Teaching a Flyball Box Turn

Most of the aspects of flyball come quite naturally to the dog. Dogs jump over things. Dogs run around. Most people teach their dog to come when called. I've learned to keep tennis balls under lock and key at my house. But I haven't seen a dog do a flyball swimmer's turn without training.

I have two dogs. One, the female, I trained to box turn first and as the most important thing. I did not ever let her hit the box in practice until she had a decent box turn. She does the box turn consistently, now.

My other dog was the first dog I trained for flyball. I worried about all the other stuff, but did not know to train a swimmer's turn. He did what a lot of dogs do, and developed the habit of slamming the box with both front paws. This seems set in stone for him. We have been unable to retrain or fix it.

A dog that already has a bad turn down can be very difficult to retrain. We use various props and jumps and cues, traffic cones and v shaped jumps, and the minute we take them away, my dog goes right back to slamming into the box with his front paws. It's what he learned first, and it sticks in his brain.

Even after you train the turn, you should use the props to reinforce it every practice.

Hey, he runs down, jumps the hurdles, gets the ball and runs back! He's doing great - why should I worry about some artificially trained turn?

1: A proper, safe box turn will prevent injuries:

The dog, in an average racing day, races maybe 4 races, with 3-5 heats in each race, not allowing for warm up runs, false starts and reruns. So, that's twenty times he's hitting the box. In one day. Hitting the box with the two front feet is much harder on the shoulders than if the impact stress is spread out to all four feet. Also, the straight on smash into the box is much harder on the joints than the glancing impact of a proper box turn.

When you add to that the additional twisting stress of pulling his front feet back off the box and pivoting on his hind legs to run back, it's a lot of stress. The dog is also jumping four jumps on the way down and four jumps on the way back, so that's 80 more impacts on those abused shoulders, spine and hips.

No one wants their dog injured. Anything we can do to prevent that should be done.

2: It improves focus:

My box slammer dog will rotate in whichever direction faces the other lane. That's because he's screeched to a stop in the process of pivoting to run back up the lane, and it gives him time to think. With this particular dog, that's a bad thing. He thinks how he's got the ball from his side, but there's another ball over in that other box, and - Wahoo - another dog to chase. What Fun!

He's also experimented with giving the ball to the box loader, jumping over the box and completely leaving the ring, and just coming back but wide of the jumps. (He's kind of a PITA type dog, but he's mine and I love him. Sorta) Don't get me wrong, the dog can and often does the course just fine. He has titles and certificates. But, he would do much better with a decent box turn.

3: It's faster:

It is faster. In a game where the timer goes down to the thousandth of a second, the faster matters. A dog doing the proper box turn doesn't screech to a stop, pivot and then start back. It's all one continuous motion with an extra boost from launching off the box with the back feet.

Note: This is for adult dogs. If you are looking for training tips for a puppy, click here.

Get a stick. Get a clicker. Get some CheezeWhiz (or whatever). Squirt the gunk on the end of the stick, hold it in front of the dog and tell the dog "touch." Click as the dog eats the gunk.

Start being more coy and moving the stick away from the dog, so it has to work for it. Transition from gunk on the stick to a treat given after the touch. Keep marking the successful touch of the stick with the dog's nose by clicking.

Really make the dog work to touch the stick. Wave it around. Make the dog jump for it. Once you've got him racing around, jumping to try to get his nose to touch the stick, start holding the stick to the wall, but higher than eye level for the dog. Move it higher. The dog should be jumping up against the wall to try to get to the stick. (Make sure he has successes)

Start clicking for feet touching the wall in the process of getting to the stick. Transition to holding the stick against the wall, telling the dog "touch", then whipping it back away from the wall as the dog jumps up, so the dog is tricked into pushing off the wall after the stick.

Do this a zillion times, gradually lowering the point where the stick touches the wall. Sneak the box in against the wall. Transition to touching the box with the stick and clicking for feet touching box in the process of bouncing off to get the stick. Minimize cueing with the stick. Eventually the dog ends up with "touch" meaning bounce off the box.

Note: This is for adult dogs. If you are looking for training tips for a puppy, click here.

Okay, this is the technique I used with my second dog, the one who has a good box turn.

Get or make a low jump. Line the dog up parallel to the jump. The dog's side should be facing the jump, not its nose. If the dog turns to the right, its left side should face the jump. The reverse if she turns to the left. Teach the dog to jump "over" it and reward with a tug game.

Once the dog gets that, transition to "over and back." Lure the dog over the jump and then immediately "back" over with the tug toy. Only reward when the dog is back over the jump to the side it started from. Do this a billion, zillion times. Make a dance out of it. But don't reward every jump, only the successful over and back.

Become pickier and more subtle in your luring. You should be able to cue the dog and have it hop over the jump and immediately back over with no pause.

Move the jump closer and closer to the box. Eventually, the dog lands on the box on the initial over and bounces back over the jump. Have a party. Reward the jeepers out of the dog. Do the exercise a gazillion times.

Remove the jump. Use the exact same wording and physical cueing with just the box. If the dog has trouble, put the jump back in for several repetitions.

This is a method I've never tried, but a lot of teams swear by it.

You take a regular 'ole traffic cone. Teach your dog to run away from you, loop around the cone, and then run back. Move the cone closer and closer to the box, so the dog has to run up on the box to get around the cone. Do it a bazillion times, so it gets programmed into muscle memory, then sneak the cone away.

On the plus side, you can use the cone to block the ball from the dog's view, so that it is less likely to just slam the box. On the negative side, when you move the cone away, the dog may completely abandon any type of turn whatsoever. However, this is true with any of the box turn training props.

There are also methods based on chutes or ramps. If you have access to this kind of equipment, wonderful! There are various web sites with instructions for constructing them and using them.

ONE HOLE PRACTICE BOXES - DON'T USE THEM!

One prop I do not recomend are the small, one hole, "practice boxes" or training boxes. They teach the dog to slap the box with both front feet-exactly what you are trying NOT to train your dog to do. You are teaching a turn. The dogs rarely need to learn to get the ball out of the box. However, if you have access to a full size, no hole, dummy box, those can be usefull. (Or, you can just start out not putting the ball in box. The dog will have to become accustomed to the "click" when the box is triggered. Involving tennis balls before the dog has the turn just gums up the works. You would do much better to use a square of plywood bungie corded to a wire fence (so it has some "give" or bounce.

Where props can be extremely useful is in refining the box turn, once you have the dog hitting the box with three or four feet. Jumps placed in front of the box during practice runs will encourage the dog to jump up on the box, rather than slam it with his front feet.

Also, once you have the dog hitting the box correctly, often you will find that they get sloppy and don't rotate far enough and miss the jumps on the way back. Two techniques to work on this in practice placing a jump or stick of some type perpendicular to the front of the flyball box on the side the dog is going out on. The dog compensates to avoid landing on the stick and makes a tighter turn.

Another way to work on it in practice is to have one person release the dog to go hit the box, and another person dart across the flyball lane close to the box, from the side the dog's nose is pointing. The second person has a tug or something and calls the dog to lure it into over-rotating beyond the 180° to reverse direction.

Note: This is for adult dogs. If you are looking for training tips for a puppy, click here.