Eager canines, owners avid to compete in relay races

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WOODTV.com

CHELSEA, Mich. -- Inside a pole barn at the Chelsea Fairgrounds, everyone's wearing earplugs. The place has gone to the dogs.


The metal walls reverberate as border collies, Jack Russell terriers and other lean, wiry athletes with names like Bongo, Scrubby and Static bark and yelp for joy _ pretty much nonstop.

Everywhere you look, dogs are straining at their collars as handlers make them wait their turn, or streaking down a track to tap the trap door holding the prized flyball, or exuberantly leaping with their handlers in a post-race adrenaline high.

Canine heaven must be just about this noisy.

"It's the most fun a dog can ever have," says Phyllis Askew, a member of Front Runners, a flyball club competing in a recent tournament at the fairgrounds. A long-standing Ann Arbor-based club with about 50 dogs, Front Runners entered five teams.

Area flyball clubs keep one of the barns hopping on most weekends for practice sessions. For tournaments five or six weekends a year, clubs from southern Michigan and Ohio fill the barn and spill onto the grass. At one recent tourney, members pulled up their RVs and set up shade tents for resting dogs.

Bongo and Throttle of the Smokin' Paws flyball club cooled their heels in one of the kiddie swim pools set out for contestants.

Some neighbors don't like the noise of so many barking dogs, says Doug Stevens, rental manager for the Chelsea Fairgrounds. But the flyball events are good for the fairgrounds _ the rental fees help pay the insurance _ and good for local business, he said.

Flyball visitors "generally spend a couple thousand in town" on tournament weekends, Stevens says.

In flyball tournaments, dogs from two competing teams race beside each other on a 51-foot-long rubberized track separated by a couple of empty lanes.

"It's sort of like relay racing and drag racing for dogs," says Cindy Arnold, coach and owner of the Pawsitive Attitudes club, which hosted the recent Chelsea tourney.

Four dogs on each team run, one at a time. Some dogs are so eager they bust loose from handlers and try the course before the starting whistle.

In each heat, a dog streaks over four low jumps, touches a spring-loaded panel at the end which ejects a ball, grabs the ball in its mouth and speeds back over the jumps to the start/finish line. There, a second dog starts the course, ideally an instant after the first dog crosses the line's infrared sensor. Then two more teammates continue the same pattern. To win, a team must be the first to have all four dogs run the course without making an error.

Teams compete in different divisions based on their previous speeds. The fastest dogs in the sport cover the 102 feet, including the pause to trigger and grab the ball, in less than four seconds. They're moving about 26 feet per second.

Everything happens in a couple of blinks. Judges get a needed boost from technology: starting lights that look like traffic signals, passing sensors and instantly recorded times for each dog and team.

Individual dogs get points, based on their team's speed, that can be accumulated toward a future title.

The recent Chelsea tournament hosted 39 teams representing 17 clubs from Michigan and Ohio. The upper Midwest and Ontario are hotbeds of flyball activity.

Flyball was developed to offer obedience-trained dogs some fun, says Kim O'Neill, a member of Pawsitive Attitudes. The fun for owners extends to word play: club and team names like Fur in a Blur, Swat, Bordering on Insanity, Fuzzy Lightning, Instant Replay, Flying Giblets and a new southeast Michigan team, the Wooferines. Dog names run from Bubba to Blitz to Sonic.

Dogs seem to run the course for sheer fun. Do they even know their handlers have larger stakes in mind, like points and titles?

The most competitive canines are aware they're racing against a dog on an opposing team a couple of lanes away, and show a drive to win, says Arnold.

As for the people, flyball fans say they range from fiercely competitive to laid-back. In all cases, flyball is a team effort.

"If you have to pull your dog (because he's not in top shape), you do what you need to for the good of the team," says Elin Becker of Huntington Woods, a Pawsitive Attitudes member who races her dog Nigel, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Her club, like many, runs a lot of border collies but also whippets, golden retrievers and mixed-breed dogs. All are welcome in flyball.

"It's fun to win, but the good thing is, your dog gets points even if your team loses," says Front Runners member Vicky Lamb, a Westland veterinarian.

Jack Russells are a go-go kind of dog, so they're naturals for flyball. But a mellow yellow Labrador retriever stands out in this crowd. The sport appeals especially to dog owners who need to take the edge off seemingly bottomless stores of canine energy and drive.

Flyball is a workout for handlers as well, Lamb says. Some rush with their dogs to the starting line, and run up again to egg them on for the home stretch. Some flail thick rope chew toys on the ground and shout "Back!" In the din, it's hard to tell who's yelping loudest, dogs or humans.

At the end of one round of the Chelsea races, the Ballistics team shook hands with the Paw Busters team. The handlers, that is. The dogs just panted and looked happy.