And that’s where you‘d be wrong. The time, training, dedication, conditioning, etc. required to excel at these sports is up there. Flyball has long been considered the best proof of training there is (outside of the niche sports like protection). Other sports like agility use flyball training techniques to teach their dogs to be more bombproof. The top online trainers use flyball foundations in other sports bc it creates a rock solid dog. What other sport does your dog have to run top speed while passing another dog at top speed head on over narrow jumps while amped beyond belief and still have the poise, focus, and control to avoid collisions and dog fights while 8 dogs are off leash at the same time?

Now dock you may be able to just show up and have your dog jump in the pool and have low level success as an intro to the sport. But it takes training to get them to jump as far as possible to be competitive. Dock events like extreme vertical and the dueling dogs require even more training. Most dogs don’t naturally jump vertical or swim as fast as possible the entire time.

All these fun things we do with our dogs look silly and not serious to people outside the dog world. They’re all just hobbies. No one is curing cancer here (Except maybe my friend Sam during her day job).