Life at Home

A Lab From Brazil Went Back-to-Back. The Better Story Was in Third.

Cacau defended her Top Dog title at the World Dog Surfing Championships. But the podium was mostly rescues, and one of them was riding her last wave.

By Nina Vasquez, Living Editor

August 5, 2025 · 5 min read

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The crowd at Linda Mar Beach in Pacifica does not behave like a crowd at a sporting event. It behaves like a crowd at a wedding. Thousands of people, phones up, screaming encouragement at a Labrador standing on a surfboard in gray California fog.

The 2025 World Dog Surfing Championships ran on August 2, and the headline result is straightforward: Cacau, a chocolate Labrador from Brazil, took Top Dog for the second year running, riding for her owner Ivan Moreira through conditions the competitors’ families were charitably calling a washing machine.

The more interesting story was one step down the podium.

How a dog actually wins this

The competition is structured with more rigor than you would expect. Dogs are divided by size, small, medium, large, and extra-large, and there are separate categories for stand-up paddleboard, two-dog tandem, and human-dog tandem.

Judges score on the size and strength of the wave, the length of the ride, the distance covered, whether the dog found an open-face wave rather than riding whitewater, and technique, which includes confidence on the board and actual tricks: riding backward, turning, holding a line.

That last criterion is the one people underestimate. These dogs are not being carried by a wave. Many of them are reading it.

The podium was a rescue list

Cacau won out over Koa, another chocolate Lab and a cancer survivor, who took second.

Third overall, and first in the large division, went to Faith, a pit bull who was found abandoned in a parking lot in 2012. She has surfed seven of these championships. She has also recently been diagnosed with vestibular syndrome, a condition affecting the balance system, which for a surf dog is a career-ending diagnosis in the most literal sense available.

This was her last heat. She placed third in the world, in her final competition, with a balance disorder. Her family got the send-off they were hoping for.

Elsewhere on the results sheet, Iza took gold in the medium division, and Rippin’ Rosie won the human-dog tandem.

The event is a fundraiser in a wetsuit

Strip away the spectacle and the World Dog Surfing Championships is, structurally, a rescue fundraiser that happens to be extremely fun to watch.

Proceeds from the 2025 event went to Rocket Dog Rescue and the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA. Spectators regularly walk off that beach and into an adoption application, which is roughly the highest-conversion marketing funnel in animal welfare. The competitors keep at it year-round, too: one past Top Dog, a French Bulldog with an eleven-year career, raised thousands over her lifetime for the French Bulldog Rescue Network and the Helen Woodward Animal Center.

Past champions tend to describe the training less as a sport and more as a relationship. The ocean forces a dog and a person to read each other constantly, in conditions where guessing wrong has consequences, and the pairs that do well are the ones who learned to communicate first and surf second.

Before you put your dog on a board

There is no qualification to enter. According to past competitors, the entire requirement is a dog who genuinely loves catching waves. That is real, and it is also the part where people get themselves into trouble, because “my dog likes the beach” is not the same thing.

“A dog who loves water and a dog who is safe in surf are two different dogs,” says Dr. Lena Park. “The ocean adds current, cold, and swallowed saltwater, and none of those are obvious in the moment. The dog will not tell you they are in trouble until they are well past it.”

If you are heading out to try it, the non-negotiables:

A properly fitted canine life vest with a handle. Every competitive surf dog wears one. It is not decoration, it is how you get them out fast.
Watch the water they swallow. Repeatedly gulping seawater can make a dog seriously ill; repeatedly gulping fresh water in a lake carries its own risk of water intoxication. Take breaks.
Rinse afterward. Salt and sand left in the coat cause skin irritation, and pit-bull types and short-coated dogs in general burn, so sunscreen formulated for dogs matters.
Let the dog set the ceiling. A dog who is done is done. Dragging a tired dog back out is how the fun ends.

“Ten minutes of hard swimming in surf is a serious workout for a dog,” Dr. Park says. “Treat it like exercise, not like a day at the park.”

Next year’s event returns to Linda Mar. If you would rather not put your dog on a board, come anyway and stand in the fog with the rest of the crowd. The dogs seem to appreciate the noise.