Flyball Starter Tournaments

This has sort of been a pet peeve of mine for a long time, but I’m now facing returning to Starter Tournaments with potentially 2 dogs (one young, one old) in the next 12 months. So I thought it was time to take a closer look.

I think all flyballers can agree on what a Starter Tournament is. This is a competition for dogs who are not able to compete at Open or Multibreed tournaments, for whatever reason, and is held under mock tournament conditions including ring party and a judge. The lanes are netted, jump heights are optional, and other training aids (box jumps, chutes instead of boxes, extra handlers) should be allowed. Dogs from 12 months are allowed to compete (although I think a fair argument could be made for raising this to 15 months, but that’s another topic).

However, here are the rules pertaining to Starters in the current BFA Rules and Regulations:

5.2 (b) Dogs may not compete on the same day in more than one team at a BFA Sanctioned Tournament, including Starters and intermediate

5.2 (d) (g) If a Starters Competition is run, dogs entered must be a minimum of 12 months old.

5.19 General Welfare of Dogs also covers Starters, and some of Section 3 (Discipline) sort of covers it, although it’s open to intepretation. I think flyballers would inteprete gross misconduct in Starter tournaments as such, but it’s worth noting that at least some Starter competitors are not BFA members.

Starter tournaments are currently running under the idea of good sportsmanship, honesty, and the general community of flyballers being nice to one another. Which is a lovely thought and has worked reasonably well for 15 years, but it’s already showing cracks. There is a lot of confusion about Starters, about which dogs can run and why, about whether you can drop in and out of Starters, about how the tournament is going to be run, etc.

I’ve looked at every schedule currently available on the BFA website, and only one schedule directly mentioned Starters in the rules. That was to say that dogs entered in the Starter tournament could not enter Open on the same weekend (and vice versa), which is actually covered in the BFA Rules & Regs anyway.

I found one peice of documentation on the web vaguely outlining Starters (props to Delta Force for their training docs!)

Current discussion on the BFA Forum suggests that members should notify the BFA when an older dog returns to Starters. But there is actually no reason why you should, since it’s not a rule and there is no way of penalising anyone who does (and why would you anyway?).

In an ideal world, Starters would be Sanctioned as a seperate tournament with variations on the standard BFA rules. If I had any idea how to go about proposing a rule change, I probably would, but I don’t. If that’s not possible, then at least providing an outline of suggested rules for Starter tournament organisers to adopt should be considered, instead of this whole “everyone knows” stuff. Because not everyone does!