Fit Friday: Dock Diving

I already shared some pictures I took of other dogs dock diving at the fair last weekend. Well, I did take Koira up on the dock for the "give it a try" session. Since I was there for a flyball demo, I didn't want to enter an official wave. And Koira doesn't know the difference anyway.




One of my flyball teammates (Sophie's mom, if you remember the little Jack Russel I shared a photo of earlier this week) was nice enough to video our jumps for us.

Koira broke her stays a few times to start with. I reset her closer up finally, and went from there. And I was very proud that she held her stay at all. We've been doing a lot of work with impulse control, and I think it is paying off. On our second jump, Koira didn't break her stay at all.

She isn't a super long jumping dog, but she obviously loves this sport. She'll jump here in front of crowds into a pool, into our pool at home, or into the river. It is all the same to her, she just loves it. And I love that dock diving is essentially a low impact sport. Other than the impact of running and of climbing up the ramp at the end, there aren't any pressures or impacts on the joints.

Koira was doing the distance jumping here, but you can see in this video below (taken by X-Treme AirDogs) that even when dogs are doing the vertical jumping and hitting the water with more vertical force, that they still don't hit the bottom of the pool.




Overall, we really enjoy dock diving, both at the river and in competition settings. Though I have to say, I think Koira has a little more fun than I do.