A normal team consists of 4 dogs, plus 2 alternates. The 8-dog proposal suggests there is a need to have additional alternates only for Multibreed and not for any of the other classes of racing. Personally, I disagree based on facts and principles and a little on experience and perception.
I have read the official posting by NAFA on their website as well as some of the comments made by participants which were posted to NAFA's facebook page.
Several things stand out for me:
1) In NAFA's official posting, they point out that commenters can remain anonymous and their name will only be used with permission. Why would anyone not want their name associated with their comments? To me this indicates some sort of fear. Fear of losing their standing politically or perhaps fear of rejection or worse fear of retribution. More importantly it is indicative of past, present and future biases and prejudices associated with NAFA flyball and personally, I believe leadership should not be promoting this type of prejudicial behavior.
2) One commenter on NAFA's facebook page said they wanted to know 'who' made the proposal...correction to this part...the person wanted to know the reasoning of who made the proposal in order to formulate their opinion or provide any feedback. This makes sense and seems reasonable; I agree, knowing 'why' something is needed helps in the analysis. My apologies for misreading the comment and I've deleted the rest of my original statement as it no longer applies.
3) Two other comments on NAFA's facebook page contain ideas worth consideration for Multibreed racing:
a) Allowing a team to convert to Performance mid-tourney; this allows replacement dogs (if needed beyond the original 6 listed on a timesheet) and also allows dogs to continue earning points. The present rule forces a team to become FEO and thus lose the ability to earn points.
b) Defining mixbreed dogs into additional categories; such as a GSD-mix, BC-mix, JRT-mix and so on. This would allow for multiple mixbreeds to run together, promote the different breeds to the public, provide for additional flexibility in composing a Multibreed team, keep all the classes of racing consistent and fair and also provide an avenue for participants to better classify/designate their dog as either a purebred or a mix breed. The current rule about breed designation is unclear and convoluted and has recently caused issues in NAFA flyball.
4) In the big picture, if NAFA adopts an 8-dog team for Multibreed, I believe it will add unnecessary complexity all the way around from managing the database, to judging (head and line judging), to timesheets, to dogs on the course and to potential cheating by teams. In fact, cheating was said to be the main reason NAFA recently adopted the Breed Challenge Process which was hotly debated among participants as unnecessary but adopted by the BoD anyway.
In order to help avert cheating by entrants of an 8-dog team, perhaps NAFA may want to consider requiring all dogs in Multibreed racing be micro chipped and verified before and after tournament racing. This process would be similar to that implemented for the Iditarod. In the Iditarod a musher starts with 16 dogs and must finish with at least 6, the caveat being the 6 dogs must be the same ones that started the race.
I can see where dishonest folks who have a propensity to cheat in flyball could easily substitute dogs of the same breed who are not even on the timesheet right in the middle of racing and no one would know the difference. This is especially so with multiple dogs of the same breed who are all related to each other; some of these dogs look so alike they could be perceived as identical.
5) Lastly, any comments made on NAFA's facebook page including the two good ones I mentioned above might be completely ignored by the BoD unless there is a 'formal' comment given to the BoD. I think the BoD should be able to simply take the comments from facebook. Requiring unnecessary and extra steps by the commenters is counterproductive.
This entire subject needs simplification. I tried, but probably failed this time.
Sincerely,
I Like Flyball
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Flyball Attack dogs and owners who do not pick up after their dogs beware of the underground electric fence. No visible training flags.
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