[herdingdogs]

Hi Michael! I know I've asked you about flyball in New Zealand on the Mighty Mites board.

Agility is a much more popular sport than flyball here in the US. However Flyball is growing. There are now 734 teams in North America and over 16,000 dogs registered with NAFA (North American Flyball Association).

Actually you really don't need to have a great retriever to do flyball. Tab could have cared less about a ball and was not that great of a retriever when I started with him. I acutally was doing it with Zoe (who was a ball retrieving nut) and just brought Tab along for the fun of it. What you really want to do is find something they are willing to do anything for. In Tab's case that was food. As the ever starving corgi he will do anything for food. Once he realized he got to go over jumps (which he likes), got cheered on, was allowed to bark (on the lane only) and got food for bringing that ball back, he became crazy about the game.

While he was trained in obedience and agility, he never loved them as much as he loves flyball.

Zoe on the other hand, loved anything I did with her and did it with gusto. I use to call her my border collie in a corgi suit.