Photo by Andrew Bershaw/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
Dog diving is perfect television.
“Ain’t no rule says a dog can’t play basketball.” Such a classic line from a classic movie. That’s from Disney’s 1997 hit Air Bud if you somehow couldn’t draw the conclusion.
For me, that’s about as far as things went for dogs in organized athletics. I know that they do dog shows every year. My wife and I watch them and then repeatedly try to get our dogs to notice the dogs on TV in hopes that, I don’t know, there’ll be some sort of canine worm hole that opens up and all the dogs on TV come into out house play with us forever. We’ll keep trying and let you know if anything happens.
A few weeks ago we were having one of the classic lazy Sundays where we load up on snacks and order out all day. While we were flipping the channels looking for something that would inevitably be the soundtrack to our food coma, we stumbled upon an exciting sport that we’d never seen before. Dog diving.
Look at this:
Tell me you can’t stare at dogs doing this for hours. They look so happy and so determined at the same time. It makes you want to immediately take your dog to the lake and see if they can do it too. I love my dogs, but one is 12 and would rather sleep on the dock and the other is eight months old and would probably retrieve the toy and never come back. We’re still working on things with her.
Naturally I had to go and find out everything I could possibly find out about these competitions. I wanted to know everything I could. What are the rules? How are these dogs being trained? Is this a year-long thing or is it just one event? I had to know it all. So I scoured the world wide web and I got in touch with some great people.
First I talked with Steve Powell of North America Diving Dogs. The NADD is an organization that partners with both the American Kennel Club and the Continental Kennel Club. If you’re familiar with the scene in The Big Lebowski where John Goodman’s character is telling the Dude that his ex wife’s dog has papers, these are the places where that dog likely got its papers from.
Powell explained to me that there are three types of competitions and then gave an explanation for each of them.
Distance
“It’s basically just throwing a toy or placing a toy in the water and letting your dog jump and run and get it. Then we measure the distance they actually jump. We use visual judging and we measure to the tail set, or where the tail meets the butt. It don’t matter what the toy is, it just has to float and has to have not previously been alive.” Yes, Powell said that handlers have thrown dead animals in the pool during competitions before.
“That’s what we have. That is a toy suspended above the water, two feet above the dock, and the dogs go out and jump and grab it and we measure in 1-foot increments.”
“Is testing how fast they swim in the water. With us the dog leaves in front of the 10-foot mark, swims as fast as they can to the 37-foot mark where we have a toy suspended an inch and half about the water and it turns around and swims back to its owner. We time it to the 10-foot mark of the pool.”
Dogs can qualify by going to a standard event to jump their dog. The goal is to get your dog a title with NADD to get recognized by the AKC. Then there’s qualifiers all over the country. The winner of those goes to regionals and the winners of the regionals head on to nationals.
Now that we know all the ins and outs of the competition, I had to know the ins and outs of how these dogs train and prepare for competition. Luckily the AKC was able to put me in touch with Sheila Downing and Stacy Roberts, They’re the handlers of Shuggs the Greyt.
“What gets him going when we get him on the dock, you always want to make it fun for him.” Downing said. “I think they always stress that Steve and Kristen Powell are very big proponents of you got to make it fun for the dog. If you’re not having fun, then you shouldn’t be doing it.”
The good thing is that Shuggs seems to be having a good time. I got to meet him via Zoom and he looked like your average super-happy dog. Downing says his tail always wagging when he’s out there training and competing.
Like your average human athlete getting ready for a competition, there’s training that goes into this for the dogs. Downing takes Shuggs to a training facility near their Wisconsin home every other week. Shuggs will get in about 12 jumps per visit. Downing says the 12th jump is about where Shuggs tires out.
Much like that same human getting ready to compete, Shuggs takes supplements for his joints and muscles. His muscles are quite different from your average greyhound. Shuggs is a beefed-up Greyhound from all the swimming he does. Your average Greyhound has a much different muscularity because these dogs are often racing dogs. When I saw Shuggs on Zoom, he looked like Stallone in Rambo 2.
All the training and the repetition leads to that moment when Shuggs takes the stage with both Stacy and Sheila. He’ll back his way up to the starting spot where Stacy is waiting to hold him from the backside. Sheila will hold his toy out and and say the magic words “get your wubba, get your wubba!” Ears perked and jaw chattering, Shuggs is like stock car at the starting line. Then it’s time to go, and he flies.
