The Bow Wow Boom Run debuted Saturday as a demonstration event at the Great Outdoor Games.

MADISON, Wis. — When ESPN this spring asked Great Outdoor Games timber sports organizer Rob Scheer to suggest new sports, he thought of his black Labrador Tucker. About 10 years ago,
when Tucker was just a pup, he enrolled her in logrolling school while he trained for tree climbing at Lumberjack Bowl in Hayward, Wis.

"I paid the $50, dropped her off every Tuesday and Thursday for her half-hour lesson," Scheer said. "No kidding."

For a summer, it was just Tucker and 50 kids in the logrolling class, and Tucker turned out to be a passable logroller. Scheer noticed, too, that when the kids would call her from across the school's pond, the dog eventually elected to scamper down the boom, pretty as you please.

Scheer's resulting suggestion to the network folks sounds like a game the Flintstones would have played as kids, or some garbled translation on a Beijing park sign: Bow Wow Boom Run.

As unnatural as it was to send grown human beings sprinting along a line of floating logs tethered end-to-end, man has decided to cajole dogs into attempting the same.

"If it can catch on here, it's just a matter of delivering booms to different kennels around the country, and each kennel does what they want with it," Scheer said.

"Any dog can run on the boom. It's got this funky, weird kind of nutty potential. But, hey. Frisbees and dogs. Jumping off the docks with dogs. Weaving and running through stuff and teeter-totters. Why not a boom?"

	"Any dog can run on the boom. It's got this funky, weird kind of nutty potential," said Great Outdoor Games timber sports organizer Rob Scheer.

It's just an exhibition sport for now, not even on the official schedule. But oh, shucks, they'll have no problem selling this.

A Tinkerbell of a Jack Russell Terrier was the first to brave the boom, and practically fluttered across on the first try, perfectly dry, perfectly hilarious.

One thousand small steps for dog …

Later in the afternoon, Duwayne Bickle and Doug Janes of Donnybrook Kennel in Cedar Grove, Wis., pitted a 10-year-old black lab named Homer against a chocolate lab named Aggie.

The idea is to run the best two of three, one-way, toward a handler waving a training bumper and blowing a whistle.

Homer wouldn't have it. While Aggie catapulted her way to the other end in about 7 seconds, which compares favorably with the fastest human times, Homer wandered as far as the second log and, proving his instincts are still sharp after all these years, bailed into the water.

He swam back, tried again, went back in the water. Janes helped him out, lead him to the other end, where Aggie waited.

Then Janes called Homer again. Homer bucked up and scuttled all the way to his trainer.

"They practice and they fall a few times," Janes said. "Eventually they realize, they want to get that bumper so badly."

Alas, Homer's time wasn't good enough to advance to the finals, to be held Sunday. There Aggie will meet a black lab named Cody for the crown of first-ever Bow Wow Boom Run top dog. Say that five times fast, then look for it at next year's games.