Zoe Goldstein/Vail Daily
VAIL — The noise of barking is all over. The speaker roars a mix of music and a series of data.
“Rivet’s last jump measured in at 26 feet, 11 inches!” At its handler’s command, a fluffy streak take apart a 40-foot dock and launches itself into the air, flying up of 20 feet into a clear blue swimming pool. This is the DockDogs Big Air competitors at the GoPro Mountain Games.
Stacy Nesting, of Monroe, Oregon, is the handler of 2 prizewinning pups: Rivet, whose dives regularly categorize in the Super Elite classification, and Echo, who is still logging 22-foot dives at 8 years of ages. Between the 2 dogs, this is Nesting’s 4th time at the GoPro Mountain Games, and calls it among her preferred occasions on the DockDogs circuit.
“There’s so much to do and so much to see. It’s so cool to watch all the other athletes do their thing,” she said.
“Everyone got dogs during COVID, and now they’re finding fun ways to be active with their dogs. This is a great way to keep a dog engaged and smart.” — Elizabeth Spencer, Denver resident and handler of Tuna
The swimming pool for the Big Air competitors determines 20 feet large and 40 feet long and consists of 25,000 gallons of water. Untrained dogs often balk at its edge. According to commentator Kevin Gillingham, of Sunset, Utah, dogs see the clear water as an indicator that the swimming pool is empty. Dogs in the Big Air competitors run down a 40-foot-long dock and leap into the air in pursuit of a chew toy tossed by their handler. The length of their dive is determined from the dog’s tail set, or where their tail gets in touch with their body. It does not matter if the dog captures the toy in midair. How far a dog leaps figures out the department they fall in: Novice, Junior, Senior, Master, Elite, and Super Elite classifies a part of the range in between absolutely no and 35 feet from the dock.
DockDogs likewise hosts 3 other competitors at the Mountain Games. Extreme Vertical is a high leaping test in which dogs needs to recover a toy from a bar that begins at 4.5 feet and boosts in height by 2 inches every round. Announcer Gillingham mentioned the outside world record for the high dive as “8 feet, 10 inches.” Speed Retrieve is a combined run, dive, and swim competitors. Dogs should go to completion of the 20-foot dock, leap into the swimming pool, and swim to the end of the swimming pool to recover the toy hanging there, all as rapidly as possible. Dogs are determined on their time to reach the toy. Dueling Dogs is a head-to-head race in between 2 dogs at a time to leap off the dock and swim through the water, the winner being whichever reaches the toy at the end of their lane initially.
Denver resident Elizabeth Spencer’s dog is Tuna, nicknamed the “Flyin’ Hawaiian.” This is Tuna’s second year at the Mountain Games, a sport she found by accident.
“We did an end-of-season pool closing celebration in Morrison. They were about to drain the pool, so they let all the dogs go in and have a good time. They had some silly competitions that are not competitive, but Tuna won almost all of them,” said Spencer. She quickly realized Tuna’s aptitude for these types of events. Since then, Tuna and Elizabeth have paid a weekly visit to Jasper’s Splash Zone in Lafayette, where Tuna hones her long-jump skills in pools similar in size to the one featured at this weekend’s competition.
Stiff Competition
“Thursday is just a warmup day. Friday is really when the competition starts,” explained Spencer. While the format of the event does not change from day to day, the intensity of the competition ramps up as it heads toward finals on Sunday.
Qualifying for finals is broken down by jump-distance division, so that dogs can face appropriate competition and still participate when they jump shorter distances. Spencer, whose dog Tuna showcased jumps in the high teens on Thursday and Friday, described how this affects competition: “If your dog is hitting 25 (feet), you’re out, because there are dogs hitting 27, 28 (feet).”
Jumping 25 feet puts dogs in the Super Elite division, where it is possible for a dog to jump up to 35 feet. Meanwhile, a dog that jumps 10 feet is in competition with dogs in the Junior category, who also jump in between 10 and 15 feet.
While Nesting is here to have fun, she also takes the DockDogs competition quite seriously. On Thursday, Rivet wows crowds with a 27-foot, 5-inch leap, and Echo does the same when she launches 22 feet, 2 inches. Rivet and Echo will be competing in multiple occasions per day throughout the course of the weekend, taking adequate time to rest between events.
Interested in trying out DockDogs?
On Thursday and Friday, at the end of a long day of official competitors, DockDogs offers an opportunity for interested dogs and handlers to put their jumping abilities to the test. This is where the dog-loving community gathers to relax. As an introduction to the water, dogs are allowed to first walk down, then jump off the ramp that competitors typically use to walk out of the water. If a new jumper succeeds on the ramp, they are led to the competitors dock, and encouraged to leap there, too.
“It’s a great way to see how dogs can be athletic,” Spencer said of DockDogs. “Everyone got dogs during COVID, and now they’re finding fun ways to be active with their dogs. This is a great way to keep a dog engaged and smart.”
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Nesting shared some pointers for finding and training a champ DockDog. “The first thing you want to do is make sure your dog can swim,” Nesting said. “A dog that is very eager to swim and play in the water is the best place to start.”
According to Nesting, the next action in training an effective DockDog does not include a swimming pool at all. “You want to engage the dog heavily in what is called toy drive. They have to want that toy more than anything in the world.”
Finally, take that dog to a swimming pool. “Once that all comes together, you put it in water and mix, and then you have yourself a DockDog.”
More typically than not, dogs at Try DockDogs do not handle to make it off the platform. Some of the time, dogs remain dry and their human handlers wind up in the water, intentionally and not. But the crowd cheers raucously for any indication of success, no matter how little.
“If you have a dog that loves water, and loves toys, do it,” Nesting said.
For viewers, Gillingham had the last word: “Come on down, enjoy the sun, and check out the shows.”
