Surf Dogs Break Guinness World Records in San Diego

We know it's not officially summer yet, but we are definitely feeling the dog days.

Over the weekend, dogs of many shapes, sizes, and pedigrees gathered in San Diego for the Loews Coronado Bay Resort Surf Dog Competition. We sure hope the competitors brought their summer safety kits in addition to their longboards.

The competition, which raised money for the ASPCA, invited dogs to catch a wave and hang 20 out in the surf and sand.

With careful supervision from their human friends, more than 50 dogs competed in various categories. The scores were based on each dog's best two waves. In the small dogs heat, Australian Kelpie Abbie Girl took first place, with Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever Torri taking second, and a German Shepherd mix named Kona taking third. In the big-dogs heat, a Golden Retriever named Ricochet took first, and the winning dog-and-human team was Russell Terrier Zoey and two-legged friends Scott and Tyler Chandler.

Prepping for the tandem surf event, dogs and humans gather around.

Little Bobby Gorgeous came all the way from Hawaii to cheer on the surf dogs!

Nani, a Bernese Mountain Dog, was one of the largest competitors present!

The event also saw a couple of Guinness World Records broken: most dogs riding on a surfboard at one time (17!), the most dogs riding on a surfboard with one human, and the most dogs riding a surfboard at one time with two humans.

Cowabunga, canines!

The dogs who made record-breaking history posing on their custom made board.

Via Huffington Post and Laughing Squid, images via the Surf Dog Comptetition Facebook page.

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Guinness World Records Names the Dog with the World's Largest Eyes

That's not a wide-eyed gaze of surprise. It's just how this dog always looks.

Bruschi. Photograph courtesy of Guinness World Records.

Guinness World Records has just announced the world record-holder for "dog with the largest eyes" -- and it's a four-year-old black-and-white Boston Terrier named Bruschi who lives with eighteen-year-old Victoria Reed in Grapevine, TX.

Reed discussed this exciting news with the Huffington Post, explaining that when she first learned of it at 2 a.m. Wednesday, she immediately told Bruschi.

"He started barking," she said. "He shook his body. He can't shake his tail because it was broken and then set wrong."

Reed told the interviewer that she first saw the pup three years ago while working at Operation Kindness, a no-kill shelter near Arlington, TX. Their eyes met -- granted, Bruschi's eyes would be hard to avoid -- and "he jumped up in my arms and wouldn't leave," she said.

Bruschi as a puppy. Image courtesy Guinness World Records.

The then-high-school student adopted the dog, whose eyes measure a whopping 28 millimeters (1.1 inches) in diameter each, and who was named after former New England Patriots linebacker and current ESPN analyst Tedy Bruschi.

"The eyes are big on a Boston Terrier anyway, but when I'd bring him out in public, people would say, 'Wow, he has huge eyes,'" Reed said.  "My vet joked a few months ago about submitting his photo to the Guinness World Records and I just went for it."

And won. No other pooch in all the world boasts bigger peepers.

Bruschi's eyes sometimes scare other dogs -- and even some people, according to Reed, who hopes her dog's win can help raise publicity for Operation Kindness and similar shelters.

“Some people do make fun of him for his looks,” Reed told the Guinness World Records website, as reported by MSNBC.com. "But I feel like he would go up to them and say, 'Haha, look where I am now, I've got a record for my looks!’"

Sources: Huffington Post, MSNBC.com

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