Flyball is an ideal canine sport for energetic, ball-loving dogs and the human companions who want to please them.
Twice a week, a half-dozen owners meet at Tucson-area parks to train their dogs in the team sport.
Flyball is a timed dog relay race. The standard team consists of four dogs, though depending on the league, some races can be run with two dogs or in an individual competition.
The dogs run down a 51-foot-long, 2-foot-wide lane, leaping over four low hurdles, grabbing a ball from a flyball box and running back with it as quickly as possible. Each dog gets a turn, and the score is based on total team time.
The flyball box is a wooden contraption with a diagonal, spring-loaded base. A ball is loaded into a notch in the front of the box and released when the dog steps on the base. Most experienced flyball competitors catch the ball at the moment it is released from the box. If a member of the team misses a jump or drops a ball, the dog will be required to rerun the course, adding additional seconds to the team's overall finish time. Points are awarded to each dog based on the team time. The goal for each dog is to accumulate enough points at various competitions to be awarded titles.
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Robin Combs, captain of the Online K9 Flyball Club, started the organization in 1997 when she lived in Yuma, after an acquaintance invited her to watch a flyball event in action.
"I went out and got hooked," Combs said. "I'd never heard of it; I'd never done anything competitive. This was a first for me all the way around."
Combs moved herself and her club to Tucson in 2000.
Kiwi, a Pomeranian, was the first dog Combs introduced to the sport.
At first Kiwi loved flyball, but "she decided one day she didn't want to play anymore. She does the whole course, but she won't hit the box."
Combs suspects Kiwi pinched one of her toes while retrieving the ball, and that put her off the sport for good.
"She won't do it unless she gets really, really excited and forgets, and then she comes back and gets really mad at me, gives me evil looks," Combs said.
Now Combs has three dogs running flyball relays — Ping, a border collie; Rage, a Jack Russell terrier; and Nitro, a Pomeranian. In two weeks, she is getting another dog, a rat terrier named Zippy, whom Combs plans to introduce to the sport.
"You start playing flyball and it's like, 'Gee, you need another dog,' and you see a dog and think, 'That dog will be good at it,' and before you know it, you have a team all by yourself," Combs said.
The sport also can help with behavioral problems, she said.
If someone has a dog "that's getting into trouble, digging or barking, or tearing stuff up, then it probably needs a job, and this is a good job for dogs," Combs said. "Some dogs, like Jack Russells, they need a job, and if you don't give them something to do, they find something to do on their own."
Training time depends on the dog's personality and the motivation of the owner, she said.
"Some dogs pick it up right away, and some dogs, it seems like it takes forever."
Joseph, a spaniel mix belonging to veterinarian Ellen Grygotis and her husband, David MacQuigg, began flyball training last summer. Joseph was rescued from an abusive situation — he belonged to a family, and the children threw him in front of a school bus. Grygotis and MacQuigg adopted Joseph and thought he could benefit from some social activity.
The couple first introduced Joseph to agility competition, in which a dog-and-handler team runs an obstacle course, but when they heard about flyball, they gave Joseph a choice. He liked relay racing better.
"In agility, he likes the part where he's running through a tunnel or doing something really active, but he doesn't like when he has to tiptoe up to an A-frame or something like that and wait," MacQuigg said.
"He likes getting out that energy," Grygotis said.
Katherine Lena's Belgian Malinois, Maia, ran in her first flyball tournament last month.
"She loves it," Lena said. "That's her all-time favorite. You can tell. She gets all wound up. She's anxious for her turn. She's so anxious to go that she can't hold herself down. I have to hold her.
"She loves her ball — she really does. She's ball-crazy."
To learn more
For more information about the Online K9 Flyball Club, go to www.flyballdogs.com/ onlinek9/ or call 909-2860.
The club meets for practice from 9 to 11 a.m. Sundays at James D. Kriegh Park, 23 W. Calle Concordia, in Oro Valley; and 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays at Reid Park, 900 S. Randolph Way.