Avery’s Sporting Dog Division has once again joined forces with one of its Team WaterDog retriever trainers to develop something to make the serious water-fowler and serious waterdog’s life a little better. The ASD Boomer Hunter-Retriever Hunting Dog Stand is a great seat for your water dog keeping him up out of the water until it's time for him to do his job.
The stand was the brainchild of Chris Akin, a member of Avery’s Team WaterDog and a by the book, old school timber hunter from northeast Arkansas.
According to Chris:
We have been using something somewhat similar to this stand for years and years, but we always had two major issues. Our biggest problem was the stand’s surface; we tried everything from outdoor carpet to expanded metal. Carpet soaked up a ton of water leaving your dog standing in a puddle all morning and expanded metal is horrible on a dog’s feet and toe-nails. Our second issue was durability; we had some flaws in our designs for weight distribution. We hunt everyday of the Arkansas season and we never got much past Christmas before we’d have a bend or a break somewhere. After the last day of the 2006 season, I took what we had developed down to Avery and sat down with their design team in the Sporting Dog Division and showed them where the problems were.
We got the first prototype in November of 2007. After three changes to the surface material, we came up with a durable neoprene that sheds water perfectly. It’s very durable, provides good traction for the dog, and it’s soft.
Weight distribution wasn’t so easy and we ended up totally redesigning the support structure. The stand is now nine pounds, surprisingly lighter than the original versions, and will hold hunters and retrievers up to 250 pounds. I leave two stands in my boat, one for Boomer and one for me. It sure makes those slow days a lot more enjoyable.
Fittingly Avery decided to name the stand in honor of Akin’s dog: SRS Qualifying Winner, SRS Crown Championship or GOG Winner, and Grand Hunting Retriever Champion - SRSC-SRS-GRHRCH - Barkley’s Yankee Thunder MH otherwise known as just Boomer.
