Davy Whippet was a huge part of my life and my frisbee career.

I first started throwing for Davy in 2011. He was owned and trained by my friends Lara Sorensen and Brent Bard, and I was fortunate enough to become his competitive throwing partner. I loved throwing frisbees far, Davy loved chasing them, and it turned out we made a pretty good team.

That partnership ended up taking us all over Canada and the United States. We set world records, won world championships, competed in some of the biggest canine disc events in North America, appeared in Guinness World Records and Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, performed at events and visited schools.

More importantly for me, Davy was there at the beginning of a period of my life that changed what I thought was possible.

In August 2011, Davy and I set my first world record together. Until then, being a “world record holder” wasn’t something I had ever imagined for myself. That one record eventually led to many more, but Davy was where it started.

Davy’s Pedigree

Davy’s registered name was Whispers David. He was a black-and-white Whippet, born November 15, 2008, and bred by Patty Munnikhuysen.

His sire was O’Run’s Whispering Power Ranger and his dam was Whispers Princeton Graduate. His pedigree includes dogs from the O’Run, Whispers, Comet’s and Carbeth lines, with a number of accomplished racing and coursing Whippets in his family tree.

I didn’t choose Davy because of his pedigree — he wasn’t even my dog. Lara Sorensen and Brent Bard owned and trained him, and my relationship with Davy developed because I could throw far and he happened to be exceptionally good at running those throws down.

Once I started competing with him, though, I got to see just how athletic he was. Davy was incredibly fast, but speed alone wasn’t what made him such a good distance dog. He could track a frisbee over a long flight, make adjustments while running and somehow be in the right place when it finally came down.

That combination is what allowed us to make some of the catches we did together.

Registered name: Whispers David
Breed: Whippet
Born: November 15, 2008
Breeder: Patty Munnikhuysen
Sire: O’Run’s Whispering Power Ranger
Dam: Whispers Princeton Graduate

The accomplishment Davy is probably best known for happened on October 14, 2012, in Thorhild, Alberta.

I threw a frisbee 134 yards – 402 feet – and Davy caught it.

The previous distance record had stood for more than 18 years, and with that catch Davy became the first dog to officially catch a flying disc from more than 400 feet away.

Davy wasn’t allowed to start running until the disc left my hand, so he had to make up a huge amount of ground while also tracking the frisbee in the air. His speed was obviously a big part of it, but he was also very good at reading the flight of a disc and adjusting while he ran.

It is still one of my favourite throws I have ever made.

134 yards / 402 feet
October 14, 2012
Thorhild, Alberta

The 402-foot catch was the biggest one, but Davy and I set several records together.

Our first came in August 2011 with a 92-yard catch.

In 2012, we broke the Quadruped world record with a 101.3-yard catch in Houston and then improved it later that year in Denver with a catch of 116.5 yards, or 349.5 feet.

At the 2012 Skyhoundz World Canine Disc Championships in Chattanooga, Tennessee, we also set Xtreme Distance world records in both the Classic Plastic and Unlimited Plastic divisions.

We later set the canine Maximum Time Aloft record, which measures how long the disc is in the air before the dog catches it. In Calgary in 2014, Davy caught a throw that stayed in the air for 10.56 seconds. We improved that to 10.59 seconds in Regina in 2017.

Some of those records have since been broken, which is part of competing in record-setting sports. At the time, though, each one represented something we had been working toward together.

Davy and I were also fortunate to have a lot of success in competition.

We won four Skyhoundz Xtreme Distance World Championships together:

• 2011 Men’s Classic Plastic World Champion
• 2012 Men’s Classic Plastic World Champion
• 2012 Men’s Unlimited Plastic World Champion
• 2013 Men’s Classic Plastic World Champion

We also won the Men’s Open division of the Quadruped in both 2012 and 2013. Davy became the first dog to repeat as Quadruped champion.

The Quadruped was always one of my favourite events to compete in with him. The format was simple: throw as far as you could and give your dog a chance to catch it. It played perfectly to what each of us did best.

Davy’s accomplishments eventually made their way into several record books.

He appeared in the 2014 and 2015 editions of Guinness World Records and was also featured in the 2015 Ripley’s Believe It or Not! book Reality Shock!

Seeing Davy in those books was pretty special, especially knowing that just a few years earlier we had simply started throwing together to see what we could do.

Competition was only one part of my time with Davy.

We did demonstrations, community events and school visits together, and he became part of the work I was doing with kids.

Davy was easy to bring into a school because kids were naturally interested in him. I could tell them he was a world-record-holding dog, show them what he could do and then talk about some of the experiences that came from competing with him.

Those school visits also helped lead to something completely different: a children’s book.

Davy became the inspiration for The Davy Rule, a children’s book I co-authored about acceptance and how we treat other people.

The original idea came from Frisbee Hall of Famer Ken Westerfield, who suggested that Davy would make a good character for a children’s book.

The story grew from there.

Davy was smaller than many dogs but incredibly fast, and we used that idea to tell a story about differences, being picked on and learning to understand other people.

The book is based around the idea of the Golden Rule, but with Davy at the centre of the story.

It gave me a way to take something that had started in competition and turn it into something I could share with kids, families and schools.

Davy passed away in 2018.

When I look back at everything we did together, the records and championships are obviously a big part of the story. We had some incredible throws and travelled to a lot of places because of frisbee.

But when I think about Davy now, I also think about how important that period was in my own life.

My first world record was with Davy.

Some of my first world championships were with Davy.

He was part of the time when frisbee went from being something I loved doing to something that was becoming a much bigger part of my life.

A lot of what came later can be traced back to those years.

Davy didn’t know or care what a world record was. He just wanted to run and catch frisbees.

I was lucky enough to be the person throwing them for him.

• 4× Skyhoundz Xtreme Distance World Champion
• 2× Quadruped Men’s Open Champion
• 2x Guinness World Records holder
• 402-foot longest-distance catch
• 10.59-second Maximum Time Aloft catch
• Featured in Guinness World Records 2014 and Ripley’s Believe It or Not! 2014