Distance Control / Flygility

© Daniela Rosenstreich, Apex Boxers, Email: ApexBoxers@yahoo.com [Not to be copied or used without permission]

DISTANCE CONTROL / FLYGILITY

The sport of flygility is like a cross between dog agility and flyball. I think it has several wonderful features that make it a great form of competition, particularly for inexperienced handlers.

Flygility has more variety than flyball – several different types of obstacle are used and courses can be angled or curved depending on the level of competition. This means that flygility becomes about much more than just speed, so dogs of all shapes and sizes can compete successfully.

With the greater range of obstacles and course designs, flygility also provides a great training ground for regular agility competition. I think it’s ideal for young agility dogs as they need to master only a small number of obstacles and flygility helps them gain confidence at doing small segments while working away from their handler. That is why I started training my dogs in flygility – it was a way to improve their agility performance and general distance control and it certainly worked! (Plus they enjoy it!).

It is the confidence dogs gain at working with speed and accuracy while some distance away from the handler that is the great benefit of training a dog for flygility. It’s that benefit that lead to me developing training notes that can either be used simply to improve distance control or to introduce a dog to flygility. Those notes are provided in PDF form through the links in the table below.

There are several other benefits of flygility:– Once your dog is fully trained, you don’t need to be fit or fully mobile, nor to have many handling skills because your dog runs the course while you wait at the start/finish line. Your dog can also be young or old and is under far less strain doing flygility than agility or other sports because it’s a small number of obstacles and all are at a low height. I would run an elderly dog in flygility long after proper agility is beyond them.

TRAINING NOTES:

How to use these notes: There are 8 modules. They are presented in the logical order in which to learn them, but you can overlap many of them. You can perfect many of the separate exercises without access to any special equipment. It is important not to try to combine exercises or advance the level of difficulty until you have mastered each step fully so that your dog is confident and quick. Think of it as being a puzzle that needs each piece fine-tuned before you can assemble it.

Overall purpose of these modules: To improve off leash control, have dogs working confidently at a distance, increase speed in agility & introduce flygility.

Click on module name (left hand column) to open PDF copy of training notes for each topic

Module	What is it?	Why do it?
Overview	(A PDF copy of this table suitable for printing)
1. Send-away	Dog learns to rush out to item or obstacle on command.	Improves dog's confidence, increases speed, improves off leash control, improves distance work
2. Recall / Restrained recall	Getting your dog to come back to you reliably and quickly when called.	Improves dog's confidence, increases speed, improves off leash control, improves distance work
3. Target training	Dog hits a small target with feet on command.	Needed for flygility. Useful for teaching tricks, and also can be used for contact training for agility.
4. Focus / Ball motivation	Transfers dog’s focus away from food in handler’s hand, to instead focus on an object or item at a distance.	Improves safety and skill in negotiating obstacles as dog learns to look ahead instead of back at handler. Improves dog's confidence, increases speed and improves distance work
5. Flyball Box	Transfers target training to the flyball box so dog will trigger the pedal on the box independently. Eventually combined with the send-away.	Needed for flygility. Provides a way of training dog to work at distance and get reward without handler being present – this improves drive and motivation to work at speed away from handler.
6. Retrieve	Done with a tennis ball or other item, thrown or placed at a distance from the dog. The dog learns to rush out at speed to the item and bring it back to handler.	Needed for flygility. A useful skill in general and makes it easier to use toys in other training without having to go get them yourself! Can improve obedience retrieve speed.
7. Lead out	Uses a ‘wait’ command to allow handler to move out from dog, followed by recalling the dog over obstacles. Related to the restrained recall.	Improves dog's confidence, increases speed, improves off leash control, improves distance work
8. Other gear & putting it together	Learning the rest of the gear and combining the other modules leads to a dog being able to run flygility.	Flygility is fun and past-paced, and uses little equipment. The jumps are at lower height and dogs can compete from 12 months of age. The courses are simple and require little fitness or handling skill.