# Dock Diving



## Liz (Oct 2, 2010)

A friend of mine has a Portuguese Water Dog who is a natural at dock diving. Even on land she naturally pounces on her toys from several yards away, and since my friend has a pond, it was easy enough to move this behavior to the water. The dog, Myia (pronounced "Maya;" the spelling is based on the Portuguese word for socks, because she has white legs), is still a puppy at only one year and change, and today she jumped a personal best of 16'9".

We're very excited. My friend is hoping to qualify her for Eukanuba and only has a few more trials/opportunities, so today's jumps were important. I don't understand how the scoring works, so I'll know tomorrow (or next week?) how she's doing when her scores are updated on the NADD page. I'm pretty sure she has her DN title as of today, so even if they don't Q for Eukanuba this year, it's still a win.

My own dog, Mia, is simply not a dock diver. I got her to jump off the back of a boat once, and she spent the rest of the afternoon glaring at me and refusing to go near the boats, so I'm pretty sure that was the last time she'll ever do that.

For fun, I looked up standard poodles on the NADD site and it turns out our breed has a pretty respectable showing. Has anyone here tried it? Does anyone here have a dog who they think would be successful?


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## Skylar (Jul 29, 2016)

That's exciting - I hope your friend's dog qualifies.

I know several people with labs that participate in dock diving. Believe it or not someone locally has a mini dachshund that dock dives. I watched a video of that dog running as fast as it's little legs could take it up the dock and then it dove in. I can't imagine there are too many dachshunds doing that.

We have enough on our plates so I haven't explored if my dog would enjoy dock diving or not.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

I have never formally tried it since even though I live on an island there is no place where you can do sanctioned or supported dock diving. That said, I am sure Lily would be great at this sport since her favorite use of our pool is to jump off the steps to retrieve thrown balls.


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## Liz (Oct 2, 2010)

Skylar, I was checking Myia's new rankings, and I checked Dachshunds just for fun. The record jump for Doxies is 11'2" (!!) and for a Toy Poodle is 10'3" (!!), which I think is pretty amazing. A Papillon named Lady Gaga jumped 14' which I'm pretty sure means that she broke land speed records to get that jump.

The top dogs in the sport can jump over 30 feet. Today's top dog cleared about 27 feet, and it was really a beautiful thing to behold. There were a bunch of different jumping styles, including a dog who cartoonishly ran right over the edge of the dock, his legs pumping full speed, and dropped like a stone into the water. His legs never stopped. Luckily his owners knew how silly he looked.

Some dogs jumped high, some ran fast, some sped right up to the edge of the dock then quickly turned 90 degrees and scooted over to the ramp to walk in. All were cheered boisterously.

As for Myia, she now ties for 5th longest jump by a PWD with today's jump, and her half sister is in 4th place. It's not yet showing that she has her novice title, but I don't understand how it's calculated. I guess we'll see after the weekend.


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