Sugar, Five-Time World Dog Surf Champion and Hall of Famer, Dies at 16

Sugar, the furry white rescue dog who accumulated five World Dog Surf Championship titles and 19 career surfing victories, died at 3:20 a.m. on March 30 in the arms of her owner, Ryan Rustan. She was 16.

Rustan announced her passing on Instagram. Sugar had been diagnosed with cancer on March 2, underwent surgery to remove her tumor, and managed one final ride on March 7 before her condition worsened. She died 23 days after that last wave.

The Associated Press covered her death, which was picked up nationally by NBC News, ABC News, The Boston Globe, KTVU Fox 2, and KNX News 97.1 FM among others. Huntington Beach's official Facebook page called her a local legend and noted that her impact "reached far beyond the shoreline."

Rustan found Sugar on the streets of Oakland, California, in 2011, when she was seven months old. He had just come out of an abusive relationship and was working through drug addiction recovery; her companionship became a cornerstone of that process. One afternoon, playing in a pool, Rustan set the puppy on a boogie board. She took to it immediately.

That instinct grew into one of the most decorated careers in the sport's history. Sugar competed dressed in a life jacket, balancing on the board with the kind of confidence that judges at the World Dog Surfing Championships score alongside style and wave presence. She could ride tandem with Rustan or charge a wave entirely on her own. The World Dog Surfing Championships, founded by Kevin Reed, author of "The Dog's Guide to Surfing," drew only five dogs to its inaugural event at Linda Mar Beach in Pacifica on September 10, 2016. Sugar became the defining figure of its expansion into a competition that now draws 15 to 20 canine competitors and thousands of spectators annually. The 2026 championship is scheduled for August 1 at that same Linda Mar Beach venue.

On December 5, 2024, Sugar became the first animal ever inducted into the Surfers' Hall of Fame in Huntington Beach. Her paw prints were set in concrete alongside the hand and footprints of renowned human surfers. At the ceremony, Rustan said: "This is just incredible. Dreams do come true even for a surfing dog and guys like me."

Outside competition, Sugar served as a therapy dog at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Long Beach and worked alongside surf therapy foundations. Rustan wrote in his tribute: "She absolutely loved you guys!! she lived to put smiles on faces [and] to change dog surfing forever !!!"

She did both.