GSD’s and Flyball by Pat Saito and Tasha BH,CD,TT,FDCh

When you think of German Shepherd sports, flyball rarely comes to mind. Competitive flyball has always been primarily a "Border Collie" sport and has not attracted a large number of German Shepherds. In fact, there are only about 128 GSDs registered in the North American Flyball Association (NAFA) which is the governing body for flyball in North America. Of those, 43 had earned the Flyball Dog Champion title (FDCh) as of March 1998. Compare this to 1500 Border Collies registered.

Now its isn’t because GSDs aren’t good flyball dogs..the top GSDs in flyball have earned high honours and are exceptionally fast..as fast as some border collies in fact!! I think that many GSD owners just aren’t aware of the existence of the sport or haven’t found a place to train their wonderful dogs.

I have been running flyball with my now 4 1/2 year old GSD, Tasha for about 2 years. We compete on a team called Silver Bullets. We are not a tremendously fast team but we have a lot of fun and we have won some ribbons in tournaments as well as earning titles. Tasha’s fastest recorded running time is 5.5 seconds.

What is Flyball?

Flyball is a team sport that is open to any dog regardless of breed or size. A flyball competition consists of two teams of four dogs each racing against each other to complete the course first. The course is four hurdles and a flyball box that shoots a tennis ball. Each dog on the team must jump over the four hurdles, jump on the box to activate the spring that releases the tennis ball. The dog catches the tennis ball in her mouth, spins around and returns with the ball back over the four hurdles to her handler.

Split timing is required on the part of the handlers who must release their dog at just the right time so that the dogs pass over the start line nose to nose. If the dog is released late, it takes the team longer to run the heat. If the dog is released early and passes the start line before the returning dog, the dog is red flagged and must rerun, adding even longer to the team time. The team that completes the course in the fastest time wins that heat. Races are generally run in the best three out of five heats.

The height of the hurdles varies from team to team. It all depends on the height of the smallest dog on the team (the height dog). The dogs are measured and the hurdle is set 4 inches lower than the dog’s recorded height. This means that teams with small dogs such as Jack Russell Terriers can jump hurdles as low as 8" inches (the lowest height) while an opposing team with no small dogs could be jumping 16 inches (the maximum height). As you can imagine, JRTs and other small, fast dogs are in great demand in competition.

How fast is flyball?

The top flyball teams are very fast. The world record is currently held by Total Recall of Ontario, Canada and is 16.35 seconds. That is the time it takes four dogs to run the course. Team times vary in tournaments from 17 seconds all the way up to 30 seconds or more. Teams enter a "seed time" when they compete. This is usually determined by finding the best time the team can run and adding 1 second. Some teams use this method and others just enter their best time. Teams are then placed into Divisions so that they compete with other teams with similar speed. For example in a recent tournament, our team was seeded at 23 seconds. We competed in a division with teams whose times ranged from 22.8 seconds to 23.25 seconds.

In order to encourage teams to enter fair times, each division is assigned a "breakout time". This is one second faster than the fastest team in the division. In the tournament above, the breakout time was 21.8 seconds. Any team that runs a heat in less than 21.8 seconds "breaks out". The team loses the heat and, if they breakout three times in a tournament, they are ineligible to place in their division. So you can see how important accurate seeding is. Without this rule, fast teams could potentially enter slower times in order to run against slower teams and win the division. This way, all teams should be competing against their equals, making for more exciting and fair competition. In fact, racing even in the slower divisions can be a nail biting experience. One of our heats was won by us by only .004 seconds..that's a whisker of any dog.

Training in Flyball

Your dog needs certain skills in order to participate in flyball at either a fun or competitive level. These include, jumping, returning to the handler (recall), activating the box, catching the ball, passing another dog in a 3’ wide space, and ignoring the other team. Lets look at these skills in the order in which you can teach them. I advise teaching each skill separately before putting them all together in a flyball course (lane).

The recall:

The first skill is one that you can start when you first get your puppy..the recall. Through play, you teach your pup to come to you. You can get someone to hold your dog while you run away a short distance (gradually increase the distance). Call the dog and run a bit farther as he runs to you. When he returns, he gets a major jackpot. This can be a toy, some tug play, a tossed ball, food or just lots of praise..whatever works for your dog. Most dogs that have any ball drive at all have no problem running TO the box to get the ball. The trick is getting your dog to return to you once he has the reward. You must make the recall as rewarding as getting the ball is. My GSD, Tasha, loves tennis balls and will run full speed to the box. We have to work hard on the recalls though as she tends to chew on the ball on the way back. Its hard for me to find a reward that means as much to her as getting the tennis ball once she gets going. You will find that flyball is great exercise for the handler as well as the dog. As you can see, you will do a lot of running in the recall.

Jumping:

The second skill is jumping. The dog must be able to jump over hurdles. As I said the height varies, so you have to train the dog to jump any height between 8-16". This is certainly not hard for a GSD. In fact, it takes a lot of urging to convince a GSD to run and not step over the lower hurdles. When our team started competing, we had to run at 15" height. Tasha actually became faster as she now did a single step jump betwen the hurdles. When we acquired a height dog in 1998, I feared her time would get slower but luckily she maintained the speed and even got faster.

Teaching jumping can also start when your GSD is a pup but a word of warning here! Do not let your GSD jump over high jumps until their bones have finished growing - you may have a young dog that is awesome in flyball but you, and more importantly the dog, will likely pay for it later on when he develops hip or elbow problems. I only let my dogs jump 6 inch maximum in training while under a year and then no higher than 8 inches until at least 18 months. This ensures no stress on those growing bones. It is not necessary to practice your dog at any higher than that..they can learn the skill as well on low jumps as they can on high ones and its better for them. Don’t try any formal work until the dog is at least 9 months old..keep it fun and keep it simple..one jump at a time is enough. As the dog progresses, you can gradually add another jump until eventually the dog will jump 4 in a row. At the beginning the dog can be on leash but you want to work towards off leash jumping as soon as possible. Listen to your dog, he will tell you when he is ready.

Passing other dogs:

If your dog has been properly socialized with other dogs, this part shouldn’t be a problem but it still requires work. The goal is to have your dog run past another dog coming in the opposite direction without stopping to play, greet or bark or growl at the other dog. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. While the first two skills can be trained at home on your own, this is one that should be one in a controlled setting under a capable instructor.

As all trainers have their own methods, I’ll talk about how Tasha and I learned this. With the dogs on leash, we were required to "walk" them over a set of low flyball hurdles while another handler walked his/her dog from the opposite end of the lane. Sometimes the dogs had to pass while stepping over the hurdle. Sometimes they were in between two hurdles on the flat. If the dogs turned to the other dog, we corrected them as required. I use an "off" command to tell Tasha to leave anything alone. I soon found that my GSD has great prey drive. She had little problem passing big dogs but those little fluff balls were a great temptation to her. We worked through that and now she is reliable in competition regardless of what dogs are running in the lane beside us.

Once the dogs can do this at a walk, we progressed to a slow trot and finally to a run. We spent many weeks doing this on leash before any dogs were allowed to pass off leash. Once the dogs were passing off leash, if they reverted and growled at a passing dog, on went the leash. Because flyball involves at least 8 dogs at a time running in a frenzy of excitement and barking, you don’t want your dog getting so excited, he or she takes off after another dog..on your own team or on the opposing teams.

Obedience?

Its been asked that, as flyball is a fun sport, why does your dog need obedience training. In my opinion, obedience is critical for the safety of all the dogs, including your own. If your dog wont come when called, if he runs after other dogs, if he ignores simple commands, then your dog isn’t ready for flyball. Just think about what could happen if you have an untrained dog who runs to the box, gets the ball, but instead of coming right to you, he ignores your command and decides to run to the other team’s lane. The worst result could be a dog fight. The least is that your team loses the heat for interference.

The Box

Did you notice I left this part to the end? This was by far the most difficult skill to teach my GSD. In fact, it took some convincing to get her to approach this large wooden thing that spit balls at her face. Tasha wanted the ball but she didn’t want to jump on the box to get it. Once she conquered her fear of the box, she tried to get the ball out of the hole with her teeth (cheating). She was successful as most GSDs are and got her reward. That posed a challenge for me..to ensure she didn’t get the ball unless she jumped on the box with at least one paw to activate the spring and shoot the ball out.

The best way to get your dog used to the box is to just let the dog explore it with no balls in it. Let him climb on it, check it out, sniff it. Then have someone put a tennis ball into the box. With your dog on leash run to the box and hit the box with your foot or hand. Voila a ball pops out and hits your dog in the nose!! Gee mom this isn’t any fun!! Oops we forgot to train catching the ball!!!

Lets take a step back. While at home or in the park, stand about 2 feet from your puppy or dog. Holding the tennis ball in your hand throw it directly at your dogs nose. First ball will likely hit him as he wont know to open his mouth for it, but pretty soon his survival instinct will click in and he will start catching the ball. From here its easy to move this skill to catching the ball from the box.

There are as many ways to teach the dog how to activate the box as there are breeds of dogs. I taught Tasha to jump on the pedal once she found that catching the ball was fun. She had to want to make the ball come out. She had to know that she only got it if SHE made it happen. I literally had to lift her front two paws and make her hit the box..this isn’t something that comes naturally to a dog you know. If you have a box at home and lots of time you can just let your dog take his time exploring until one day he steps on it and out pops a ball. If you don’t have all that time, you may have to show your dog where the pedal is and what she has to do to make it pop out a ball.

Putting it all together

OK, your dog can now jump over four hurdles. he runs to you from distance when you call him. he can activate the flyball box and he can catch the ball and hold it. He can walk and run past another dog and ignore the dog. That’s great but your dog isn’t running flyball yet!

In order to be ready to compete, your dog has to run the hurdles away from you to the box. He has to jump on the pedal, catch the ball and do that fantastic recall, passing another dog on the way to or from the box, or both.

As this has to be done either with a team or in a flyball class, I will not try to explain how to do this. Suffice it to say, you don’t do it in one lesson. You start with small steps. Sending the dog to the box from directly in front of it, running him back over one jump and reward. The you send him from behind one jump and run back over 2, gradually increasing the number of jumps until he is running to the box over all four and running back over all four. you don’t add the passing until the dog is reliable at this.

If you persevere and are patient, it wont be long until you have your dog running flyball. The benefits are well worth the work. Competing on a team is tremendous socialization for your dog. The exercise for both of you is an added benefit. If you have ever watched a flyball tournament and listened to the dogs barking in delight as they wait for their turn to run, you will understand how much fun the dogs are having.

If your GSD has good ball drive and likes to jump, then maybe this is the sport for you. It doesn’t hurt to give it a try and you may find its well worth the effort. For more information on flyball, visit the flyball website.

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