Woof and welcome! You've fetched up at the home of Fuzzy Lightning, a flyball team of six dogs and their slightly less athletic humans. We practice Thursday nights in a training barn outside Tacoma, and from March to November we load up the vans and go racing all over the Northwest.

I'm Kristina Sellars. I'm 28, I'm a veterinary technician at a small-animal clinic here in Tacoma, and I run my dog Zip, a Border Collie mix who came into the shelter as a skinny stray three years ago and came home with me the same week. Zip had more energy than she knew what to do with and was eating my couch. Now she has a job. The couch is fine. (Mostly.)

I made this page because people at tournaments always ask "how do I get my dog into this?" and I can never answer them properly in the forty-five seconds between races. So here's the long answer. Paws up!

Flyball is a relay race for dogs. Two teams race side by side in two lanes. Each team has four dogs running (plus up to two alternates who can swap in between heats). One at a time, each dog:

1. starts behind the start line and sprints over four hurdles,
2. hits the pedal on a spring-loaded box, which pops out a tennis ball,
3. catches the ball, turns, and comes back over all four hurdles,
4. and crosses the line, at which point the next dog is already on its way out.

First team to get all four dogs back clean wins the heat. A good team does it in the low twenties (in seconds!). The really fast teams are under eighteen. We're working on it.

The lane: it's 51 feet from the start line to the box. That's 6 feet from the start line to the first hurdle, 10 feet between each of the four hurdles, and 15 feet from the last hurdle to the box.

The hurdles are all the same height for the whole team, and the height is set by measuring the smallest dog on the team, who is called the height dog. Small height dog, low jumps for everybody. This is why every flyball team wants a fast little terrier, and why ours, Pip, gets treated like royalty.

The lights: races are started and timed with electronic lights and sensors, like at a drag strip. The lights count down, and when they go green the first dog had better be crossing the line. Sensors at the start line time the heat to the hundredth of a second, and they catch bad passes.

Clean passes: the next dog can't cross the start line until the dog coming home has crossed it. Too early and the light flashes, the line judge's flag goes up, and that dog has to run again at the end. A perfect pass is "nose to nose" right on the line, with the outgoing dog already at full speed. Handlers spend YEARS learning to time the release. Other faults that make a dog rerun: missing a hurdle, or dropping the ball before the line.

Six tournaments so far, one first place, and a new team best: 21.58 seconds in August! At most tournaments, teams are sorted into divisions by their seed times so everybody races teams about as fast as they are. We started the year in Division 4, won our division in June, and since July our seed times have put us in Division 2, where we are officially the slowpokes. We love it there.

Every tournament, heat times and placings: 1999 Results.

Next up: Saturday and Sunday, October 23 and 24, in Salem, Oregon. Then the last one of the year in November, indoors, thank goodness.

Is my dog a flyball dog? Any breed, any size, purebred or mutt. Half the dogs at any tournament are mixes, and some of the fastest are shelter dogs. Your dog needs to be healthy and sound, love a ball (or be willing to learn to), come when called, and get along with other dogs, because there will be dozens of them, all barking at once, right next to her. Have your vet look her over first.

We teach it in pieces and put the pieces together at the end. Each step can take weeks. Don't rush.

1. Ball drive. Make the tennis ball the best thing in the world. Play with it only in short, exciting sessions, then put it away while she still wants it. Food-crazy dogs can start with a treat and work up.
2. The recall. Your dog has to run back to you as fast as she can, past every distraction. Someone holds her, you run away calling her like a crazy person, and when she gets to you, PARTY. Tug toy, treats, the works. She needs to think coming back to you is the best part.
3. The box turn. This is the big one. A good flyball dog hits the box like a swimmer at the wall: she runs in, turns her body, pushes off the pedal with all four feet at an angle, grabs the ball, and is already heading home. A dog that slams straight into the box with her front feet will be slower and can hurt her shoulders over time. We teach the turn first on a flat board against a wall, then on the box with the ball handed to her, and only later at speed.
4. Jumping. Start with the hurdles almost flat on the ground, in a narrow chute made of gates so she can't go around them. One hurdle, then two, then four. Raise them a little at a time.
5. Putting it together. We "backchain": first the box and the run home, then one hurdle and the box, then two, and so on, until she's doing the whole lane.
6. Passing. Last of all, with other dogs, slowly, on a leash at first. Your dog has to learn to ignore the dog coming at her in the next lane and the one blowing past her in her own lane.

Want to try? Come watch a Thursday practice first, 7 to 9 p.m. E-mail me for directions. Bring your dog's vaccination record.

OK, vet tech hat on for a minute. Flyball is a sprint sport, and sprinters get hurt when they're cold, tired, overweight or out of shape. Our team rules:

• Warm up before every race: ten minutes of walking and trotting, then a few short sprints. Nobody comes straight out of a crate and onto the line.
• Cool down after: walk until she's breathing normally.
• Water in the crate and between heats, a little at a time. Shade and fans in summer. A hot, panting dog sits out, period.
• Keep them lean. You should be able to feel your dog's ribs easily. Every extra pound lands on her wrists and shoulders, four times a heat.
• Conditioning between tournaments: long walks, swimming, hill work, and fetch on soft grass, not just flyball. A fit dog is a safe dog.
• Nails trimmed short and pads checked after every tournament. Torn pads are the most common flyball injury we see.
• Limping? Stop. Even a little. Ask your vet. There is always another tournament.

We get asked this every week, so: puppies don't jump. A puppy's long bones grow from soft areas near their ends called growth plates, and until those plates close, hard repeated impact (jumping, sharp turns, slamming into a box) can damage them for life. For most dogs the plates close somewhere around a year old, and for big breeds it can be more like a year and a half. Your vet can tell you when your dog is ready, and can X-ray to be sure.

That doesn't mean your puppy has to sit on the bench! Puppies can learn ball drive, recalls, tugging, crate manners and the noise and chaos of a tournament (from a safe distance), all with no jumping at all. Diesel, our rookie, did his whole first year that way, and he came to the lane ready to go.