lucyandmeg Posted June 9, 2006 Report Share Posted June 9, 2006 (edited) Following my disasterous attempts to get ellie and murphy to learn flyball i have come to the conclusion that they are never going to make competition dogs! Now i am aware that meg isn't going to last forever, shes still young, but i would really like to find another dog to compete in flyball with in addition to meg. Meg is a totally ball mad collie and that would be more or less what i would be looking for. However, whilst i think an adult rescue dog would mean that i could assess whether they are ball mad or not, because of the combination of dogs i have and because of my circumstances i think it would be very hard to find and integrate another adult dog. SO i am considering a pup (be it rescue or otherwise, i am open to ideas) as my dogs would accept this more readily. (not to mention i love pups) I have always thought that all collies would be like meg, ball mad, but the more i meet the harder i think its going to be to find what i'm after. Is the ball obsession born into them or can you create that obsession? We didn't do anything to encourage meg. Infact the first day we had her at 9 wks we threw the ball and she just looked at it, but being from working sheep dog stock i think her chase drive was very strong. Obviously this wouldn't be our only criteria, temperament, health, work ability and looks would all come into it as well. Edited June 9, 2006 by lucyandmeg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gooster Posted June 11, 2006 Report Share Posted June 11, 2006 Hmm, tricky question. I don't necessarily think it is genetic - a member of our team (Mad Mandy on here ) bought a puppy last year. The pup's mum is a fast flyball dog, and the pup's dad is a champion herder. When they went to look at the litter, they chose the one who was the liveliest - chasing shoelaces, into everything etc. I think out of the whole litter, Rye has become the best flyball dog out of them (for their age - they are just old enough to run in starters). Rye is ball mad, although does occasionally like to scale the netting to visit the other lane However, a lot of it could be down to training - they all went to different teams, who will have a slightly different way of training them. When ours are young, we teach them that a tennis ball is the handlers, not the dog's. That way we are allowing them to play with the ball, and they don't take them for granted, as they would if they were lying around the house all the time. When the ball does come out, it is associated with fun etc. I personally think that the best thing to look for when choosing a dog - especially for flyball, is it to be playful. If the puppy is lively and playful, then the chances are, it can be trained to fetch a tennis ball, which is what I did with Ed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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