Flying Fur Dogs Overcome Hurdles With The Help Of The Spokane Valley Flyball League

Clancy is hardly an athlete. His legs are stubby. His wide load would make Jenny Craig pant.

Not that it makes him any less appealing. What Clancy lacks in Fabio-like physique, he more than makes up for in color.

His long-haired coat is reddish-brown going black, not unlike a singed stack of cinnamon toast. And his eyes… well, Clancy’s saucer-shaped eyes are like Julia Roberts’: darkly deep and to die for.

And temperament? He’s so sweet-natured that you have to wonder what he was like before that day last winter when he found himself caught in the jaws of an attacking Rottweiler.

Clancy’s physical injuries have long healed, and his emotional wounds are getting better by the day. The irony is this: Distinctly non-athletic, Clancy nevertheless has been helped along the road to recovery by a game.

It’s called flyball.

Dreamed up two decades ago in California, where most crazes seem to originate, flyball is an offshoot of a sport called scent-hurdling. A relay game involving dog teams of four, flyball has earned a popular following in the Midwestern United States, in Canada and even Europe.

“It’s REAL big in Canada,” says Marilyn Keech, a flyball enthusiast who first saw the game played at a Chicago dog show.

Keech, Clancy’s owner Marceen Zappone and 20 or so other dog-owners are standing on a grassy patch of lawn just a block off Montgomery Avenue. This is a regular Monday meeting of the Spokane Valley Summer Flyball League, and there’s a rush of energy in the air.

In fact, as the humans shout good-naturedly and the dogs bark in response, the mood at moments approaches pure chaos.

In the midst of all the confusion, Clancy seems happy. He looks back and forth from Zappone to the dogs, torn between the lull of security and the thrill of impending competition.

“It really affected his personality,” Zappone says of last winter’s attack. As she speaks, she strokes the 6-year-old sheltie-dachshund’s well-padded ribs. “He was hanging back, clinging to me. He was shy and timid, and he’d never been that way.”

Zappone smiles and motions toward the gaggle of arm-waving people and jumping dogs. The humans call out to each other while encouraging their dogs to run through a setup of lanes and hurdles that resemble a miniature equestrian course.

“This has been really great for him,” she adds. “It’s forced him to be around dogs, to handle the confusion.”

It’s also given him a bit of needed exercise.

A dog needs speed, discipline and endurance to play flyball. The mechanics of the sport are simple: A relay team of four dogs runs, one at a time, over a 51-foot course equipped with four hurdles. At the end of the run, a spring-loaded box spits out a ball that the dog then carries back, again over hurdles, to the starting line.

Owners have little to do but hold their dogs at the start and then give hand directions or shout commands as the dogs run along over the course. They can only moan, as several do, if the dog drops the ball or misses a hurdle, because then the dog must run the course a second time.

The first team to send its final dog across the finish line wins.

Since the hurdles are set for the shoulder height of each team’s smallest dog, the course is not exactly Olympian in challenge. A midsize dog on a team of, say, dachshunds, likely would just step over each hurdle.

Still, bear in mind that some of these dogs are running a total of 102 feet, stopping midway to retrieve a ball, in six or less seconds.

The world team record of 16.75 was set in March by a team from Southhampton, England. And a team from Ontario, Canada, supposedly knocked .05 seconds off that in a tournament on June 9.

That far outclasses the Spokane Valley Flyball League. Keech’s top-ranked team, the Pedal Pushers (who are paced by her 7-year-old Weimaraner Magic), boast a cumulative best time of about 23 seconds.

While not exactly world-shaking, the time is good enough to please these dog lovers, who bring together enough different breeds to host an international canine summit.

Besides the mixed breeds, such as Clancy, you’ll find representatives of each of the following: German shepherd, schipperke, Belgian Malinois, Labrador retriever, sheltie, border collie, golden retriever, Nova Scotia duck-trolling retriever and at least one toy French poodle.

Some of these breeds are unique. Take the schipperke, for example. The name, according to Virginia Ann Utley, is the Flemish word for “little captive.”

“They’re bred from a type of herding breed, but they’re used on the barges in Europe mainly to keep the rats off,” explains Utley, owner of a 2-year-old schipperke named Jinx. “They’re funny little dogs,” she says.

Jinx is a little ball of black fur whose body shape resembles a pig’s (the breed, Utley says, is also called “Piggy Bears”). And he can run like black lightning, which is why he’s being used as a substitute tonight.

As he takes off in a race, another schipperke owner, Cathy Shuman, holds onto her desperate-to-run 2-1/2-year-old schipperke, Cubby. To the untrained eye, Jinx and Cubby could be twins.

“He and Cub are best buddies,” Shuman says. “They get together, and it’s a riot. It’s like, ‘Oh, no, here come the black devils.’ That’s their other name.”

Jinx and Cubby have yet a fourth name: They’re members of the team Angelitos Negros (which translates to Little Black Angels).

As the action heats up, Barb Brenner soothes the feelings of Heidi, her 6-1/2-year-old Belgian Malinois. A sleek animal whose pedigree involves herding and whose name comes from a region between France and Belgium, Heidi looks as if she should be wearing a T-shirt that reads “Born to Run.”

This is the first night that her team, Adoo (an acronym for Agility Dogs Other Outlet), will have competed together, and no one is exactly sure how they will do. But Brenner does know that, win or lose, high-spirited Heidi will have fun.

“She loves this game because it’s more fun than anything else she could possibly do,” Brenner says. “She’s always been very energetic, and this has been good for her in giving her something to focus on, in keeping her mind on what we’re doing together.”

It’s that kind of connection between owner and pet that Keech, the league’s founder, sees as one of flyball’s greatest benefits.

“There’s no reason to have all those dogs out in people’s back yards, bored to tears,” she says. “There’s no reason that they’re not out here, playing flyball.”

Even if it is on their own terms.

Take Charlie, for example. A gray toy poodle, barely big enough to make a mouthful for Brenner’s Malinois, Charlie tears over the first half of the course as if in pursuit of a hot meal.

But then he stops. Cold. Unlike the other dogs, who bite into their tennis balls with savage intent, Charlie gingerly takes hold of his ball. Only then does he turn and proceed back toward the starting line, trotting as if on parade.

The other team’s dogs race by, the dogs on his own team bark with excitement, and the air is filled with humans shouting encouragement. But Charlie continues to hop daintily over each hurdle … before stopping again just short of the final one.

“I look at it like this,” Keech is saying. “If you let your kids run around the neighborhood unsupervised, you get teenage gangs and deviant behavior. The same with dogs. You have soccer for kids. We have flyball for dogs.

“Keep your dog in a good, structured activity, and the family can come and cheer him on. Then you won’t have dogs attacking the neighborhood kids.”

Over to one side, Charlie, oblivious to the fact that the other team has long since finished, tries to decide whether he wants to finish the course. Meanwhile, Zappone explains just how beneficial flyball has been for her Clancy.

“He has his good days, and his bad,” she says. “He’s overweight, so he can only run so far before he’s fed up.”

But when he does run through the course, Zappone says, “He really does feel good. He’s really proud. It’s like he’s saying, ‘You love me. I did it right. Look at that.’ He’s really happy.”

That much is clear. Even so, as Charlie finally listens to the entreaties of his owner, Beverly Pullman, and prances to a finish, as other dogs take their marks and run more heats, as this evening’s competition ends with Keech ecstatic that her team has retained its league lead, there’s an obvious question to be asked:

Who is having more fun here - the dogs or the humans?

“I think it’s a tie,” says Cathy Shuman.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 4 Color Photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: FLYBALL The Spokane Valley Flyball League meets every Monday at 6:30 p.m. at the site of the Spokane Dog Training Club, 620 N. Locust. Five teams compete in the league, which founder Marilyn Keech says may be the only such league “anywhere in the country.” “Play occurs mostly in tournaments,” she says. League competition, which runs through Aug. 2, is open only to dogs that have been trained in flyball. Keech says the club will hold classes in the fall. For information about classes, the Spokane Valley Flyball League or the Spokane Dog Training Club in general, call 922-2645.