#flyball

Had to post a closeup crop of that one pic bc I’m absolutely in love with the pure joy in her expression.

canam ! i was not supposed to go but my team had someone drop out so i drove down with my boss. the dogs all traveled super well in the crates, we did plenty of stops. i ran my girlfriends dog for half the time and was box loader the other half, learned a ton and definitely enjoy flyball a lot more.

Thyme had his first intro to beginner flyball :)

Mimi Bekhechi, vice president of Peta, the animal rights charity, told The Telegraph: knee ligaments and other serious injuries … it’s cruel and unnecessary.

“New research must put an end to these horrible agility races, as the best interests of the dog should outweigh the fun of any human.”

PETA is now going after flyball, and no doubt will also go after other dog sports, like agility. Animal rights groups wont stop at just greyhound racing and dog sledding, they want all dog sports banned, and ultimately, all pet ownership ending.

The study doesn’t even conclude that flyball is cruel. 

The scientists analyzed records of 260 dogs that suffered an injury called a cranial cruciate ligament rupture (CCLR), which is similar to a previous cruciate ligament rupture in humans, and compared them to more than 1,000 healthy dogs.

Researchers at Washington State University found that 31 dogs (12 percent) playing flyball injured their knees at some point compared to 75 (7.5 percent) in the control group.

This is a 70% increase in risk, but when the researchers also considered other factors such as race, age, weight, and neutral status, the flyball doubled the odds.

CCLR is treated with surgery and rehabilitation and 90% of operations are successful with dogs returning to normal after about four months.

And yet the same study also found that:

Short walks of less than 30 minutes through mountainous or flat terrain were also associated with an 80 percent and 70 percent chance of knee damage, respectively.