FLAOA

 About Us 

Based in Ithaca, NY, which is located in the heart of New York’s Finger Lakes and surrounded by beautiful gorges and breathtaking waterfalls, FLAOA is an informal club comprised of a group of individuals who simply love to have fun with their dogs. Period.

As a club, we offer classes in agility, obedience, conformation show handling, Rally-style obedience, flyball, and more. We sponsor seminars, fun matches, workshops, and various other educational opportunities pertaining to the world of dogs and dog sports.

As dog owners, we promote training in a positive, reward-based motivational manner --- after all, if the dog isn’t having fun, how can we? We’re also proponents of responsible dog ownership; many of us are involved in various dog (and other animal) rescue organizations.

We’re also a community-minded group. Some of us work with 4-H’ers and their dogs, not only running their agility program but also teaching our up-and-coming young people how to become instructors themselves. Our obedience classes, though providing a firm training foundation for those who wish to pursue serious obedience competition, are geared to the public in the hope that, if the dog is trained, it becomes part of the family and is less likely to be turned over to the SPCA or some other shelter. And since children are our future, we allow kids in our classes.

FLAOA is an informal club. We’d rather get bogged down, fitting all our fun activities into our calendars, instead of being caught up in the administrative duties and politics often associated with such organizations. Most of our club business and communications are handled on the internet via our website and our club-members-only discussion list. Even our yearly club meeting is based around games, contests, and other fun involving our dogs --- no holiday parties at restaurants without our dogs for us! In other words, for those who enjoy working on the operational end of such groups, all one needs to do is roll up his/her sleeves and jump in --- there’s plenty of work to go around, and we’re always willing to share the load! If you’re looking for more structure and rules, there are plenty of other clubs around to fill that bill for you.

In short, if you have a dog (or are thinking of getting one) and you’re interested in having some fun times with other dog-loving people, we might have something of interest for you. Check us out; click here to access our Contact Us page.

REMEMBER: The “FL” in FLAOA stands for “Finger Lakes”, but it could just as easily stand for “Fun Loving”!

FLAOA: First Place in Fun!