The origin of frisbee is connected with pies. First discs were round baking plates on which the pies were baked. Soon, first frisbee made of plastic was manufactured and this sport has spread over the whole United States. The DogDisc sport, it means throwing flying discs to a dog, was founded by Alex Stein, an American who bought a whippet named Ashley on the 4th July 1971. As an experienced frisbee player, he soon noticed that Ashley is fascinated by the disc and jumps to catch it to up to nine feet.
The important date was the 5th August 1974, the day on which a baseball match between Dodger and Reds was played. During the break, Alex and Ashley ran into the playground and started their show in front of the crowds. Ashley has astonished thousands of spectators by his speed and jumps during which he was catching the disc. At the beginning, the security guards did not act – Alex was arrested after he finished his eight-minute-show. Ashley could not follow him and got lost in the crowd. For the following 3 days, he wandered in the neighbourhood, then one family in Long Beach took him home. Alex got Ashley back thanks to advertisements on TV and radio...
Alex and Ashley became famous overnight. They participated in many TV shows, they appeared on magazine titles and Ashley starred in a document that received an Oscar nomination... He also won the World DiscDog Championship three times and the most prestigious event in this sport bears his name - The Ashley Whippet Invitational. Ashley has played DiscDog until the age of 13 and when he died at the age of 14, almost all U.S. media informed about his death.
At present, DiscDog is very popular in the U.S.A., Japan and from the nineties also in western Europe (particularly in Netherlands, Germany and Belgium). This sport came to the Czech Republic in the year 2004/2005, the DiscDog klub ČR (DiscDog Club of the Czech Republic) was founded in 2006 and the first competition took place in the same year. Czech teams, however, participate in the competitions abroad already since 2004.
DiscDog has several disciplines, of which the most attractive and most prestigious is freestyle, wherein the team shows various, sometimes acrobatic, figures, in which the dog catches the flying discs. The dog glances away from the handler´s body, jumps over the handler or makes flips. Judged are the skills of the dog, but important is also the safety of the dog and the judges can disqualify a team for the reason of showing dangerous figures.
Apart from freestyle, there are many disciplines including distance or accuracy disciplines, wherein the length of the throw/catch or the accuracy is decisive, etc. The disc, however, must always be caught by the dog.
As was mentioned above, there exists the DiscDog klub ČR, which organizes several training actions and competitions during the year. In the year 2008, the DiscDog klub ČR organizes the European DiscDog Championship.
