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The Pluto Platter
It all goes back to the human fascination with flying and outer space. The fact that, as we learned in 2006, Pluto isn’t really a planet doesn’t take a thing away from the immense enjoyment humans and dogs share tossing and catching a disc in the air. Following the 1930 discovery of Pluto the Planet and the subsequent 1931 naming of our favorite Disney pooch, Walter (Fred) Morrison arrived on the scene having been heavily influenced by the 1950′s flying saucer craze.
Applying a little aeronautical engineering he picked up while serving in World War II, he modified the original tin pie plate college students had been tossing into the air around campuses. In 1955, Morrison produced the first plastic flying disc, which he called the Pluto Platter. A few years later, after partnering with Wham-O Toys, the name was changed to Frisbee, a nod to the Frisbie Pie Company credited with making the first tin pie plates to be thrown around campus by Yale students.
Fast forward to the early 1970s, way before security measures were in place which today would prohibit a baseball game from being interrupted by such a spontaneous event as the first dog disc exhibit.Enter Ashley Whippet who, with Frisbee cohort Alex Stein, dashed onto Dodger stadium centerfield at the bottom of the eighth inning.The crowds loved the show.Stein was arrested for trespassing and fined $250, but Catch & Fetch competition was born.
The 2009 Ashley Whippet Championships will be held over Labor Day weekend near Chicago. If the event is anything like the 2008 championship held in Southern California, fans will be treated to exciting acrobatics, leaps and catches, and professionally choreographed routines.Last year’s winner was Harley Davidson, a border collie hailing from Jacksonville, Florida who, along with his team-mate, Lawrence Frederick, put on an awesome freestyle show to beat out the defending champs, Rusty and Yoshihiro Ishida from Japan.
If you can’t make it to Chicago in September, be sure to check out an event close to your neighborhood this summer for some exciting canine entertainment. We’ll be attending our local championshiphosted by Southern California K9 Air Corps, on July 25th in Torrance, California, home of i Love Dogs.
Hyperflite Skyhoundz 2009 Schedule
If you are hosting or attending an event, please post a comment with the details!!
R.I.P. Fred Morrison, who died on Feb. 9, 2010 at 90.
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LikeThank you, Laurele, for your very informative comment about Pluto's controversial status. I, for one, would be happy to have Pluto back in the version of the solar system I learned and helped my son learn, complete with a hanging mobile project, when he was in school. Keep us posted about the efforts to overturn Pluto's demotion.
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LikePluto is still a planet. Only four percent of the IAU voted on the controversial demotion, and most are not planetary scientists. Their decision was immediately opposed in a formal petition by hundreds of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. One reason the IAU definition makes no sense is it says dwarf planets are not planets at all! That is like saying a grizzly bear is not a bear, and it is inconsistent with the use of the term “dwarf” in astronomy, where dwarf stars are still stars, and dwarf galaxies are still galaxies. Also, the IAU definition classifies objects solely by where they are while ignoring what they are. If Earth were in Pluto’s orbit, according to the IAU definition, it would not be a planet either. A definition that takes the same object and makes it a planet in one location and not a planet in another is essentially useless. Pluto is a planet because it is spherical, meaning it is large enough to be pulled into a round shape by its own gravity--a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium and characteristic of planets, not of shapeless asteroids held together by chemical bonds. These reasons are why many astronomers, lay people, and educators are either ignoring the demotion entirely or working to get it overturned.
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