HUDSON — A local dog from Hudson placed second in the Ultimate Air Dog Nationals in Lebanon, Tennessee, a competition in which dogs compete in dock diving and must qualify by being in the top three of a regional qualifier.
Kenai won his regional event, which automatically got him an invite to the Nationals.
On Sept. 26, Kenai posted a personal best of 26 feet and 4 inches and was able to get into a higher division. The dog jumped 27 feet and 5 inches and was judged to be second after a tiebreaker decision three days later, according to Chad Neidigh, Kenai’s co-owner.
When Magaly Sandoval and Neidigh attended a dog show near the Cape about three years ago, they discovered the sport of dock diving. They thought the sport looked amazing, and when they considered getting a companion for their 3-year-old Finnish lapphund, Maki, they wanted to get a breed that liked the water.
“We thought it was really, really fun,” Sandoval said.
Enter Kenai, a Nova Scotia Duck tolling retriever, or toller for short.
He is now 1 year old, and they have had him since he was 8 weeks old. Tollers are “the smallest of the retrievers,” Sandoval said, as golden retrievers can be 60 pounds, while a toller can be around 40.
“He comes from a working line of hunting dogs. Even though they share looks with goldens, they are much more aloof and exponentially more active,” she said.
Dock diving is a simple sport, Sandoval said. A dog’s favorite toy is thrown into a pool while they wait at a 40-foot-long dock. Once the toy is released, the dog runs on the dock and launches in the air to catch the toy.
She noted that dock diving resembles duck hunting.
“This sport channels the same instincts of dogs to retrieve and swim,” Sandoval said.
Kenai now competes in distance jumping and jumps on average 24 feet, 2 inches, which puts him in the Ultimate Division. She believed that Kenai has a “natural drive” as a toller and, combined with an inclination to water and being lightweight and strong, this helps his dock-diving performance.
She said Kenai is competing closely with dogs from the whippet breed; something she said is unusual for the toller breed.
“The muscle to weight ratio is a big determiner of how well you’re going to perform,” Neidigh said.
When Kenai was 4 months old, they enrolled him in swimming classes at Canine New England, which is based in Walpole.
Neidigh said, “Every week he would progress exponentially.”
The class was at a dock diving facility, he said. Slowly they had Kenai jump off a paddle board, a dock onto a paddle board and finally off the dock and into the water. They were encouraged to look into dock diving as Kenai was a natural and had fun doing it.
“As soon as he started learning to swim, his teacher said this dog was a natural for dock diving,” Sandoval said. “Since then, he’s been jumping one to two times a month, and he does a lot of fitness work at home, goes swimming in Bolton often and goes to chiropractic therapy at Integrative Animal Health in Bolton.”
As dogs who dock dive can get injured from using so many of their muscles, Kenai’s health and safety are “our biggest priorities” next to having fun, she said.
Basic obedience training like getting Kenai to stay when off a leash is also important, she noted. Kenai has to wait for the toy to be released for dock diving and come back when called.
She said, “It was just putting it all together in a new environment.”
Neidigh said they are “absolutely floored” by how well Kenai has done in the many competitions the dog has entered in the Ultimate Air Dogs, Dock Dogs and North America Diving Dogs leagues.
Sandoval said they were training in isolation so they had no idea how well Kenai was doing until Kenai consistently broke the 20-foot mark for jumps at such a young age.
She said Kenai loves doing anything with them whether it is chilling on the couch, hiking, playing ball in the yard or “being an absolute beast in dog sports.”
The idea is to always have fun first, she said, but “it adds to the fun to step away with a gold medal.”
Sandoval said, “No matter what his results, we always get to go home with the best dog in the world.”
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