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06/20/2009
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BUDGET CUTS ORDERED
Many happy returns in Richmond
Tax woes land on Whitefield
Rapist denied new trial
AUGUSTA MINDING A MINE
SPORT OF KINGS Falconry a blend of dedication and commitment
COLLEGE HOCKEY: Maine rallies but falls short against Boston College
COLLEGE ROUNDUP: Colby women win season opener at home tournament
All of today's:
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from the Kennebec Journal
from the Morning Sentinel
WEDDING BURGLAR JAILED
Youths talk Turkey Day
Plenty of free Thanksgiving meals available
Turkey prices make for happier holiday
Kennebec County Superior Court
POLICE
COLLEGE HOCKEY: Maine rallies but falls short against Boston College
COLLEGE ROUNDUP: Colby women win season opener at home tournament
All of today's:
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from the Morning Sentinel
BY TRAVIS BARRETT
Outdoors Writer
No training necessary.
Bo Garside thought long and hard about his 18-month-old yellow lab, Boomer. He thought about what Boomer wasn't doing when he wasn't snoring, sprawled across the comforter on Garside's bed. Garside thought about the DockDogs competition that was being held in Scarborough, about how all it required was for a dog to jump into a pool of water.
If you're Boomer, Garside thought, what's not to love about that?
"How could he lose?" said Garside, of Augusta, this week. "He's a dog. He gets to jump and swim. That's it."
Led by Garside's 11-year-old daughter Selena, Boomer won the "Big Air" competition in the first-ever DockDogs event held in Maine last weekend at The Kennel Shop store. Boomer leapt more than 18 feet in the air to take the top honors in the amateur division.
"I had no idea," Selena said.
In fact, just two days earlier, nobody was even sure if Boomer was all that interested in a competition.
* * *
Pouring rain last Friday morning finally relented, revealing a 40-foot, carpet-covered ramp leading to an equally-long, narrow pool of water below. It was like the setting at many a lakeside camp in Maine, one with loudspeakers, a paved parking lot and a crowd of cheering people added.
For ambiance.
But not every dog out there is as eager to satisfy its instinctive craving for jumping and swimming as Boomer was. Some dogs, it seems, balk at the notion of competing to see who can leap the furthest.
Boomer was not one of those dogs.
" 'Has he ever done a DockDog event?' " Garside remembers event organizer Bob Dewire asking him when he showed up to register on the first morning of the competition. "He told us that lots of dogs have a mental issue with this kind of thing to start with. It's clear blue water, so they can see the bottom, which they're not used to. There are the loud speakers and the crowds. I told him I can't believe my dog would have any issue with this."
That's when Dewire shot Garside the look -- the look suggesting some false bravado on an owner's behalf, the one that says, "Yeah, we'll see."
They started small, having Boomer run about half the length of the dock to see what he thought. On his first practice leap, he stretched out to nearly 13 feet.
No training necessary.
"You just have to throw (the dummy) out farther than he can jump," Selena said. "He gets excited and then just wants to go get it."
Dewire told Garside his dog just might win the whole thing, even in a field void of local entrants and littered with trainers and dogs that travel the country from event to event all year long.
On Friday, each of three classes of jumpers -- pro, semi-pro and amateur -- competed in three rounds of heats, with each heat consisting of two jumps per dog. There were two more heats on Saturday and a final one on Sunday morning, whittling each field down to the top eight dogs.
To start those heats, Selena Garside asked if she could give it a whirl. Her first try at handling Boomer came in the first heat, and she promptly added two feet to what her father had done. After a second jump, Boomer's best distance was up to 15 feet, 11 inches.
Fearing overtiring the dog, the Garsides opted to give Boomer the third heat of the day off. He also took Saturday off because of previous family commitments. When they came back on Sunday morning, Boomer still stood seventh overall.
"I told my daughter, 'Let's work real hard here and see what he can do,' " Garside said.
* * *
The DockDog "Big Air" competition was born of ESPN programming in 2000, when it was added as a filler event to the inaugural Great Outdoor Games that year. According to DockDogs, it wasn't expected to be very popular.
Two years later, DockDogs was established with its own criteria for holding events. This year alone, there are as many as 10 events held worldwide every weekend.
"We watched it on TV for two or three years, but it's never been anywhere around here before," Garside said of his family's decision to head to Cabela's for the weekend. "It's a 10-year-old sport, and it's growing by leaps and bounds. It's in comparison to a field trial (for hunting dogs) or like the Westminster show. It's just another deal for dogs."
That it is outdoors-oriented and doesn't require thousands of dollars in specialized training or equipment, Garside said, is especially appealing.
"We're a really outdoor-oriented family," said Garside, who is a master Maine guide. "We have a camp in the Allagash, and we do a lot of stuff in the outdoors. Boomer is always with us."
But that doesn't mean that Garside thought of his pet as any kind of an extreme athlete.
"No, no," Garside said. "He likes to jump. Really, that's all."
* * *
Selena Garside thought she'd lost any chance at all of winning the "Big Air" amateur competition with Boomer. His first attempt of two in the finals was an unmitigated disaster.
Her grip on Boomer's leash too slack, she tossed the retrieval dummy in the water. From a standing position, Boomer instinctively chased after it, crashing into the water. The jump counted, and Boomer had barely gone 71/2 feet.
Selena was crushed.
"I didn't think we could do it after that," she said.
Enter the fraternity that follows the DockDogs trail each season, a tight-knit group that came to young Selena's aid.
"She was pretty busted up," her father recalled. "She was embarrassed, upset. I went right over and told her to relax, to take it easy, that she had another chance. All those other (competitors) came over and were 100 percent supportive. We just told her to keep her chin up, that we'd never thought we'd make it this far, all of that.
"But that support of the others really turned her around."
Seventh of the eight dogs to jump in the finals, Selena led Boomer on an 18-foot, 1-inch winning leap into the pool.
"I just had fun with Boomer," Selena said. "It was fun just letting him go out and swim."
"Nobody, but anybody, expected a local dog to win -- especially not an 18-month-old with an 11-year-old handler," Garside said. "I'm super-proud of both of them. Can't think of what else you'd do that could be that much fun with your family and your dog in the rain in a parking lot."
Neither, it seems, can Selena.
"If it was up to her," Garside said, "we'd be in an Airstream (camper) going across the country now to all of them."
Travis Barrett -- 621-5648
tbarrett@centralmaine.com
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