Eight clothes pegs, sixty seconds, one black Labrador. Java, a five-year-old Lab from Kansas City, Missouri, now holds a Guinness World Record for the greatest number of pegs a dog has clipped onto a washing line inside one minute, a feat the record keepers confirmed this week.
Her owner, Lisa Rickards, is a 46-year-old graphic designer who has known the dog since Java was a 10-week-old puppy. The pair made the attempt on March 21, and the result went public on November 4.
A brand-new category, and a target she beat
There was no earlier champion to dethrone. Java was the first dog in the world to try for this particular title, and because the category was new, the record keepers set a floor rather than a rival score. Because the record was new, Rickards said in a television interview days before the attempt, the adjudicators told her “they think that she should be able to do five.”
So the benchmark was five pegs. Java clipped eight. Working that out: eight minus five leaves three extra pegs, and three divided by five is 0.6, which puts her final tally 60% above the minimum she needed. Spread across a minute, eight pegs works out to one finished peg roughly every 7.5 seconds.
Why a peg is harder than it looks
Each one is a small chain of tasks. To count, Java had to:
- pick a peg up in her mouth,
- squeeze it open,
- lift it to the line,
- and release it so the jaws snapped shut and stayed put.
Any slip at the last step means a peg on the ground, not on the line.
From service-dog puppy to trick champion
Java’s career was supposed to look very different. She was bred and raised as a candidate assistance dog through Canine Companions, a US service-dog program. Rickards had already raised Java’s mother and grandmother through the same scheme.
“For the first 18 months of Java’s life, my job was to raise and socialize her with the goal of preparing her to become a service dog,” Rickards told the record keepers. Java moved on to advanced training but was judged not to be the right fit, and Rickards was able to adopt her back.
That foundation shows in the skills Rickards later layered on top. She says she taught Java to open doors, pull off shoes and socks, unzip a jacket and flip light switches on and off. Rickards told a local TV crew that of the more than 15 dogs she has raised for service work, Java is “the smartest by far.”
Once service work was off the table, the two turned to trick competitions. Java was named International Trick Dog Champion in 2023, and she now responds to more than 200 cues and tricks, from dropping coins into a piggy bank to identifying colors and even sniffing out gluten in food.
A dog who trains herself
Rickards picked the peg challenge because it is the trick Java enjoys most. She credits Olga Jones, whose dogs Bonnie and Simba hold several Guinness titles, for the confidence to try.
Her favorite detail is what happens after a session ends. She often leaves the room and comes back to find Java still hanging pegs on the line, or standing there with one in her mouth, tail going.
“I joke that Java is fully caffeinated and absolutely lives up to her name,” Rickards said. “She has an enormous amount of enthusiasm for life and, more importantly, she genuinely loves learning.”
Java also volunteers with First Responder Therapy Dogs, visiting fire stations to perform for crews. Rickards says the pair would love to chase more records. Her advice to other owners is simple: “I would say just try different things with your dog, experiment. Dogs learn in different ways.”
For the record attempt itself, the payoff was modest. Asked before the March 21 try how Java would celebrate, Rickards said: “She might get a few extra kibbles.”
Image: Eric Ward from Provo, UT, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
