Welcome to the Flyball Mania!
you can do a few things training wise at home.
1) put a ball at the end of a hall/garden on the floor where Alfie can see it. You can start by throwing the ball at first but wait till its stopped moving. The idea is for them to learn to fetch a stactionary ball.
I tell Pepper 'Ready.. Ready..' so she knows whats coming (you'll here this a lot at comps! lol) followed by 'BALL!' as her release command (some ppl use 'GO!').
Start off with the ball close and gradually build up the distance. This helps get them used to setting off to find a ball, rather than chasing a ball. ALSO make a note of which way he goes after he picks the ball up (left or right) as this will help you find out what side of the box to put the ball.
2) Once you have this I'd move on to 'Over' command. This can be just a plank of wood on the floor, or a small jump (depends on size of garden, I only have one). Clicker training and treats work well for this.
3) Once you can work on calling them 'Over' the fence at a greater distance put the two together. I use my fence and a dog play pen to make sure they can't run out for this next step, as you don't want them to realise they can come back without going over the jump. As soon as he picks up the ball call his name (to get his attention) and Over so he knows to go over the jump
4)Gradually widen whatever you're using to fence him in with so he has the option to run out. If he does go back and re-enforce the Over command and narrow it again. Make sure the ball is straight with the jump or slightly to side (if her turns left put it slightly to the right, so when he turns back to you he's straight with the jump)
5) once you have this going well, move the ball slightly out of the comfort zone, but still get him to come over the jump. Gradually move the ball further and further out of line with the jump, in both directions. This is really helpful for teaching dogs if the don't catch the ball well from the box (fumble) they still need to come over the jumps.
6) another elliment to introduce is 'Turn's. How this is taught varies from club to club. At home, I have a rescued traffic cone (from a stream) and ask my dogs to Turn, then lure them round with a ball (or treat). This is now progressing slowly to me saying Turn with the ball out of sight, making a hand gesture and once they have gone round I throw the ball as the reward. You do have to watch they don't double back tho.
Pepper and Kye are at stage's 5 and 6. Pepper has been training for about 6 months, Kye since March last year. Pepper is the better dog at turns (she has a natural turn on the box already).
I always start each session at home with step one and do a few reps of each stage, just to re-enforce what they need to do. I also only do this twice a week max, on top of club training/comps
There's a flyball forum recently started with some nice people as members, with lots of tips:
www.flyballfever.co.ukETA: don't expect to be able to do all of the above in one go, it's taken me a good 6 months with each dog to get them running well at training/comps. And we still have off days (see Kye and Pepper's blog for details! lol)
