Some new competitive sports are better than others. I am not sure how I feel about dock dogs competitions. Still it has to be an improvement over diving horses which were wildly popular in the US in the 1880s. Remarkably there is at least one diving horse still performing. But first, from Time magazine: DockDogs: The Sport Where Canines Catch Big Air
Diving Horses
In 1881 William “Doc” Carver “invented” a sideshow attraction in which a horse would dive into a pool of water fron heights as high as sixty feet. Sometimes the horse would have a rider and sometimes the horse would dive alone. The 1991 Walt Disney movie, “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken“, is about a girl who rides a diving horse.
There is one diving horse still performing. The diving horse “Lightning” does summertime shows at the Magic Forest, an amusement park for young children near Lake George, NY.
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