Happy National Dog Day (in America). While North America does not actually support dogs on the golf course (except in a few rare clubs), their canine appreciation does, inspire a few special fundraiser competitions on the tournament calendar. Many of these are in aid of canine charities (and yet, still oddly don’t integrate the beneficiaries of their largesse into the day’s festivities). In fact, one charity Canine Companions Golf promotes such events and keeps a list of those on its website (as well as a number of “Putting for Pups” events).
So show your appreciation for your best friend by asking your club about allowing canine companions on your round (even if for a trial period during off-peak times), or at least join in a golfing event which at least supports better lives our puppy pals.
Dexter the black lab is a pioneer of dog golfing whose exploits were an initial inspiration for Dog Golf UK. When we were first looking for courses to take Rusty and Grace on to. His person Lorne Smith is editor of the Fine Golf website and newsletter which is a rich source of information on golfing in the GB&I and was the one place I found with information on the dog protocols of various courses. It also featured a number of pieces about golfing with your dog.
Dexter holds the world record for the highest number of different Courses Walked by a Dog – 83. Dog Golf’s Grace is up to 72, but since we have golfed most of the dog friendly courses within an hour’s drive, and given the uncertainty about 2021 with the pandemic impact (as many courses are limiting visitors with so much pent up demand by members), and given that Grace is going on 13 years old (still healthy and vibrant but get more fatigued on the rounds), Dexter’s mark could stand for quite some time.
Dexter’s obituary a few years back documented his illustrious career. A few excerpt highlights:
“In early days, taking him on the golf course formed part of his training to be patient and not ‘run-in’ on squirrels etc. He learnt to wait by the green while the golfers putted out and then moving on to the tee would be seated in the right place to the front off-side. He was seldom interested in the golf game itself but when he saw Lorne coming down the stairs in the morning wearing his golfing plus twos Dexter would not leave his side until he was in the car and on their way in case he was left behind. Hares are the most difficult game to stop a dog from chasing and when out at Royal West Norfolk GC, Dexter put one up near the second tee and belted across the seventeenth fairway, losing it in the salt-marsh. When it is almost de rigueur to have a dog with you at Brancaster and many dogs can be less well-behaved than Dexter, Lorne was not too worried as the players disturbed on the seventeenth fairway were not angry but enjoyed the spectacle of his embarrassment and were at least impressed by Dexter’s obedience to return on the whistle.”
I contacted Lorne about Dexter’s honour, and he shared these added reflections:
“I am honoured for the late Dexter to enter your lovely idea of a golf dog hall of fame. A lot of people still ask after him as he was always with me if dogs were allowed and there are lots of photos on the FineGolf course reviews with him sat in front of somewhere that I wanted to photograph. He did become a bit of a star primarily because of how well behaved he was having been trained as a gundog with whom I competed in trials as well as working him picking-up.”
A great source of “golf dogs” is the social media site of the moment, Instagram. Unfortunately, it is not as great a site for identifying dog-friendly courses. I explored Instagram, especially the #doggolf tag with 820 posts (for some reason #golfdog has 19,087 posts!).
Of course there was over half of the pictures with hashtag grenades that only vaguely has anything to do with “doggolf”. Some were just dogs on indoor putting matts or sitting on a golf club at home. But a good number showed a dog actually on a golf course – just over 100. A dozen or so posts that were not geotagged, I DMed the post to ask which course they were on. Only 2 people got back to me (and they clarified that dogs were no actually allowed on the course for one of the reasons below).
Nearly 90 were actually geotagged with the name of the course so I simply contacted all of those courses. About a quarter (22) of the courses got back to me. 6 confirmed that they were dog friendly (so I added them to the Worldwide Dog Golfing Map). The other 18 told me that they did not allow dogs. Which did beg the follow-up reply of “Why does this Instagram post have a picture of a dog on your course?”
These false alarms tend to fall into the following groups:
Staff – Especially grounds keepers bringing their dogs to work.
Working – Scaring birds and some assistance dogs
Dog Walkers – Photos taken “by” the course.
Unauthorised – A few snuck rounds
Poseurs – Just there for the photo
Let me know by email or in the comments if you know any other courses in the world that welcome dogs.
There are the dog days of summer, but today is THE Dog Day in summer. International Dog Day 2020 established to encourage adoption of dogs. One of our obviously favourite reason to adopt a dog is to join in your favourite activities. Our favourite is golf, but we’ve found a few others to share to mark this special day below. No dogs pushing soccer balls around the yard or dropping balls onto bowling pins, but actually joining their human in the sport. And we also found the lovely video piece above by Leon and his human Jay Revell (I have noted in his comments section that ideal dog protocol is to steer clear of the teeing and putting greens).
Welcome – Another “commons” course, but this one nestled in a more urban setting – Wimbledon Common. The popularity of the area for city walkers means that there is nearly a 1:1 ratio between dogs and humans. So absolutely no self-consciousness about taking Grace on a round. And she made more friends than we did during the day.
Walk – A delightfully flat course making for lots of rolling bonus distance for well hit shots (especially in the dry conditions). The course doesn’t really have many bunkers, water hazards or dog legs. The obstacle of choice seems to be trees plopped right in between the tee and flag for you to skirt under, over or around.
Water – A few small streams and a modest water hazard on hole 9 but no real return to the clubhouse so set out with some full water bottles.
Wildlife – We’re back in the city now with distinctly urban winged creature pigeons and crows ruling the roost.
Wind Down – Instead of a doggie-friendly pub, a recommendation of a pub for dogs by a friend for our wind-down, but it was a ways away as we were visiting someone in the area while in town. But we did make note of the gastropub Fox and Grapes right around the corner from the clubhouse which is supposedly very dog friendly and you can take your dog to your table.
Welcome – Grace and we discovered an incredibly dog-friendly course with probably the most exclusive club membership in the UK right in our own neighbourhood – “Bledlow Ridge”. We had been invited to play a round at our much favoured Temple GC with a warm-up “round” (well, more a round of drinks than golfing) at our good friends Neil and Sarah. Their lovely country links included an admittedly small facility, but what it lacked in expansive playing field, it made up for in expansive views. And what it lacked in playing limitations, it made up for in fewer dog limitations as their high-tech playing surface meant that the dogs could wander freely wherever they wanted including the greens themselves. In addition to a new “course”, Grace met two new buddies, Baxter and Bailey. They weren’t quite ready for the big fairways, but they were literally right at home at Bledlow Ridge.
Walk – Ten metres from end to end, and completely flat, makes the walk by far the easiest in the UK.
Water – The “course” had dog bowls on ready offer (and stronger stuff for the golfer sthemselves).
Wind Down – Our follow up to the elite “Bledlow Ridge” (membership is strictly vetted) was a full round at Temple GC hosted by Neil (the founder and owner of Bledlow Ridge GC) who is a member there as well. We were quickly reminded of why we were so infatuated with Temple when we first played it at the outset of our dog golfing odyssey. The clubhouse and 18th hole might simply have one of the best course views in the UK. The dog friendliness is evident as we were greeted by a couple of canine companions at club deck when we arrived. The course is challenging enough (especially summiting some holes like the 17th) and interesting enough (plenty of twists and turns and the inimitable vortex of doom on the 10th). To top it all off, being out on the hottest day of the year, the club was sending around a cold drinks cart which kept us refreshed especially having quickly consumed our several bottles of water we had brought along.
One dividend of the lock-down has been a chance to invest a bit more time into finding dog-friendly courses in the UK. A big help has been the rise of social media. Now most courses have Facebook pages and they appear to be more responsive to Facebook messages than they were to emails when I conducted my initial research a few years ago (stay tuned for updates).
In the process of enquiring about course policies, I got the following answer:
“As much as we love dogs unfortunately we cannot permit them at the course for their safety. It’s our club’s policy for the safety of players and their treasured pets. We wouldn’t wish to risk a dog to come loose and get hit by a golf cart or a car, or get lost on the course.”
If a golf club does not want to have dogs on their course, then that is their prerogative. But I do object to this faux-righteous justification that it is for the sake of the dogs.
There is zero evidence that dogs on golf courses represent any substantive dangers above and beyond just being dog. And the standard policies of having a dog “under control” or “on a lead” dramatically reduces the risk any dog faces to any hazard (golf related or not).
Dogs have been an integral part of the golfing since its beginning. The oldest and most prestigious golf clubs in the world are also the most dog-friendly – eg. St. Andrews, Sunningdale, Wentworth, Muirfield, Turnberry. In the UK, over 500 courses welcome dogs and yet there are virtually no cases of dogs being seriously hurt by their presence.
If you Google “dog hit by golf ball”, you come up with 2 instances – one in Winnipeg, Canada in 1926, and one questionable account (very few details and unsubstantiated in any other reports) in Rossendale in 2010. In both cases, the dogs were running freely and out of control so the obvious safety measure would be to insist on control or a lead which all courses who allow dogs do.
The bizarre extremity of the course’s excuse reminded me of the song from the musical “Man of La Mancha” called “I’m Only Thinking of Him”. Two relatives embarrassed by Don Quixote’s behavior seek to get him committed to an insane asylum to alleviate their discomfort:
But or what he’s done to me
I would like to take and lock him up
And throw away the key!
But if I do… but if I do
There is one thing
That I swear will still be true
I’m only thinking of him.
Feel free to abandon the tradition of golfing with dogs (as old as the sport itself), but don’t blame it on the dogs or credit yourself as caring for the dogs’ welfare.
A bit of a hiatus for some overseas holidays (where the dogs can’t join us and there is actually not hardly any golf). But I thought I would send a postcard (or postcards) nonetheless to our readers. Some vintage cards depicting dog golf in various guises.
Dog golfing originates from the earliest days of the sport when it was a gentlemen’s pursuit. Well-heeled gentry would hunt in the winter and golf in the summer. Or in other words, shoot birds in the winter and shoot birdies in the summer. So it was quite common for a golfer to take his trusty hounds, who had served him so well in shooting season, when he had a sunny outing on the course. I recently saw some fun vintage golfing postcards displayed at St. Enodoc and wondered if any such prints had been done which included dogs. The ones I uncovered are shared here.
We always craft our own family holiday greetings and this year it seemed appropriate to highlight Dog Golf which has been one of the big, new aspects of our lives. To illustrate it, we were fortunate enough to capture these photos of a long suspected culprit keeping our shots out of the hole. Happy Holidays dog golfers!
