Southern Kingdom Diving Dogs in Soddy-Daisy, a regional dog dock diving training and competition facility, is hosting a National qualifying event this weekend for the annual North American Diving Dogs National Championship held in Orlando, FL in December.
There will be dogs from all over the Southeast attending the event from Novice level to the Elite jumpers. The competition begins with Air Retrieve on Friday at 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday competition begins at 9 a.m. The event will offer “Try-Its” to introduce newcomers to the sport.
North America Diving Dogs explains dock diving, “is a canine sport in which dogs are enticed to run the length of a dock and leap as far out into the water as possible to compete for height or distance. They’re motivated to fly with a prized toy, which is thrown just out of reach in order to help them keep their momentum and get the best launch angle possible.
“Each distance jumping Splash allows two judged jumps, back to back. The longest jump of them will be your qualifying score. In Air Retrieve, a dog also gets two attempts to grab the bumper. A scoring jump is determined by the distance of the bumper from the front edge of the dock. After successfully grabbing the bumper the dog advances to the next round and the longest successful grab distance determines the dog’s qualifying score."
Southern Kingdom Diving Dogs is a NADD (North America Diving Dogs) sanctioned facility and located 20 minutes north of Chattanooga TN on 4.9 Acres.
"We host 1 NADD Diving dog event per month. We also have pool rentals by the hour and group classes," officials said.