While we were at the Pet Festival in Oklahoma City, we caught a little action at the 4th Annual Flyball Tournament.

The tournament featured 34 teams from four states (TX, OK, CO, and KS) and ran continuously throughout both days of the Festival.

Flyball is a dog relay race in which teams of four dogs compete against each other by jumping four hurdles, pressing a spring-loaded box, catching the released tennis ball, then racing with the ball back over the hurdles to the finish line. Anyone interested in more information might check out the North American Flyball Association (NAFA) site. See the videos linked below for perhaps a better idea of what is going on.

As you can see from the picture, the dogs are "flying" when they hit the end. Most of the matches we saw lasted less than 25 seconds.

While we didn't see any Miniature Pinschers running at this event, someone has shown us a link to a Min Pin named Stetson in San Diego who is part of a team. And Sharona has been part of a team at one point too.

Most teams would have one smaller dog, which they used as their "height dog". The height of the hurdles the dogs had to jump was determined by the height of the shortest dog on the team. So by having one min pin on a team, the hurdles are set lower for all of the dogs. Min pins can be pretty quick when they want to be, too. At least Zeus can sure move when he is chasing a squirrel!

We were able to get a couple of video clips of some matches. This is one of the faster teams we saw (MOV / AVI)... think they finished at 20 seconds or faster. Here is a clip (MOV / AVI) from the other end with a better view of the turn arounds. And yes, that is a Pomeranian in the far lane.