Great Outdoor Games staff
It really doesn't matter whether or not you are a "dog person" the sight of a canine reaching top speed as it hurls itself down a boat dock, then launching into the air for a leap of 20 feet or more is something you'll likely stop and watch.
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| Shad Field and his wife, Melanie, head up DockDogs, the organizers of the Big Air competitions at the Super Retriever Series. |
Field, 41, is a navy veteran, former adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Denver, and business consultant with the firm KPMG. The Wyoming native is also a long time dog trainer and handler (his father was a professional horse trainer) who has applied his marketing background and dog expertise to become the undisputed overseer of the new sport.
He gave us a little history as he completed the setup for this week's Super Retriever Series:
What was this sport before it became a sport?
Shad Field: "My story is that it started with two duck hunters in a blind in Wyoming. There being nothing much in the way of ducks in Wyoming, one of them passed the time by taunting the other that his dog could jump the farthest off of the boat dock. Seriously, the basic activity has been around as long as there has been a person, a dog and a boat dock. Some of the game fairs in Minnesota have had informal competitions over the past decade or so and there have been some corporate demonstration type events, but really there had been no real standards set."
So you had to set the standards in order to have a full-fledged competition at the first ESPN Great Outdoor Games in 2000?
SF: "Yes, and that involved setting a standard height for the dock at 24 inches, finding a standard material for the dock surface because we soon learned that artificial turf type products were not acceptable. We also had to develop a standardized way of measuring the jumps. You can't exactly use a tape measure on water, so we developed technology similar to what's used in ski jumping, which is accurate to within an inch."
What else had to be done for the first event at the Great Outdoor Games?
SF: "I had to find competitors. Seriously. And to do that I pretty much drew on my contacts in the retriever dog field. I knew some folks who had dogs that were athletic and inclined to jump."
So, what's the growth been like in the sport since that first ESPN Great Outdoor Games?
SF: "Tremendous. This year, we'll do 10 qualifying events, each with 30 to 60 competitor teams and next year we expect to do 20 or so. And we'll be organizing a network of local and regional chapters, sort of like the Bassmasters Federation concept, to provide competitions that can lead the teams on up into these qualifiers. We've also gotten some amazing publicity, including articles in the Wall Street Journal."
What is it that makes a dog a top performer? Is it more a question of breed, or size, or is it training techniques?
SF: "Like most animal athletes, it seems that genetics plays the biggest role. The ability seems to run in the bloodlines. As far as size, we see more top dogs in the 50 to 60 lb. range, with the height to weight proportions that you generally find in Labrador retrievers. But that is a bit misleading, because we have so many of our competitions in areas of the country where waterfowling is big, so we're seeing more Labs than any other breed. As the sport continues to spread into other regions, we'll doubtless see more different breeds coming on and doing well."
How far will we see these dogs jump in the future?
SF: "The current world record is 26 feet 6 inches (by Little Morgan, who incidentally weighs just 45 pounds). I'm looking for advertisers right now to help establish a '30 foot bounty', because that jump is coming.
You can learn more about the sport, the events and the athletes at the DockDogs website: www.dockdogs.com.
