Making a Splash: Discovering Dock Diving with Barn Dogs Australia

Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining: Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.

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It's the Dog People Podcast with your host, Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this podcast for some free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things. Yeah. Go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then I get one like, oh my God, what the fuck I done? And Max O'Neill.

You would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.

It's the Dog People Podcast, the podcast hopefully giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, he's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence, of course, joined by Max O'Neill, the Down Under Dog Trainer. The ladies from Barn Dogs Australia have been checking out the Facebook page and some of these videos. We've already, of course, spoken about the barn search, which looks like so much fun. I cannot wait to have a go at this. But we want to talk about something else that I don't think my dog personally, Kira, would do.

We've just off air created like a live wager. I bet Kira will, Jack bet it doesn't. We'll have to figure out what the thing is, but I reckon we'll get into it.

She's a real princess, old Kira, when it comes to that stuff.

I still think she would jump. There's so many dogs down there. You go to the Gold Coast Show. You see how many dogs people think aren't going to jump? They jump.

Some of my clients are doing this now. And when they told me, we're going to do this with so-and-so, I'm like, I love your enthusiasm, but your dog ain't going to do it. Next minute, freaking just, mate, honestly, they're just launching themselves. So I reckon we'll get— but let's rewind.

What are we talking about today?

We're talking about dock diving with our dogs. The name's pretty self-explanatory, but what's dock diving?

Dock diving. It's absolutely awesome. You might have seen it being done at the Gold Coast Show.

Yep.

Um, it's been done all over. So we're working alongside with Dock Dogs Australia. Um, we are a splash zone for Dock Dogs Australia. Uh, they've got a facility that's gone up at the AA Pet Resort in Brisbane as well.

Yeah.

That's a sanctioned facility. We're just the splash zone. What it is, the dog goes up, they've— we've got a ramp rather than steps, so we're accessible to everybody. They're going to go up onto the ramp and then run themselves along Throw a toy in, they jump into the water. You need them to jump as far as what they can.

Cool. So from my understanding, there's a measure and contest for the furthest jump.

Yes.

And they will do this based on like, is it weight or age or something? Do they do like under 25 kilos or under 3? How do they sort of categorize it?

Do you know it's actually based on just how far they jump?

Yeah.

Rawr.

Okay. So as soon as your dog cracks a PB, you're in the next category.

You've got it. Well, it's kind of, it's a measured distance, I think. The first one being amateur, I'm sure it's up to, is it up to 12?

I think it's something like that.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm pretty sure it is.

So basically for laymen, it's essentially long jump into water.

Yes.

That's what it is. It's just dogs running and diving as far as they can and they land in water instead of sand.

Do you know what? That's one of them. So that's the dock diving side of things. And then you've got the next one. And what is it when they jump up into the air and they have to jump as high up as they can?

There's 3 different ones you can do. You can either do Extreme vertical, which I've seen Malinois do that.

Yeah, absolutely crazy.

Yeah, speed retrieve, and they put it at the end of the pool, and it's how fast they can get from the dock to the toy to retrieve it.

Yeah, Kira would be good at that one. She might have a slow entry, but then she's gonna gun it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, she loves it.

And then there's the big air, and that's the long jump. Right, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's really, really cool. We did the big air with Nelson when he was younger, and he loved it, and we're really keen to get back into it because Like you said, it's just one of those ones where you can go there and whatever your dog's athletic strengths are, whether a high jumper, long jumper, or even just like a crazy power swimmer, it's one of those sports that's pretty, pretty easy to walk into, right? Again, it doesn't take a heap of intelligence. Like, you can be pretty thick in the head and jump off a jetty.

It's so nice because there's all different classes that you can do. And so even if you've got one dog that's jumping like 20 foot, yours could jump 12 and still win the Yeah, the category they're in. You don't have to be the best. Your dog can still get the ribbons for how far they go.

And then you just keep on getting better and better and better as they get more confident and they learn to do things.

Well, I mean, this was what I was saying to you before we started recording. So with Kira, what I'll do is with water, she loves water. She'll go in water like anytime, but it's her entry. This is what I'm saying. She wouldn't do dock diving. So I'll throw a retrieve for her. She loves these things. She'll just fly as fast as she can, but she'll fly as fast as she can to the edge of the water. Then she puts the brakes on, slowly climbs in, and then starts swimming.

Do you know, you do see that with a lot of them, but a lot of them, it's confidence, isn't it? It's that first jump. As soon as they do that first jump, they carry on going.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they just run from there.

Nelson's first time we did it, we had him on the edge of the jetty down at Tallabudgera and he's whining and sulking and carrying on. And then he finally did this little jump. We've got it on camera somewhere. And then this light bulb went off. He's like, oh, that thing I was so scared of ain't that bad. Like I said, he was sprinting down the jetty, full sending it. And we thought like, This dog ain't gonna do it. And that's what's really cool about it. Again, it's one of those sports where it doesn't take like— you're not going to be up till 10 o'clock every night training out in the rain and crying because it's like, oh my God, this is so difficult. I'm speaking about my own experiences here, um, with PSA. But it's one of those ones you can just be like, cool, I'm gonna walk up to a splash zone or a registered facility or whatever and just go up to some training days and have a crack at it.

See what happens.

Then if it starts being a bit of fun, you can go and it doesn't matter whether your dog's jumping 4 or 5 foot. As you said before, they kind of categorize it as like amateur, novice, advanced, whatever else. So just because there's these border collies jumping 58 meters through the air or whatever, it doesn't matter. You're not even going to be up against them, right?

And you know, a lot of the time as well, it's actually the way you throw the bumper.

Yeah.

So it's not just the dog jumping. That's the first piece. The next bit is actually the way you're throwing it.

Yeah.

So you can have coaching sessions as well, can't you? From registered coaches that actually teach you how to throw the bumper.

Like with most things when it comes to dogs, it's actually more about training the human than it is the dog.

Most definitely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What's funny is that Again, Michelle, who works for us, shout out to her. She does dock diving with her dog Bella. And I know when she went and saw a coach and improved her throw, she added like 2 or 3 feet onto her PB and then won a ribbon at the Gold Coast show, which was pretty sick.

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It's, it's just such a cool sport. Like, we're starting to see a lot of our clients right now, particularly all the golden retriever crew we train with. A lot of them are going and doing it. Yeah, I think that's really cool. And again, it's one of those ones where it's like you might have got your dog and not expected to get yourself into dog sport because you're like, oh, like this is just a pet. But Nick made it like, oh no, like my dog competes, they do sport. Like, and it's so cool because it's that sort of environment with them and just having a goal to work towards is so good for your relationship and it's such a good outlet. And that's, that's why we love to do it. But what are some things that you've seen around like, oh, it's been so good for this dog?

You know, I reckon it's actually really good. You know, like some dogs are scared of crowds. people. She doesn't like people, and I think it's really nice for her to be doing something positive that she likes. And she loves the ball. She'd forget everything for the ball. She loves the ball.

She loves the water.

To like forget about the microphones and the people and just do the ball. It's really nice to see it.

Yeah, confidence building in, in a lot of dogs.

For sure. And for the people, people can have fun. You can have fun doing sport with your dogs. It's not also, uh, with a lot of dog sports, people can be quite angry and Yeah, you know.

You mean there's anger in the dog world?

Oh wow!

Why?

How dare you!

But with this one, it's fun.

Yeah.

It's real good fun that you can have all the people that we've met dock diving have been absolutely wonderful and so supportive of each other.

100% agree.

Which is wonderful. And that's the nicest thing, isn't it? It's going in, it's a no stress environment.

Yeah.

This is really bad, you know, even like at the competitions when there's lots of people, you can get your dog out and train them around other dogs. Yeah.

You can.

It's like an all-purpose thing.

Good opportunity to work on other bits and pieces. Yeah.

And it's a really good opportunity just to sit down and let them chill whilst everyone else is doing what they're doing.

Yeah, it desensitizes them to so many different things, which is fantastic.

It does. And it's just such a good environment. I'm really glad you said that because sometimes these competitive, you know, environments, whether it's like, you know, dog showing or whatever, can be a lot. And you go, oh, well, I don't want to go and not know what I'm doing, get shouted at. But it's a lot of fun. Like, I'll fully admit, Nelson and I, when we did our first one at the Dog Lovers Festival a couple of years back, had no clue. We just kind of decided on the day, let's do this. So we had no clue about the rules, doing everything wrong, but no one's like, you're a dickhead. And I think that's what I really had noticed, like, here's how to do it, here's how to do it.

Everybody is so friendly.

It was really cool. And supportive.

Everybody claps for everybody else. Everybody's there for everybody else and their dogs. It's beautiful.

It is. It's so cool. And it's just, it's so nice to see when your dog finally does it. It's like, it's, it's a pretty awesome thing. And that's what, you know, that's why we really recommend that more people try and get into dog sports, especially ones that are pretty accessible. Again, some of the sports we're going to talk about in the next few weeks, IGP, can take years before you're ready to trial. They're really intensive and there's a, there's a side for that. like, you know, dock diving and barn search, they're so good because quite often we spend so much time training our dogs just to do monotonous stuff, walk nicely on a leash or tell him to stop doing stuff, stop chasing the kids, stop eating the toilet paper, whatever it is. So doing something where it's just like, hey, this is full go for it.

Yeah, it's like a new hobby.

And letting them be wild again is so important. Like we spoke about in last episode, the more we can let our dogs do natural stuff and just, you know, fly off the end of a jetty and just be a dog, like it's so good for them. Because I bet, as you do know with your Malis, after each session, those dogs come home and would just rest and just be like, I am gassed, right?

They actually have an off switch. You might not know they have an off switch. Once they've done the barn search, they've done the dock diving, they totally have the off switch. And that is what you're looking for. They're happy. You want a happy, contented dog.

Love to hear that.

That's what you want.

And it does actually stop a lot of those bad behaviors.

It does.

Giving them an outlet to do stuff.

You're letting them do what they're meant to do rather than suppressing their natural instincts.

Exactly. Expression. So, because that's, that's a really good point. Like a lot of what we're A lot of the problem behaviors in a dog is really just them searching for what we call conflict in the behavior world. They just want some type of challenge. So if that challenge is, hey, that thing's all over there, you've got to try and get to it as fast as you can, they go, oh, that's a challenge. And just getting that out of their system is good. So we know with, with dock diving, it's one of those ones that's pretty national now. I understand there's always trials in Brisbane, Goldie, Toowoomba. That's just in Southeast Queensland. But I know there's like Sydney, Melbourne. It's pretty widespread.

Definitely.

And although it's new to Australia, it's been one of those sports that's been existing for quite a while in the US and UK. I remember watching it on like National Geographic when I was like 10, which was many years ago.

So—

What are you talking about? This guy's like 22.

I'm getting on now, Jack. Let's just say that someone listened to this episode and was like, all right, I'm in. I want to have a crack with my dog and get into dock diving wherever they're listening from. How would you recommend they do that? Like, for example, for Jack and I, like, I haven't touched the sport for a couple of years. I want to get back into it.

We want to get— I've got a dog who's soft and probably won't do it. But I'll give it a go.

But we sure will. How would we get into it?

There's our website. So you could go onto the Barn Dogs Australia Incorporated website. Facebook, again, the link is on there as well.

I would check out Dog Dogs Australia.

Is that a Facebook or a website or Instagram?

Facebook. And that's got all the places where they are.

So that's awesome.

And they're really great. Excellent.

So Dog Dogs Australia, if you jump on there, they'll have a directory for where your locus splash zone or registered facility, whatever it's called, is where you can go and train.

And it's the same thing.

You rock up, you do some sessions, you figure out whether your dog can or can't do this. Chances are they probably can and might surprise you. And then you can either just keep it as a fun thing, you go and train a couple of times a week, or if you go, screw it, let's, let's go for a competition and see how it goes. It's pretty easy to enter that and register.

It's so, so easy. It's better to enter before the day, isn't it?

Yeah, definitely.

There's definitely, there's something for everyone. And the best thing is about R1 in Coomera, we're undercover.

Yeah, nice.

So come rain, come shine, we're under, we're in the barn.

Perfect. Well, you'll definitely see Jack and I there. We're definitely going to give that another crack and you're not too far from me. So if you're in the Gold Coast area, you can contact these girls. But again, if you're somewhere either abroad, you can contact your national type, type in dock diving UK or US or NZ, wherever you're from. Or if you're in Australia, Dock Diving Australia or Dock Dogs Australia. Find a nearest facility and get into it. Honestly, it's so much fun. It's one of those sports that really is such a good atmosphere. So cool for our dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

All right, and we'll put all the links to all of these bits and pieces in the show notes of the episode as well. So if you want to check out Barn Dogs Australia, you certainly can. Thank you very much indeed, ladies. This is fantastic. I'm excited.

Thank you so much for having us on.

No, that's all right.

Thanks for coming on.

The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence.

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