Greenport gears up for 10th annual dog dock diving weekend

Greenport’s dock-diving scene reaches a real milestone this summer: the 10th Annual North Fork Dog Dock Diving Weekend is set for June 6-7 at the Greenport Polo Grounds on Moores Lane, and this year’s Wild Card designation will let competitors earn double points. For handlers chasing rankings, that makes the village’s biggest canine splash weekend more than a celebration. It becomes a high-stakes stop on the DockDogs circuit.

The event runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days and is being promoted as rain or shine. The competition will feature Big Air, Speed Retrieve and Extreme Vertical, the kind of formats that make dock diving such a crowd-pleaser because every leap, sprint and vertical jump is right there in front of the spectators. The first 125 attendees each day will receive free swag bags, another sign that the weekend is built as much for the people on the rail as for the dogs in the water.

Harbor Pet is hosting the event, with Kim Loper, Sarah Phillips of First and South, and Rena Wilhelm of The Weathered Barn leading the organizing effort. Loper, who helped introduce DockDogs to Long Island, has been part of the event from its earliest days, and the 10th anniversary gives that work a visible payoff. What started as a niche summer competition has grown into one of Greenport’s signature gatherings, with local businesses, vendors and sponsors now woven into the weekend.

The Polo Grounds are still a relatively new home for the event, but they are already shaping its identity. The 2026 meet marks the second year there, after the ninth annual competition moved off Greenport Harbor Brewing Company’s Peconic location in 2025. Organizers said the shift was meant to make the weekend feel more like a community event and to pull more of Greenport Village’s business district into the action, giving local shops and restaurants a better shot at the foot traffic that comes with a packed event calendar.

That community angle has also carried a charitable thread. Last year’s competition included support for the Greenport Fire Department and Greenport Skate Park Inc., and official materials for 2026 say the event will again benefit the Greenport Fire Department and other Greenport organizations. After a decade, the weekend has settled into something more durable than a novelty. It has become a place where high-drive dogs get a legitimate outlet, and where Greenport gets a front-row seat to their best work.