These surfing doggies made a SPLASH in the record books!

Dogs who surf and break world records together? 🌊

Yes, it’s a true story!

The UK Dog Surfing Championships, held at Branksome Dene Chine, near Poole in Dorset, UK, are very popular among boarders – both humans and doggies!

Mark Reeves from the UK, who runs Shaka Surf, wanted to make this year’s event even more exciting. On 27 July, not only did he host the usual fun race – where people and their dogs paddle out to a buoy and back as fast as they can – but he also planned 3 world record attempts for paddleboarding pups. 🤩

These are the record titles:

• Most dog/human pairs paddleboarding simultaneously
• Fastest 50 m paddleboarding by a human/dog pair
• Most dogs on a single paddleboard

After a fun morning of paddleboarding races (including a red-carpet beach entrance where dogs and their humans got to show off and say hello 👋), it was time for the big record attempts.

So, at lunchtime, with hundreds of people watching and cheering them on from the beach, the exciting challenges began, carefully watched by Pravin Patel, a Guinness World Records Adjudicator from our team.

First up was a fast and fun 50-metre paddle race!

10 teams, each made up of a person-doggy duo, raced across the water… 🐕

That was just the right number to break the record for the most dog/human pairs paddleboarding simultaneously.

And which duo broke the record for fastest 50 m paddleboarding by a human/dog pair?

Matthew Jenkins with his 2-year-old shih-tzu rescue dog Gigi AND Ben Gray and his bodacious border collie Boo, were both super-fast, resulting in a tie as they crossed the finish line in a lightning-quick 32 seconds.

Jenkins told GWR afterwards: "Me and Gigi were overjoyed to find we had set a new world record and it was made even more special that it was a dead heat with Benn and Boo!

"It was a very proud moment for all of us, but records are there to be broken and we will be back at the next opportunity to go even faster. I’m up for it, and I know that my wing girl Gigi is too!"

Congrats everyone. ✨

Of course, the last record attempt was the trickiest of all, as it meant getting lots of dogs to ride together on ONE giant paddleboard. 😰

At first, everything seemed to be going well, until… 

They suddenly realized that there were only 9 dogs on board instead of 10 – whoopsie! 

Luckily, 3 more owners and their dogs volunteered to join the record attempt, rushing into the water to help. They joined the others just in time to make it happen.

That brought the total to 12 dogs on one paddleboard… a brand-new world record! 💪

This whole amazing day just goes to show that, when people and their pups team up, anything is paw-sible! 🐾