Local dogs Bear, Slide are champs
Sunday, July 6, 2008
By Will Woodbery, Staff Writer
Last Wednesday afternoon at the Chattanooga Riverfront, Bear, a 3 1/2-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever, had his paws before him like a sprinter ready to race at the crack of a starting gun.
Bear was awaiting the go-ahead signal from his trainer and owner, Chattanooga resident Chris Potter, who about 20 feet away held a white, rubber training dummy.
After a moment of suspense, Bear heard what he’d been waiting for.
“Go get it, Bear! Go get it!” yelled Potter, perched on the edge of the boat landing.
Bear came barreling toward the water. In a quick exchange, Potter tossed the dummy over the water and Bear launched, stretching for the airborne toy and catching it midair before making a splash landing.
Bear emerged from the water with the dummy clenched tightly in his mouth and returned it to Potter after shaking his coat dry.
Bear wanted to jump again, and Potter was happy to oblige.
“It’s a labor of love,” said Potter, who with Bear won the 2008 Super Retrievers Series Crown Championship in the Super Fly competition May 24-25 near Little Rock, Ark. Bear jumped 23 feet, 10 inches to win the title. “He loves it. I love it. We have fun.”
Bear wasn’t the only local Lab having fun at the Super Retrievers competition. Slide, a black Labrador, and trainer Chris Akin earned Crown Champion titles in the retrieving category.
“(Slide)’s got a tremendous amount of desire,” owner Ron Marsh of Chattanooga said Thursday. “That’s something you look for in a retriever. You can’t put it in them.”
Likewise, Bear isn’t lacking in any competitive drive.
“When we’re just at home or at the park, he won’t growl at another dog,” Potter said. “But at a competition, he just flips over and goes crazy. He knows what’s going on. He knows what he’s there to do. And that’s his favorite thing to do.
“He’s very competitive and so am I, so we make a very good team.”
That team won the DockDogs-Outdoor Channel National Championship last year with a jump of 25 feet, 7 inches. Bear, who was named the 2007 DockDogs Chocolate Lab of the Year, has been featured on the Versus Network.
But their recent success didn’t happen by accident. Potter, who started competing in April 2007, practices with Bear two to five times a week.
“You have to spend a lot of time with them to make them really good,” Potter said.
The same principle applies to Slide, an AKC master hunter and UKC grand hunting retriever champion.
“These dogs that run these events have a ton of hours of training,” Marsh said. “A tremendous amount of time goes into them.”
Both Marsh and Potter agreed that training is only part of producing a winning dog.
“Slide had an awesome pedigree,” said Marsh, who bought him when Slide was 9 months old primarily as a hunting dog. “I knew the potential was there. Once Slide got to be 2 years old, I knew I had something special in regards to a dog to compete with.”
Bear benefits greatly in jumping competitions from his muscular physique, which Potter attributed to the efforts of local breeder and trainer Roddy Reynolds.
“He’s a monster,” Potter said of Bear. “Because he’s so muscular and cut, that probably helps a whole lot. … I can take credit for training him how to do it, but I can’t take credit for the breed.”
His physique and high-leaping ability earned him the nickname “Big Air Bear” at the Super Retrievers Series.
“If he jumps straight off,” Potter explained, “he won’t get any distance, so I had to get him higher and higher and higher and focused on the object.”
Wednesday, Bear was living up to his nickname with several long jumps and attracting a small crowd of onlookers in the process.
“It’s all about the fun,” Potter said. “It’s a wonderful thing. If you love dogs, it’s a wonderful thing to do.”
E-mail Will Woodbery at sports@timesfreepress.com
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