March 3, 2013
Every year Opua hosts the Opua Regatta, a summer festival, and the highlight of this event is the dog races. But in these races, dogs don’t race around a track, they swim about 100 yards from a floating platform to shore. Also, these aren’t specially trained dogs: these are your average, everyday household pets.
I will start by saying most Kiwi dogs live near the water and are used to running and playing on the beach or by a lake. Most of them swim, often when chasing and retrieving a stick thrown in the water.
That said, this is not quite what they are used to. Here, they are ferried out in a dinghy to a platform from which several dogs will race at a time. By race, I mean they are picked up by their owners and when the whistle blows, deposited into the water, involuntarily. At this point some confusion ensues for the dogs, and hilarity ensues for the people.
Most dogs sort out what they’re supposed to do when their people call to them from shore. They’ll head that way, swimming side by side with the other dogs. Some dogs get confused and swim off the wrong way, or back to the platform. Some dogs realize it’s a competition and decide to chase off the competitors before they get to shore. It’s usually a combination of all of the above and it’s highly entertaining.
When the winners of the first rounds are established, those winners will race each other in the final round. This year there was one clear winner, a dog who’s probably done this before and clearly loves to race and win. Everybody has fun. Well, maybe some dogs have more fun than others, but it’s great fun for the audience! –Cyndi
