A dog’s tale: Local veterinarian describes dock diving

Wednesday, 25 January 2012 17:08

By Carole Walker

Correspondent

Colby, Alisa Wayland’s 8-year-old Labrador retriever, has had his 15 minutes of fame and then some. Now the top-ranked veteran dock diving dog in New England, he was featured on the David Letterman show in 2008 as one of the top three dogs in the Purina Incredible Dog challenge.

Wayland, a veterinarian at Milford Animal Hospital who lives in Seymour, is also an authority on dock diving, which she said is the fastest-growing dog sporting event in the country. It involves dogs taking a long jump off a portable 40-foot dock into water to catch a toy thrown by the owner.

Sometimes the events are organized at ponds or lakes, and sometimes portable pools are set up to host the competitions.

In dock diving, a dog and its handler compete against other teams. Dogs run down the dock and jump into the water, with the distance judged from the end of the dock to the base of the dog’s tail. Each competitor gets two jumps per round, with the longer distance of the two jumps counting as the score.

The greater the distance jumped, the greater the score.

Wayland and her four Labrador retrievers — Parker, age 11, Abraham, 5, Paxton, 2, and Colby, who form Team Blabador — have attended hundreds of events in more than a dozen states over the past five years.

Team Blabador’s roots started with Parker in June 2001.

“As do most Labrador retrievers, Parker had a strong love of the water from a very early age,” Wayland said. “Luckily, we have an amazing dog park nearby that Parker was able to explore many different water activities in.”

Parker began jumping off embankments with great delight, and when Colby came into the picture in 2003, he quickly learned why his brother found jumping to be a lot of fun.

“Soon we had two leaping Labs and many days filled with fun and laughter for everyone,” Wayland said.

In 2006, she discovered that other families were enjoying the pastime with their dogs in a competitive setting. She went online and found local organizations like Dock Dogs, Splash Dogs and Ultimate Air Dogs.

Fortunately, there just happened to be a competition in her neck of the woods in February 2007. Before that event, she had made arrangements to get a new puppy that would travel half the country and meet her at her first event. His name is Abraham.

Wayland said most people involved in the sport do not take it too seriously. “Basically you enjoy that time with your dog. That’s what it should be about. Any dog can do it, it’s a lot of fun and it’s family-oriented. Kids 7 years or older can throw.”

The dogs are separated into categories based on the length of a typical jump, not on their breed. Paxton is in the Super-Elite category of dogs who can jump 25 feet and longer; Colby is in the Elite category, competing against dogs who jump between 23 and 25 feet; Abraham competes in the Master category of 20- to 23-foot jumps, and Parker is a Senior, competing against dogs capable of jumping 20 feet.

The two other categories, Novice and Junior, are for dogs that can jump 10 and 15 feet respectively. There are also divisions for lap dogs and for veterans, dogs age 8 and older.

“Dock diving is the big air of dog sports,” Wayland explained. “There’s not a huge amount of training involved, such as is needed for sports such as disk-catching.”

Even though three of Wayland’s dogs are rescue animals and two have health issues, such as Parker’s vision impairment and Colby’s bilateral hip and elbow dysplasia, they have thrived under the training they receive for dock diving. Wayland said dock diving has made Colby, hyperactive by nature, a calmer and better-behaved dog. For conditioning, the dogs swim in slow-moving rivers, retrieve upstream, and run up and down hills.

“Colby lost 14 pounds and gained a lot of muscle, and as a result, does not look like an 11-year-old dog,” Wayland said. “You’re not a real dock diver until you’ve fallen into the water throwing your toy. Everyone enjoys watching that.”

For more information on dock diving, visit Wayland’s website, teamblabador.com.