North Amarica FlyBall Association NAFA  www.flyball.org   /  NAFA rules

United FlyBall League International UFLI  www.u-fli.com   /  UFLI rules

HISTORY  OF  FLYBALL (from the NAFA site)

.

Flyball was born in the late 60’s and early 70’s when a group of dog trainers in Southern California created scent discrimination hurdle racing, then put a guy at the end to throw tennis balls to the dogs when they finished the jump line. It didn’t take long for the group to decide to build some sort of tennis ball launching apparatus, and the first flyball box was born.  Herbert Wagner developed the first flyball box, and he did a flyball demo on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson that got a lot of attention. Shortly after the Tonight Show, the new dog sport was introduced in the Toronto-Detroit area by several dog training clubs. After a few small tournaments were held in conjunction with dog shows, the first ever flyball tournament was held in 1983.  In November 1984, twelve teams from the Toronto-Detroit area formed the North American Flyball Association (NAFA).  Flyball races match two teams of four dogs each, racing side-by-side over a 51-foot long course. Each dog must run in relay fashion down the jumps, trigger a flyball box, release the ball, retrieve the ball, and return over the jumps. The next dog is then released to run the course, but can’t cross the start/finish line until the previous dog has returned over all four jumps and reached the start/finish line. The first team to have all four dogs finish the course without error wins the heat.  Jump height is determined by the smallest dog on the team – this dog, called the “height dog” is measured at the withers, then that number is rounded down to the nearest inch and another 4” is subtracted to get the jump height (with the minimum jump height being 7”. So, a 13 1/4” dog would round down to 13”, minus 4”, would jump 9”. Maximum jump height is 14”.  The Electronic Judging System (EJS) uses lights and infrared timing sensors, and tracks starts, passes, finishes, and individual dogs’ times to the thousandth of a second. It’s hard to imagine racing without an EJS. In the early days of flyball, all the starts and passes were called by judges, who also used hand-held stopwatches to time the races.  Many teams run all four dogs through the course in less than 20 seconds. The NAFA World Record is now under 16.0 seconds (and closing in on 15.0 seconds)!

NAFA tournaments are divided into divisions so that teams compete against other teams of equal abilities. All dogs, including mixed breeds, are eligible to compete and earn titles in NAFA sanctioned tournaments. Titles are earned via a point system based on the time it takes a dog’s team to complete each heat race.   NAFA currently has over 700 registered clubs with more than 16,000 registered dogs.