Sevenz Site |

Welcome to Sevenz Site!!

Hi, my name is Kim and I am honored to be able to tell the story of my wonderful German Shorthaired Pointer Seven, who joined our family in December of 2003.

Sevenz life has been packed full of fun since Rob & I picked him up from Newark airport on a cold December night a few days before Christmas. The first part of Seven we saw as he slowly crept out of his carrier were his enormous feet...we joke that they haven't grown, he has just grown into them!?!?!

Living on Long Island, Seven has been in the water since he was about 6 months old. He loved it first time and now we can't get him out, even when it's freezing!!!! Seven spent his puppy days at the dog park for hours on end, so we would have a semi-calm dog in the evenings. Everyone loved it when we showed up because their dogs would run around and chase Seven for 15 minutes and be tired for days. Seven would just continue running for hours avoiding being herded by the herding dogs by going into the woods every once in awhile or going for a swim. So, our rambunctious puppy grew up into a driven, toy obsessed dog, who loves the water!!! So in June of 2007, we decided to try dock-jumping with our crazy GSP, at The Rock Classic in Freeport Long Island. On his first day jumping he improved on his first jump of 11 feet to jumping over 23 feet by the end of the weekend!! After that we were hooked and so was he.
We took about 2 months off to welcome the newest member of our family our son, Lucas who was born June 20th.

We resumed dock-jumping with Seven in August 2007, at a benefit to raise money for Breast Cancer hosted by L Oreal. Seven continued jumping almost every weekend in August, continually increasing his jump distances. At the Duchess County Fair Seven broke the Ultimate Air Dogs record with a jump of 26’ 8”. My husband Rob then decided to drive to St. Louis to try and qualify for Purina’s Incredible Dog Challenge. Seven and Rob made the 1,000+ mile drive each way to St. Louis over Labor Day weekend and returned to Long Island on September 4th, with the news that Seven qualified!!!!

So, later in September Rob, Seven and I took another drive to Missouri to compete against the best in the country at the Incredible Dog Challenge!!! It was a fantastic experience for us and for Seven…we were all treated like royalty by Purina. The competition was on Saturday and Seven was ready after a few practice jumps on Friday to get acclimated to a different dock. Rob and I were a little nervous that all the people, cameras and noise might throw Seven off his game, but we just had to wait and see. Competition day had arrived and all three of us were excited!!! It all came down to three jumps for each of the top 6 dogs in the country!!! The finals were on Saturday in the late morning, so we arrived early to watch some of the other events, to get some souveniers and get in one or two practice jumps on the Purina dock. It was finally our turn…we were up on the dock second!! Seven’s first jump was 29’ even to the nose…we were sooooo excited and he was pumped beyond belief!!!! Rob was able to really get Seven hyped up before getting on the dock and then I was able to keep it going by

whispering in his ear on the dock right before he jumped. His second jump was HUGE, and after we waited for what seemed like an hour for the jump distance it was finally announced at 30’ 4” to the nose!!!! Wow, the pressure was mounting, the other dogs in the competition were jumping great, their jumps so far were in the 28 to 29+ foot range...so it wasn't over yet!!! OK it’s Seven’s last jump and Rob was confident that he could go even further…but a delay on the dock and he being able to steal the Frisbee from Rob, lessened the intensity level and his last and final jump was 29’8” to the nose, again HUGE!!! We were sooooooo excited only 4 more dogs to jump…and then we would find out if Seven’s 30’4” jump would win it…well it did Seven is the 2007 Purina Incredible Dog Challenge Diving Dog CHAMPION ☺ After making dozens of phone calls and sending out a text message to EVERYONE with the news, we hung out at Purina for a while doing interviews and talking with other competitors from various events…it was a great afternoon and a great way to start the 15+ hour drive back to Long Island!!!

Since Purina’s I.D.C we have been to a couple other competition. Seven competed in his first indoor event in Pittsburgh and was jumping huge, as a matter of fact I overheard a few people say that this was the biggest they had seen dogs jump inside ever…so I guess the big jumps were comtagious. People were actually rubbing their dogs toys on Seven for “good-luck.” At our first indoor event Seven actually ended up breaking his own UAD World Record with a jump of 26’9” to the tail…which was great especially since there was a Janpanese Film Crew there taping the event and interviewing some of the handlers!!! More to come on that when we get the details from Milt ;-)

So Tune to ABC on Sunday, January 13th @ 5pm EST, to watch Seven and all the other top dogs in the country compete for the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge Title and bragging rights for LIFE ;-)