Dog surfing is a fun and entertaining sport in which dogs are properly trained so that they can surf on various surfing boards, bodyboards, skimming boards or by simply doing body surf.
Dogs surf either individually or with their trainees on surfing boards or bodyboards.
It's a popular sport, enjoyed by a massive count of the audience and has a nice TRP for its broadcast. The dog surfing competitions were documented for the first time in the 1920s in the United States.
The main aim of the sport is to bring entertainment and broadcast the adventurous side of dogs with surfing boards. The participating dogs tend to balance themselves properly over the surfing boards on high and vigorous waves.
These dogs have to give their best and try not to fall from their designated boards. They have to perform their best skills and balance throughout the round to earn points from the judges.
The dog participant with the highest score wins the event.
The first instance of dog surfing was found in the 1920s documentary filmed in California and Hawaii. Later in the 1930s a silent film "On the Waves in Waikiki" was released in which Phillip K. Auna and a terrier breed pet dog surfed together on a wooden surfboard in Hawaii.
The dog performed various skills over the surfing boards, along with hanging ten skills. After this, the trend became popular. In 1944, a full-page article along with the image of a dog surfing was published in The National Geographic Magazine.
This dog was Rusty, and its article inspired many other enthusiasts to train their pets for the surfing competition. In 2006, the first major dog surfing competition was organized in the city of California, United States and was regarded as the Loews Coronado Bay Resort Surf Dog Competition.
In the year 2011, almost 50 dogs participated under three different categories Small Dogs, Large Dogs and the Tandem dogs. The event of tandem surfing usually involves surfing of two or more dogs together with or without the trainee on a single surfboard.
In 2012, three Guinness Book records were broken due to the participation of 50 dogs, where 18 dogs were photographed on a surfboard. Since September 2009, the 'Surf City Surf Dog Competition' is held annually in the Huntington Beach situated in California. Since March 2012, the Noosa Festival of Surfing has held annually where the dogs along with humans surf on a special type of stand up paddleboards (SUPs).
The first fundraiser competition "Surfs Up, Dogs" was organized in 2013 by the Big Dog Ranch Rescue situated in the Wellington, Florida. It was organized in Jupiter, located in Florida. The largest World Dog Surfing Championship is being held in California since 2016.
During September 2019, dog surfing for puppies started under the competitive name of the "SUP for Pups Intracoastal Challenge". It was organized in the Deerfield Beach, situated in Florida.
Horse Boarding
It is a boarding game in which the participant rides on either a kite board, surfing board, wakeboard or any skim board. But during their boarding, they are towed behind a horse ridden by another player usually through shallow water.
