Proposed: Title Points Revision for Multibreed Class

Announced on the NAFA Website:

October 6th, 2011 – Multibreed point proposal for a binding delegate vote

Introduction: In an effort to revitalize the Multibreed class, the Board is presenting a proposal for consideration by the delegates that would increase the NAFA title points earned in the Multibreed class. If adopted, the following change would become effective October 1, 2012.

Question for delegate vote: Should NAFA amend the point-count rules for the multibreed class so that each dog on a team that runs with a recorded time less than 24 seconds earns 30 points; from 24 to 27.999 seconds earns 7 points; and from 28 to 31.999 seconds earns 2 points?

Pros: This increase is designed to recognize and reward the comparative difficulty of assembling a multibreed team where every dog running is of a different breed, counting a mix as a single breed. Of all the classes, multibreed perhaps does the most to stimulate interest in flyball because people who have dogs at home can identify with the variety of breeds running and visualize doing so with their own dog.

Cons: This proposal cheapens the points earned by dogs who run with clubs not able to field multibreed teams and makes titles too easy to get. There should be one point system for all.

This is news and the first opportunity for the flyball public to discuss it.

My opinion is that it would have been nice to have some kind of “heads up” before the NAFA Board finalized the wording of the proposal. In the past, the NAFA Board has been presented with proposals to reform the title point system for ALL classes because the times posted by teams today do not even come close to the average times that were posted when the title point system was first adopted by NAFA in the year 1987. Back then, relatively few teams posted under 24 seconds and so it was quite an achievement to do so. Since then, there have several technical developments that totally revolutionized flyball racing. Some of these developments include the EJS (lights), internalized catapult system of box design and the swimmer’s turn. The Board has always rejected proposals that would change the title point system, even proposals that requested the delegates be given the opportunity to vote on them.

So, would it make more sense to reform and rethink the entire title point system FIRST and then look at the Multi-breed class and see if we want to increase points earned in that class?

What other questions and issues or concerns should we be looking at?

…..Chris

The True Cost of The NAFA World Record

Occasionally, I receive a request from someone who has an opinion and wants to write on a topic. I will allow this as a "guest" blogger. Publishing this article does not mean I endorse this view. It means that I believe that everyone has the right to express themselves and they are welcome to use this blog as a platform.

"When you try to determine the cost of something, there are several things to consider.  I‘m going to discuss two of them, the monetary cost and the opportunity cost, as they relate to the new NAFA regular record.  It doesn’t matter which sanctioning body sanctioned the tournament, it’s not a world record, because it’s not the fastest time ever run in competition, but that can be argued in another forum.

There’s no disputing the accomplishment of setting the NAFA record.  It takes a lot of hard work and practice.  It’s what one does in trying to achieve that accomplishment that teaches us about character. 

The monetary costs for attending a tournament are pretty easy to come up with:  gas, lodging, meals, entry fees.  Then there are the monetary costs to the organization because of one team’s behavior.   It’s a monetary cost for one, and an opportunity cost for the other.  It can be argued that the team used it’s member’s positions within NAFA for their own benefit.  If you’re 1,000 miles away, you may not think so, but if you had to race against it at every tournament in your region, you may think differently.  

Liberties were taken with regards to dogs that clearly weren’t ready to compete.  Steps were taken to try and keep them from crossing into the opposing team’s runback area.  Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t.  That leads to the next opportunity cost.  The team attempted to gain an advantage by claiming that a member of another team tried to injure one of the dogs that crossed over into the opposing runback area.  Much to their surprise, the disciplinary committee ruled in favor of the accused, but threw the complaining team a bone, by issuing a reprimand for an ‘inappropriate correction’, whatever that is.  The attempt to run-off one of the strongest flyball competitors in region 1 failed.  Coincidentally, a member of the record holding team resigned from the NAFA Bod.  Also around the same time, the complaining team decided to remove itself from a ’hostile environment’, and relocate to an adjoining region. As someone once said, ’if you can’t beat ’em, leave ’em’. 

Now, let’s look at the monetary cost of those opportunity costs.  Region 1 is now an also-ran when it comes to NAFA regions.  It was once one of the strongest, along with Region 2. There has been a decrease in tournaments, from 12 each in 2009 and 2010 to 6 in 2011.  The team’s opportunity cost had a monetary cost for NAFA. By my calculations, there were 213 fewer fees paid to NAFA.  At $25/team, that’s $5325.  I wonder if they’ll be asked to pay it back? 

Congratulations on your NAFA record.  I hope it was worth it."

-Russ Helganz

Tribute to Zima

The "About Me" page on this blog states that I live with 9 dogs. Recently, that number changed to 8. Zima, pictured above, left us to wait at the Rainbow Bridge. She was just one month shy of 14 years.

Zima was one of those dogs that will be memorable for the rest of our lives. Although I lived in the same household, Zima wasn't my dog. She belonged to my sister and since we share this house, I often took care of Zima, feeding her, walking her, letting her outside and playing with her. She enjoyed attention and she didn't care where attention came from. But, clearly, her heart belonged to Ruth.

Flyball Accomplishments

Zima was as accomplished in Flyball as any Border Collie should be. Her record speaks for itself:

 FD=03/04/00 FDX=03/04/00 FDCH=04/15/00 FDCH-S=05/06/00 FDCH-G=07/15/00 
       FM=11/11/00 FMX=06/30/01 FMCH=10/27/01 ONYX=05/25/02 FGDCH=08/30/03 
       FG40K=09/03/05 FG50K=10/18/08 

 In the Spring of 2009, we learned she had cancer and so we retired her at Chelsea Fairgrounds on 5/30/2009. She deserved to enjoy life and, although she loved flyball, she was soooo much more than a Flyball Dog.

As a young dog, Zima revealed she was a character. She loved the sound of ripping newspaper. At first, I thought she just liked to make messes but, her reaction when I tore a paper demonstrated to me that it was the sound that attracted her to make confetti out of newspaper. Who knew?

She liked to bark at thunderstorms, too. I thought she was scared of them but, no, she didn't act nervous or afraid. She just wanted to tell that "big dog" outside to shut up and stop barking at her!

She had herding instinct out the wazoo! Whenever I took her for a walk, she spent countless hours just circling me. Circle, circle circle. My friends would watch us at flyball tournaments and that's how they would know I was walking Zima because she would constantly circle me.

She would also herd us by jumping up and bouncing off of us and barking whenever we started dancing in the house. You know how it is. Some good song with a strong beat would start playing and you just can't help yourself, you start a moving and a groovin'. Well, Zima acted like the "fun police" telling us to stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I thought she didn't like us moving. I was half right. In her eyes, we were sheep trying to run away. She wasn't going to let that happen!

One day, my sister took her to a herding test. We thought she would be a natural with all these indicators. Zima got in the pen with real sheep. It was towards the end of the day after this group of sheep had been herded several times. The ram was fed up, took one look at Zima,  snorted and tried to head butt her. Oh-oh! Zima wanted out of that pen in a hurry! Picture this: Sheep on one side and Zima on the other.

After that, we knew that Zima's "herding" behavior was all pretend herding with pretend sheep!

Zima could "spell", too. She was extremely observant of mine and Ruth's behavior and liked to get the whole household stirred up when food was being offered. She knew all the words associated with "food": hungry, dinner, "feed the dogs", it's time, etc. We tried spelling it out to keep the peace. "I think it's time to F-E-E-D the D-O-G-S". It didn't work. She would hear us spell and she was telling everybody, "they're getting out the food!" Bark, bark, bark!

Folks wouldn't believe us. We would demonstrate by spelling the word, F-E-E-D, and getting her to bark. Still, they claimed we were "doing" something that was giving her a "que". So, one night, just to prove it to us, Ruth started to spell out feed in total darkness. Zima still alerted. She knew what those letters meant. We knew she knew.

I miss Zima. There won't be another like her in our household. Not in a million years!

Sleep tight ol' girl. We'll be reunited some day...

Is Your Dog a Potential Flyball Candidate?

ANY dog can play flyball. However, not every dog will. There are a few things to consider if you plan to join a flyball team. One of them is the response you get from your dog when you introduce certain elements of the game. Does your dog like tennis balls? A dog that goes nuts when he sees a tennis ball can be a great candidate for flyball training. Does your dog like to chase you when you play with him? The desire to race is called "prey drive" and a dog that is crazy to fetch a tennis ball or to chase and catch you is a dog with the natural talent for flyball. These are the kinds of dogs that flyball teams want to train for flyball.

Another consideration is the size of the dog. A person who has a small dog with prey drive is in high demand by flyball teams because of size. This is because the flyball course consists of a series of jumps that must be jumped by the dogs. Miss a jump and the dog must re-run the course. Jump heights are based on the height of the smallest dog on the team. So, a team that has a small dog on the team has lower jumps, making it easier for of all dogs in the team.

Another factor is the speed of the dog. Flyball is a race and the team that finishes first is the winner. If you have a small dog in the team so that the jumps are low, that helps most dogs.

Flyball Dogs should be intelligent and curious. Fast learners are the dogs most likely to succeed. Dogs who are naturally very lazy and relaxed, can learn flyball but, may not do as well. If you plan to play flyball, it might be better to play with a ball or try to get your dog to chase you and see if they can learn and is eager to learn. If you sign up for flyball classes, you can always borrow a flyball box and see if you can teach your dog the box and if it is reasonable to do so. The best dogs are dogs that love to catch the ball out of the box for fun.

Flyball is very competitive, sometimes very hard but, great fun. There are other dogs, most of them barking wildly and enthusiastically. Racing is often very close to the other teams in the competition. Teams are running at the same time, against each other and parallel to each other. The Flyball candidate must ignore the other dogs and stay motivated to maintain focus on running the race and returning to its handler.

Flyball teams usually practice at least once a week and often when there is a competition to prepare for. A flyball competitor must have the time available to engage in this activity. His fellow team members rely on his presence. A person who is unable to engage in this activity should not become a competitor.

If you and your dog can meet most of the foregoing, it is probably a safe bet that both of you will be welcome additions to any flyball team.

...chris

FlyballGeek.com

in·no·vate

[in-uh-veyt] Show IPA verb, -vat·ed, -vat·ing.

–verb (used without object)

1. to introduce something new; make changes in anything established.

–verb (used with object)

2. to introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time: to innovate a computer operating system.

3. Archaic . to alter.

From the moment that scent hurdles introduced a catapult that launched tennis balls into the air for the dogs to catch, "Flyball" has been a sport constantly evolving and changing. The latest innovation to create a "buzz" in the flyball community is "FlyballGeek.com".

Flyball Geek is the brainchild of Andy McBride of the Go-Dog-Go Flyball Club. For years, the flyball community has used various ideas and methods to provide race information to participants. Large numbers for displays set both inside and outside were most often used. The problem was that no matter how big they were, they often were not readable at great distances and other buildings often blocked their view.

Next, we tried two-way radios set to a specific channel for the tournament. These were great but, sometimes were drowned out by barking dogs at camp. Static often garbled the message. People forgot to announce races. Many did not trust their reliance on them and if they did not understand the message being broadcast or simply missed what was said, you would send a runner to ringside or risk being late to a race.

In fact, sending a runner to report where the host was in the race schedule was the only truly reliable method for keeping track of racing but, it was exhausting for the person(s) doing the running. I blame that for the reason I would need to take Monday off to "recover" from a weekend of racing.

The growing popularity of "smart" phones, tablets and laptops along with an ever improving broadband internet access made creating a web app that kept track of the racing schedule desirable. Andy McBride took up the challenge and successfully created such an application that worked so well, NAFA offered to pay him to develop a much more sophisticated program to handle the demands of the CanAm Classic.

Flyball Geek is available in limited beta. Go the website and sign up for an account which simply involves creating an ID and a password. Email Andy at Andy@FlyballGeek.com with your reasons for requesting an account and he'll finish setting you up allowing you to upload race schedules and do other administrative functions.

As Chief Correspondent for Flyball Today, I set up an account so that viewers watching the livestream of an event could access race information and know exactly who they were watching race. It was so much simpler for me to use Flyball Geek than to upload that information at Livestream.

What I want to emphasize is that Flyball Geek is simple, simple, simple to use! Do NOT let fear of all things technical keep you from exploiting this service for your event! Andy will answer all your questions and guide you through step by step. In fact, the instructions on the Flyball Geek website seem to be very clear but, if you get confused, there is plenty of help available.

Sign up at least a week in advance of your event so that you can familiarize yourself with the program and do the necessary testing to make sure it works for you and that you understand what is normal behavior for the program.

As an example, it was necessary for me to change my uploaded schedule for three small changes on Sunday. I wasn't sure that deleting the existing schedule and uploading a corrected version while the schedule was in progress wouldn't mess something up. Andy answered my question with plenty of time for me to upload my corrected schedule for Sunday's racing. AND, there were no glitches with the program!

So, rest assured that anyone can use this and you can even correct your mistakes! Help is only an email away!

Another benefit is that all of your event's participants will love you for doing this. Your tournament will move quicker, too, since there is no longer an excuse for a club showing up late for a race due to inattention. (Of course, a human will still have to look at the updater every now and then!)

Remember the name, Flyball Geek. It just might be the most important innovation in flyball since the swimmer's turn!

Good Luck and Good Racing!

Chris

#Flyball Says "TWEET ME"

Do you flyball? Do you also twitter? Let's take advantage of Twitter's recent explosion in popularity!
Twitter is today’s hot spot! Bill Gates, Ellen DeGeneres, Ashton Kutcher, CNN, your local news, and even your local radio stations and shopping malls, all have twitter accounts to grow their network of twitter followers. They promote themselves on twitter to generate new fans, leads, viewership, news hounds, and music listeners. Even the creator of R2D2 in Star Wars uses Twitter! Shouldn’t flyball players be doing the same?

You  hear “Follow Us On Twitter!” every time you turn on the TV or Radio or visit a website!

This has caused an enormous avalanche of new twitter users signing up every second hungry to connect with like minded people! We who play flyball are always looking to connect with such "like-minded" people and their dogs.

Could we use Twitter to promote Flyball?  Why not?

So, how does it work and how do we get started?

Create a Twitter Account

You cannot believe how easy it is and how much fun Twitter list building is!!!

If you already have a Twitter account, you can skip this step. If not, here is what you do:

1. Go to Twitter
2. Click on the sign up button.
3. Follow instructions.

Ok, now what? What can I/we use Twitter for?

Are you going to flyball practice? Tweet that. Does your club offer flyball training? Tweet that. Are you leaving for a flyball tournament? Tweet that. Are you hosting a tournament? Tweet that. Are you participating in a demonstration of flyball? Tweet that. You get the idea....

OK. You have a plethora of activities and you have been tweeting them to let your friends and the public know where/when they can find flyball. What else can you do?

Hashtags #

Twitter makes it easy to identify "topics" that may be of interest to "tweeps". (People who use twitter are known as tweeps). To isolate a group of tweets by topic, users use a hashtag symbol (#) followed by the keyword you are interested in following. An example would be #pets. Any tweet about pets would contain #pets and would show up in twitter searches. However, #pets is too broad a topic to do much good for flyball so, doing a twitter search query for #flyball would reveal a more targeted group of tweets.

At the moment, there are only a few of us using #flyball but, we are growing in number as the word spreads. Hopefully, #flyball will become a "trending" topic for tweeps who do not necessarily participate directly in flyball but, who like to help a worthy cause along by "retweeting" informative tweets.

To post a "retweet" is to read a tweet and pass it along to your followers who might find an interest in it. Say you have people who are just interested in #dogs. If they know what flyball is and they see your tweet about an upcoming flyball tournament, they would "retweet" your tweet and therefore, might hookup your event with new people. Of course, you reciprocate by either thanking a "retweeter" in a tweet or "retweeting" one of their tweets. This is how Twitter grows interests & topics among its users and is the reason Twitter itself is growing so rapidly.

Common Topics on Twitter

Some common hashtag topics you will see are #pets, #dog, #dogs, #cats. Some less common but, equally effective at helping you to locate tweeps to follow are #woof and #Fursday.

#Fursday refers to Thursday where cat & dog tweeps look to find new followers. The hashtags will show up in searches and you can be reasonably sure that tweeps using them have an interest in animals.

#ww or #WW refers to woof Wednesday. #FF is also #FollowFriday and that means you follow back anybody who begins to follow you. This is the way to build influence within Twitter. The more people who follow you, the more people have opportunity to read your tweets.

#Flyball

The hashtag topic #flyball is gaining because of one tweep who decided to promote it. @flyballtoday decided they wanted to harness Twitter to promote flyball but, the best way to do that was to create a searchable hashtag. Hence, #flyball was created. Flyball Today uses it a lot but, I happen to know that the people there would just be thrilled if other Flyball Teams, Clubs and individual flyball players would use it to draw attention to our sport. They check all the time and follow ANYBODY who uses it to reference the sport for dogs. (warning: some Baseball tweeps use the phrase "flyball" when tweeting about baseball)

Twitter Accounts of Interest to Flyball

By the way, I happen to be on Twitter myself. You can follow me at @chrisandblast. Want to follow my flyball team? @wooferines. If you are familiar with Flyball Today (Livestream channel dedicated to live and pre-recorded flyball action video) you can find them at @flyballtoday. All these #Flyball tweeps will follow you back!

Got questions? Post a comment! Want followers? Post a comment and let us know your Twitter ID!

Good Luck! Good Tweets! and, Good Racing!