Flyball AGM

It was good to be back at the AGM, missed it last year as we were desperately trying to get the teams prepared for Easter and were running out of time!

I won't go through all the proposals as i'm sure the minutes will be up soon. But basically most of the things I agreed with went through and most that I didn't didn't! The biggest change to racing is that their is now a divisional breakout which means if you're seeded in a division you cannot go more than 1 second faster than the top seed in the divisions seed time. This is to stop teams running faster dogs on a slower seed time and annihilating a division which unfortunately you do see from time to time. I'm not sure how much difference it will make as to be honest if you're running 0.5secs faster than the top seed in a division you're probably still going to comfortably win it. But hopefully it will atleast make teams think a bit more about the dogs they are running.

The thing I was most disappointed with was the reaction to the idea of making the dogs in the winning team of div 1 at the Champs a flyball champion and having FbCh proceed it's name. I couldn't believe how negative and to be honest rude people were about this proposal. I personally think that winning div 1 at the Champs is the ultimate achievement and that the dogs that do it should be honoured.

People argued that it was pompus and vain to want this title, even though the people arguing are very happy to accept awards for points gained. Which to me tell you nothing about the ability of the dog, only about how many competitions you've been to. The other argument was that why should a 4sec dog be able to achieve something that a 6sec dog can't when they both put the same amount of effort in to racing. My simple answer, because flyball is a race, faster teams win so faster dogs should get a bigger reward. And I know what you're thinking, it's ok for me to say that because I have a fast dog. But I ran a 5sec dog for 10years and I still had the same opinion then which is what motivated me to train Asher to the standard he is at. Also we already have a lot of equality in flyball. All dogs get to run in a competitive division and have a good chance of winning. And dogs running in a 20/21sec team get the opportunity to earn the same (and usually more) points as dogs in a 16/17sec team. So why shouldn't the elite get a little extra reward?

My other problem is that you can look on the BFA website and find all the dogs that have reached a certain points award but you can't find anywhere which dogs were running on the Championship winning team for a given year. I find something very wrong with that!

Now the only argument I see sticking is the fact that the KC might have something to say as people may try and use it in conjunction with KC names which I agree would be wrong. So maybe you don't use it to proceed the name, and to make it individual you could include the dogs BFA number so it could be e.g 0734b Asher FbCH. And it's not like you would use it much, it would only be on future award certificates and on the dogs stat page on the website. I personally don't see the problem and I think it would be a nice touch.

If people are really very against it then I think at the very least a section should be added to the BFA website for the Champs and it should detail the teams that have won it each year and a link to the dogs that ran in that team with maybe a picture. That way winning the Champs gives you more of something to look back on and a way of people seeing what you have achieved.