Rescue Border Collie Jax wins national flyball title with York team

Jax, an 11-year-old Border Collie rescue from Dogs Trust Leeds, has gone from anxious newcomer to national flyball champion with the Monsters of York team. In a sport built on speed, agility and nerve, the York dog has now helped deliver both the British Flyball Championships and the UKFL Flyball Championships.

Flyball is as fast as it sounds. Four-dog relay teams race over hurdles, trigger a box to release a ball and sprint back to their handler, with every clean exchange and fraction of a second mattering. Jax and his teammates did that at the highest level, then finished with the kind of result that turns a local success story into a national one.

Julia, a York dog walker, adopted Jax in November 2019 with her husband Phil after she had recently lost another rescue dog, Seve. Jax arrived full of energy and intelligence, but lacking confidence and unsettled by new situations. Julia already competed in flyball and hoped the sport would give him a job for all that drive while helping him feel secure. After three years of training, Jax and the Monsters made the leap from hopefuls to title winners.

Julia described the British and UKFL championships as the 'Olympics' of the sport, and for good reason. Those events sit at the top of the flyball calendar in the United Kingdom, where every hundredth of a second can separate the front-runners from the rest. The Monsters team, based in Tollerton, York, was established on March 20, 2022 and had a team record of 17.26 seconds as of August 3, 2024, a marker of just how sharp the group has become.

Jax is not flying solo, either. He continues to compete alongside his Border Collie sibling Alva, who was also a top competitor in the sport. The team’s roster also includes captain Kerry Sugden, underscoring the structured, club-style side of flyball that helps turn raw canine energy into repeatable results.

Kelly Walker, manager at Dogs Trust Leeds, said Jax’s story shows how much difference the right home, patience, understanding and stimulation can make. That is the clearest takeaway from Jax’s rise: for high-drive dogs, the problem is rarely too much energy. The breakthrough comes when that energy finally has somewhere to go.