Hobbes

If you race flyball, your dog can earn some points. Gather enough points and you can get a recognized title, maybe add some letters to the end of the dogs name and such. Most of our racing is organized by the National Flyball Association, or NAFA. So in a race, if your team finishes in under 24 seconds - each of the four dogs earn 25 NAFA points. You can also get 5 points for 24-28 seconds, and 1 point for 28-32 seconds. Now our typical tournament will organize about 24 heats per day. So you race against 6 opponents in a round robin style (or 3 opponents in double round robin or whatever), and each race has perhaps 4 heats.

This all means that in one perfect day, on a good team, you could earn 600 NAFA points, but probably more like 400-500 because nothing is perfect. We then race Saturdays and Sundays for a tournament so 800-1000 points makes a great weekend of flyball racing.

Now you can take a look at the NAFA web site to see all the titles available and just imagine that you need 4 consistent dogs, with families able to dedicate weekends to flyball and run consistently and quickly at tournaments to earn some points on a regular basis. At the very end of the list of titles is the Hobbes title named after the first dog to reach 100,000 points years ago. So if you can organize a team who will get to 1 tournament a month with you, and run steadily each time, you could earn 10,000 points per year. Then keep your dog healthy and racing for 10 years in a row and you could get to Hobbes.

Now each region is different, each team is different, and every dog is different, so you might have more tournaments per year, run closer to 600 points per day, or barely manage 200 points per weekend. Flyball has a lot of dependencies and it takes a lot to make it work tournament after tournament year after year. It takes money and time, and good food and exercise and a bit of luck to stay on that trajectory which is why so few dogs have it.

Ezri is one of those dogs. This weekend, Joy and Ezri completed a long journey to become the 3rd dog in our region (NAFA region 7) the 27th Border Collie to get the title, and the 91st dog overall to reach Hobbes. As Joy is a scientist and enjoys looking at the data, she collected the stats on what it took for Ezri to reach this title.

  • 113 Tournaments

  • 107 different team mates

  • Traveled over 55,500 miles for (NAFA) tournaments

  • Competed in 9 states and 1 Canadian province

  • Competed at the NAFA nationals competition “CANAM” 4 times

  • Ranked in the NAFA top 250 point scoring dogs 9 of 10 possible years

Of course Ezri doesn’t care for the titles or the plaques or ribbons. At age 10 she still gets excited to get in the ring and start the race. The cheeseburger she got when we got home on Sunday was definitely something she liked too. Dog cake and cupcakes, yeah those were cool.

Getting to Hobbes was a long journey and not without its trials and tribulations. But with dedication, organization and a bit of luck Joy and Ezri have completed their quest.

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