Chase's Big Chance--CANCELLED Due To Finster

Ripley Getting Serious Air Time at Cosmo Park

Poor Chase! His debut as a professional sports dog will have to be put on hold for now. If a certain baby girl had followed the original plan and appeared at the end of March, Chase was going to enter the Splashdogs competition at Scottsdale's Canine Thunder Event on April 25th. Splashdogs is a canine athletic organization that puts on competitions for dock diving. You may have seen it on TV. The dog runs down about a 25 foot dock and leaps off the end into a pool. Dog with the longest jump wins. The record is something like 27 feet. Loving the water, Labradors outnumber all other breeds at this sport. We go to Cosmo Park to play, and they have a cement dock that goes into a lake built for dogs. The Boys have a blast tearing down the dock and launching into the air chasing the toys we throw into the water. Chase likes it so much that if you throw the toy from the beach, he'll run over to the dock, jump off the end, then swim out to get the toy. Ripley entered a Splashdogs contest about a year and a half ago shortly after we adopted Chase, who still had too many "issues" to work out to allow him to join in as well. Problem is, he is so used to jumping into lakes that he's not too keen on pools, which have crystal clear water. I think that spooked him because in the last few feet of his run he'd put the breaks on as if to say, Whoa, are you sure there's any water in there? So a jump that could have easily been 15-20 feet ended up at 7. Well so what we can't all be Michael Phelps right? Unlike Chase, who has no fear of anything (well except garbage trucks) he won't even jump into my parents pool without lots of coaxing. So I want to try Chase next because after a few practice jumps I think he'd do great. Oh well, there's another event in October...