the Club' or 'the Sport'. The people who have been training for a year or more from nowhere, no previous experience, are ready to compete in the high levels but they lack confidence and trust in themselves and their dogs. They need a competition that makes them and their dogs work under pressure for fun. Then there are the people who really want to do the sport but are just at the start of their training and the dogs are all over the place, concentration wise., There is a need for them to get their game together with their handlers, and the handlers need to want to work harder to achieve this.

So three levels of people are deliberately involved in this games night to improve their own and their dogs' capabilities.

Let's start with the dogs who are capable of running up to the fly box, hitting it and coming back to their handler, that is all they can do, and mostly they can do it when there is no distraction level. I don't want to introduce any more equipment to these dogs and handlers until they can run twentyfive metres from the start to the flybox, hit it, collect the ball and return to their handlers without being distracted by what is happening in the other lane. So how will this be achieved. On night one of the competition (next week) the boxes and lanes will be twentyfive metres apart. As these dogs achieve at this level they will slowly learn the equipment they need to know to become full flygility dogs. The lane they stay with until they are ready to move on will be flat hurdles no heights, just a flat run. All of the dogs we had tonight, all juniors are ready for this work.

The second tier of dogs are those who can do flygility and have even been to a few competitions, but they lack confidence, speed and are spooked by dogs in the other lane when they get under pressure at a competition. These are the dogs who are 'nearly there' but can really run faster and do better. These dogs need a weekly lane competition where some dumb dog is going to run across their bows and their handler is going to be there to make it good for them and they are going to continue to run to the box under duress and they are going to go fast to beat the dog in the other lane and they will win through the junior part of the Flyball Competition and go from flat training to fly hurdle training quickly and grow ready to work their Flygility stuff much faster and with much more confidence.

The third tier of dogs are those such as my two older dogs and Lucy Prichard. These dogs are working at Senior level and Advanced NZ Flygility Dog Assoc. My Chan is FDX titled, Becki-boo and Lucy are FD. Lucy is almost to FDX. For our experienced dogs the trick is to keep them fit, fast, and practising in lanes. Our Club has four more experienced dogs who should do Summer Flyball but for some reason their owners don't see the value. I certainly do from the point of view of match fitness. Match fitness is different to physical fitness. What it means is the dog is capable of doing the course continuously without getting bored or losing the plot, and at each run gives his all. This is slightly more difficult than it sounds. So I definitely know the value of this training for my dogs.

Every handler coming to Summer Flyball should have their own agenda for their dog. The weekly improvement will become obvious after three to four weeks. We have one dog who finds it a real challenge to come back to her handler - this is the dog who will 'get it' within the next three weeks. We have a greyhound cross who is so fast you would not believe it, her owners have hassled with her running off for two years solid and tonight she came back every time. Wow, this dog will go all the way this season. I have my Fae who, at eleven months, can catch the ball from the box. I want her doing a full hurdle course by the end of this season. There is little Axl who finds concentration around other dogs very difficult, but the sheer repetitiveness in itself builds the dogs' confidence. Every junior dog there tonight will become proficient at Flyball by the end of the Summer Season.

Not only that but the fun of the game, the cameraderie, the laughs and the lows are shared by the whole group, and eating together is good too, it adds to the atmosphere of the night.

I am truly looking forward to Summer Flyball, the two practice nights for juniors are over now so the real competition starts next Thursday, bring it on.

And another thing we have Rose, a Club member who is devoting herself to box loading for us this summer, she will join our perennial box loader, cum barbecue cook, John Pakes. So we have two wonderful people willing to give us time to make the night a success. That frees up the handlers to concentrate on their dogs, lets hope that works.......

I will report after opening night, which will be from 5p.m to 7p.m. because although it is daylight savings someone forgot to tell Mother Nature that we automatically needed more light. Instead of becoming dark at 6.15 it will become dark at 7.15 which means if we do 6p.m. to 8p.m. at this early stage of daylight savings, we will be well and truly in the dark, which in some ways might improve some dogs' runs as we won't be able to see the mistakes anyway. So I guess for the next four weeks until more light is available we are stuck with 5p.m. till 7p.m. which in fact makes it hard for those who work till 5. But it might enable some of the juniors to get a bit more work up their sleeves.

To all who have joined the Summer Flyball Group, Good Luck, Enjoy.

Raewyn Saville 27 September 2012