Parkour, a sport developed in France, involves getting from point A to point B in the most interesting way possible. Practitioners must overcome obstacles in various ways — jumping, flipping, climbing, and vaulting in any combination of movements that will efficiently and stylishly get them to their destination.
It’s a sport for only the most nimble athletes – so is it any surprise that one of the world’s emerging Parkour stars is a dog?
TreT, a five-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier from the Ukraine, scales high walls, climbs tall trees, and jumps from scaffold to scaffold like a true Parkour champ. No obstacle is too challenging for TreT to tackle, and the pup seems to love every second of it.
TreT’s owner, Evgeny Elchaninov of western Ukraine, was once a Parkour fanatic himself, with dreams of turning his passion for jumping over stuff into a career. But when a catastrophic knee injury forced him to leave the sport for good, he thought perhaps he could teach his then-6-month-old dog TreT some puppy Parkour.
TreT’s first Parkour feat – jumping from a chair to the top of a refrigerator.
To Elchaninov’s amazement, not only was TreT a natural traceur (a male Parkour athlete), the dog seemed to genuinely love the sport. Elchaninov says that he only had to teach his dog a couple of tricks before the agile Staffie started improvising moves of his own. Now the Parkour pair of man and dog travel the world, recording videos of TreT jumping, flipping, climbing, and vaulting around cities and historical sites.
Videos of TreT’s amazing feats have become YouTube sensations, with clips like “Super Dog” attracting over a million viewers and turning TreT into an Internet celebrity.
Elchaninov thinks that TreT’s brand of Parkour could catch on with other dog owners. He’s planning to create a series of training videos so that others can teach their canine athletes how to Parkour like his buddy TreT.
TreT is now one of only two known Parkour – or is it Barkour – dogs in the world. Roxy, the current Hawaii Parkour Mascot, has her own popular YouTube videos.
Sources: The Huffington Post, OddityCentral.com
