Dock Dogs!!

For the first time this year, the official DockDogs Competition came to Killington - and it has turned out to be one of the best events of the summer!  It was a great mix of professional athletes, local dogs and the old dogs who were just there for the social atmosphere.  Aaron & I followed Vespi around for a couple of hours as she sniffed her way through the crowd that was already over-flowing the bandstand in its first year!  She made tons of new friends, sniffed butts with some old ones, and came home with a big bag of homemade treats that would make any pastrry chef jealous  :)

Photo Credit: Chandler Burgess

The object of the game is to get your dog to jump as far as possible off of a running platform that is two feet above the water, the world record being over 28 FEET!  Since Vespi won't even jump off the dock, it was amazing to see these dogs not even flinch at jumping 13-16 feet.  One of Vespi's boyfriends, Sully, was competiting for the first time and ended up jumping over 13 feet, while our neighbor's dog, Finn, ended up with 2nd place in the Junior Division.  You should have seen how proud they were of his ribbon!  Sent the photo all around to their friends before the event had even ended  :)

All in all, I think that DockDogs might very well turn out to be one of the highlights of the Killington summer event schedule.  If you missed it this year, I would very much recommend that you add this to your list - and start training with your dog now just for a chance to participate!  Set to the backdrop of the beautiful mountains with Ozzy Ozbourne blaring out of the speakers, this is definately a Killington friendly event - at what other dog show do you get offered jello shots on a regular basis?