Dogs & Discs
Posted April 1st, 2007
Angelo Marinakis was playing Frisbee with his puppy, Stanley, in the back yard one day. Stanley was super excited, and showed an uncanny talent for catching the disc.
“The first time he flipped in the air, I couldn’t believe my eyes!” Marinakis said. “I thought, “Let’s see if we can make that happen again.'”
And they did. That flip was the beginning of Stanley’s “disc dog” career. Now Marinakis and his Australian shepherd show their athleticism all over the country in competitions in which Stanley has to catch discs tossed 20, 30, 40, 50, even 60 yards away as fast as he can, and perform a freestyle routine choreographed to music.
“I just love being a part of it,” Marinakis said, and you could guess Stanley would say the same. “We’re always trying to learn new variations on things, and we’ve developed a great working relationship to communicate.”
Marinakis and another disc enthusiast, Krishnan Venkataraman, have begun a club in the Burlington area called Green Mountain Disc Dogs. They and their canine partners, Stanley and Aryan, along with some other athletes in the area, meet up at Fort Ethan Allen to practice their skills. During the winter, they meet at Waggles in Williston.
Think your dog (and you) have what it takes? All ability levels are welcome to join the club. Venkataraman says medium-size athletic dogs usually do the best – between 35 and 50 pounds, and a good height is about 20 inches at the shoulders. But bigger dogs can compete, too. His Aryan weighs 90 pounds, is all muscle, and he not only loves the sport but does well.
It’s not just your dog who must have skills. A lot of a team’s success depends on the human’s ability to throw accurately. In the toss-and-fetch event, the human throws the disc different distances, such as 10 yards, then 20, then 30, and, with a clean catch by the canine, the team gains points on a progressive scoring system: 1 point for 10 yards, 2 for 20, et cetera. The team has a time limit – a minute or minute-and-a-half – to score as many points as possible.
Then there’s the freestyle event: choreographed tossing and catching set to music. Dogs vault off of the human’s body to catch the disc, and it’s judged similar to a gymnastic floor routine.
Want to know more? Check out www.greenmountaindiscdogs.com. You can also attend some of the upcoming demonstrations and clinics. Contact Marinakis at webmaster@greenmountaindiscdogs.com for more information.
If you’re not a dog owner, or short on time to practice, Marinakis said the demos are fun to watch. You can also see Stanley and him performing at Vermont Lake Monsters games.
“It’s amazing to see. Stanley is an athlete. All these dogs are athletes,” Marinakis says. “Stanley is in his element when he’s doing it. It looks like he’s doing what he was born to do.”
But there’s more to it than athleticism, according to Marinakis. “What it does for your relationship is a gift. It really gets me, when you get that eye contact, and you know they’re trying so hard for you and they want to do this for you. That gets me every time.”
