Ashley Whippet: First Notable Disc Dog

Ashley Whippet was not the first dog to catch a flying disc (frisbee), but he did help popularize the sport.

Alex Stein and Ashley Whippet

On August 5, 1974, 19-year-old Alex Stein smuggled his dog Ashley Whippet into Dodger Stadium where the baseball game between the LA Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds were being televised nationally. During the seventh inning stretch, Stein jumped over the infield wall and went onto the field (uninvited) with Ashley where he threw discs for his dog to catch. The crowd was amazed with Ashley's ability to run up to 35 mph and leap up to nine feet in the air to catch the discs. The two performed for eight minutes before Stein was escorted off the field and arrested.

Stein, Irv Lander (a consultant to Wham-O - the maker of the Frisbee) and Eldon McIntire (a dog trainer and a frisbee enthusiast) organized the first Frisbee Dog World Championship in 1975. Stein and Ashley won the first three championships in 1975, 1976 and 1977. In the early 1980s, the competition series was renamed the Ashley Whippet Invitational in honor of Ashley.

Ashley died in Stein's arms in March 1985 of natural causes at age 13. Sports Illustrated eulogized him.

Mr. Barbo: Mount Equinox's Beloved Dog

Thousands visit Mr. Barbo's gravesite every year atop Mount Equinox in beautiful Vermont.

Joseph George Davidson was a chemist and inventor who was partly responsible in the development of mustard gas during WWI and the atomic bomb during WWII - two destructive acts in human history that bore heavily on his conscience. In the 1940s, he began buying tracts of land on Mount Equinox, one of Vermont's tallest mountains. In the 1950s, Davidson, his wife and his beloved dog Mr. Barbo, a Norwegian Elkhound and Siberian Husky mix, moved to the land in their mountain top home. By the time he retired in the 1960s, he owned almost 11 square miles of land.

In November 1955, during the deer hunting season, 12 yo Mr. Barbo was shot and killed by a hunter. Davidson was heartbroken and livid. He banned hunting on his property and hired a sheriff's deputy to enforce it. He also offered a reward for the assailant's identity, who had never been found.

A granite monument stands at Mr. Barbo's gravesite on the mountain with the inscription: "We loved him and he repaid that love with an adoring devotion that only a dog could give. Shot and killed by a malicious hunter Nov. 24, 1955."

Davidson passed away in 1969, and his land was donated to an order of Carthusian monks - the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration is the only Carthusian monastery in the U.S. "No Hunting" signs remain to this day and the monks still keep up Mr. Barbo's grave.