As we say goodbye to the Olympics and hours of TV surfing between different sporting codes, I thought it might be fun to highlight some of the extremes of our pet world and their achievements.

Our animal friends are capable of amazing things, some useful and others less so!  Let’s celebrate the wonderful extremes and the ways they make us smile.

Now the aim here is to not create controversy, just to share some of the crazy things our pets can do. 

Did you know there is a Guinness World Record for how quickly a dog can pop 100 balloons?

This is held by Toby the whippet from Canada in a time of 28.22s.  I know my dog would hate that, all that popping noise and what a mess. 

Then there is Augie the Golden Retriever who holds the record for most tennis balls in mouth at the same time with five and Jess the Jack Russell Terrier who holds the record for most skips with her owner in a minute of 59, that’s nearly one per second.

When we move to more athletic pursuits, things can become more complex with the consistency between events and locations. 

Casterton saw a Walker the Kelpie, jump 2.67m in 2024, which involves jumping and climbing up vertical boards, whereas the Guinness World Record is for a clear jump over a hurdle type set up – and this is 1.72m by a number of greyhounds. 

Our own Nurse Lauren’s dog Cobba, jumped 2.2m at Eudunda Show last year, pretty impressive from our canine friends!  We of course cannot discredit our service dogs who have all sorts of mad skills, being able to sniff, climb, scramble and jump to support us in the various challenges we put in front of them. 

Now let’s not forget their feline counterparts, while perhaps the records are less extreme, there are still several to be proud of. 

Didga from Tweed Heads performed 24 unique tricks in a 60 second period to hold the record and Alley jumped 1.82m to hold the record for distance jumped.  Unsurprisingly there is not a record for number of toys in the mouth or balloons popped. 

Now we all know there are many other crazy unofficial records that our pets hold, YouTube and TikTok make sure we are entertained by their antics whenever we need a smile. 

So, whether our own pets are medal winners, pranksters, clumsy oafs or merely our faithful companions we love the smiles they bring us and marvel at their versatility and variability.