Into the Pool

So, a couple of days ago I posted about my happiness. Yesterday’s post turned out to be about happiness. Today, I thought I would continue on this theme of happiness.

This is my fourth year at the Hopkinton State Fair, and I’ve seen a lot of happiness at the fair. There are those crazy derby-goers who manage to be one of the lucky 5,000. There are the kids who get to run around the petting farm, playing with goats and sheep. There are the people who, after waiting all year, finally get to chow down on a perfectly cooked buffalo sausage again (this group includes me). Lots of people go to the fair, and many of them are happy.

No matter what though, no one is happier at the Hopkinton State Fair than the dogs leaping into a forty-foot pool from a forty-foot dock: The Dock Dogs.

For those that have never heard of Dock Dogs, it’s a pretty simple concept – dogs jump off a dock into a pool. They have three different contests: Speed Retrieve (a toy is affixed to the far end of the pool, the dog leaps in, swims out to retrieve and get back out of the water as quickly as possible), Extreme Vertical (basically a high jump), and Big Air (basically, the long jump). I think the number of dogs registering for each event determines the number of times they are done, but at Hopkinton, the Speed Retrieve and Extreme Vertical tend to get just one or two competitions over the course of the weekend. The rest of the time, and the event most people show up for, is the Big Air.

I’m not sure why this one is so popular amongst the dog owners versus the other two. I would guess, though, that the Big Air is probably the easiest to train a new dog for, as it is a fairly natural action. A toy is tossed into the water, the dog jumps in after it. In Speed Retrieve, the dog has to know to swim to the toy at the end of the pool. In Extreme Vertical, the dog sits at the end of the dock and leaps straight up.

Whatever the event, though, the highlight of the event is the dogs. They are pumped to be chasing, or jumping, or whatever they’re doing. They jump, they bark, they creep forward when their handler’s back is turned, because they just have to have that toy. Then, they finally get the command to release, and they get to tear down the astroturf to leap into the pool and get their toy. Sometimes the dog gets to the end, sees the water and freezes. The owner implores them to get the toy (no pushing the dog in – one of the few unbreakable rules of the Dock Dogs – if the dog doesn’t want to go in, it doesn’t go in), and the crowd cheers them on, and usually the dog will hop in and get their toy.

Whether the dog jump one foot or twenty, the crowd cheers, and the dog is praised, because they went in. They had fun. They don’t know there’s a competition involved, or prizes on the line. They just know that their beloved owner is playing fetch with them, and they just want to get that toy and bring it back to their owner. As the announcer says when a dog pauses at the end of the dock, then only jumps about three feet, “That dog just jumped fifty-three feet in his mind.”

If you couldn’t tell by now, I love watching the Dock Dogs. I rarely get to watch an entire competition, as I usually get a call in the middle, but the time I get to spend there is some of the best time I spend at the fair. When I’m having a particularly bad day, I try to make my way over to the dock, and just watch those dogs. I’m not going to make some tired, tortured point that maybe we can learn something from those dogs about doing what we love, because that’s not always possible for a variety of reasons, the major one being that we’re human beings with human being problems and stresses that dogs simply don’t have.

They’re just tons of fun to watch.