Source: Gulf Coasting Live, by by amy sowder, 10/17/2008
Imagine your dog sailing through the air, ears flopping and tongue dangling.
Then — splash! — as he catches the yellow tennis ball and simultaneously plunges into a pond.
Cheers erupt from onlookers.
Your dog is a star.
That’s the point of the 2008 Spook Splash and Dog Olympics.
Spectators and owners of any dog breed are welcome to the three-day event on Buckingham Road in Fort Myers starting today. It’s hosted by the Southwest Florida Dog Diving Club and Splash Dogs, a national group originating in California.
Labrador retrievers are the most common dog to participate, but people bring all sorts, from German shepherds to chihuahuas.
“Alex actually shakes with adrenaline when he’s waiting to go on,” Jen Gaytan of Fort Myers says about her 4-year-old black labrador retriever. “We’ve been doing this ever since he was born.”
The contests include: dock jumping, super vertical jumping, fastest dog on the dock, speed retrieve, speed swim, a “Chase Away Canine Cancer” fundraiser and a Fort Myers Police canine demonstration.
There are specific rules and regulations for the main contests.
Dock jumping involves measuring how far the dogs can jump. The 40-by-8 foot dock must be used.
The most popular method is the chase technique, says Cristin Madden, a club member from Bonita Springs and owner of 4-year-old Casco, a lab retriever.
People use a chase object, which is usually a floatable toy, to entice the dog to jump off the dock for distance, although it is not required.
Measurement is taken where the base of the tail meets the spine.
“Casco only jumped 10 feet her first time,” says Madden, 37. “That’s OK. Some don’t jump, but you can see they want to. They want to get the toy.”
If the dog takes to it, dock jumping becomes addictive, Madden says.
She’s traveled to competitions in West Virginia and Georgia.
Now Casco’s best jump is 20 feet, 7 inches.
“You kinda get a hankering to do it after the first time, and if your dog likes it, it’s fun,”
she says.
The second major contest is super-vertical jumping.
A bumper is extended 8 feet over the water from the dock and starts at a height of 5 feet. The dog must grab or knock the bumper off to clear the height and move on to the next round, which is 2 inches higher.
It’s funny when people try it for the first time because sometimes they have to get in the water to entice their confused pooches, says Terri Alexander, president of Southwest Florida Dog Diving Club.
But owners shouldn’t get discouraged, she says.
Alexander founded the group about five years ago after she saw a dog-diving competition on the sports TV channel ESPN.
She drove more than 1,000 miles to Little Rock, Ark., to participate the following year.
That’s when she formed her own group in Florida.
Alexander has been adding contests, such as dog olympics and pond races, to the event every year since.
Winning dogs receive a pot of entry fees and also medals and ribbons.
The best reward isn’t material, though, Alexander says.
“It’s bragging rights, man,” Alexander says. “If your dog is the fastest of Southwest Florida on land, water or dock?”
The reality is we “speak” much louder than we think we do when we move. Dogs are physical animals, they communicate through body language… so whether you can see it, understand it or believe it, it is….. and as Ive proven to myself above. When I try to get my brain to think as fast as we are moving, I’m much better off if I just speak to my dog through body language as the actual human speech part is where it gets lost in translation.
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