The City of Cupertino held the fall installment of its semiannual Pooch Plunge event on Saturday, Sept. 6 from 9 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. The event includes 160 dogs enjoying time at Blackberry Farm in the pool and surrounding area — in addition to complimentary toys and treats.
The event was the second of 2025, establishing this year as the first to host the Pooch Plunge as a biyearly event due to overwhelming interest in previous years. However, differing from past years, The City of Cupertino now requires dog owners to register their dogs ahead of time. As a result, this event was split into four blocks — each lasting 45 minutes, giving staff 15 minutes to clean the grounds before the next block of dogs arrived. City of Cupertino Recreational Coordinator Jason Bisely says while the implementation of the time block system has been effective, he hopes to add more activities for dogs in future events alongside addressing capacity concerns.
“Having the time blocks we had today really increased the amount of people who could enroll, which is always helpful with the amount of interest we get,” Bisely said. “We’ve also discussed adding more blocks to kind of open it up, but it’s tough because we already have four blocks. But I would like to add some more agility courses for the dogs, especially those that are still afraid to swim.”
Returning attendees and sisters Tiffany Hu and Jackie Hu brought their Golden Retrievers, Waffles and Moose, in celebration of the pets’ seventh birthdays. For them, the Pooch Plunge has become a tradition in their family as a meaningful way to spend time with their dogs while engaging with fellow community members. This year, they especially appreciated the range of activities available, like agility obstacles, observing that the dogs who were not as fond of the water benefitted particularly from the new options that the event provided. They also found the recently implemented scheduling structure to broaden access and overall participation compared to previous years.
However, the sisters noted a potential improvement — for large pools, they would like to see additional exit points to ease crowding and increase safety for the dogs. Overall, they believe that Pooch Plunge will continue to bring joy to both dogs and their owners in the community.
“I think our dogs love the community and the idea of getting together with all these different dogs,” Jackie said. “Just having the freedom to jump in a pool with all this open space is amazing. The weather is always great and it’s overall such a nice tradition.”
