A few days back, we bore witness to the canine incarnation of sunglasses and a backwards hat doing little doggie kick-flips on a skateboard as kids and adults alike looked on in awe. Well, now it’s Friday afternoon, and after some highly journalistic digging around on Instagram, we are happy to report that not only does the dog have a name—Eric Spock Maclean, a.k.a. Eroc—he’s also a professional skateboarding dog with sponsorships from a local skate shop and Nature’s Menu pet food, thank you very much.
Eric lives with his people Claire Maclean and Joel Deason in Highbury, London, where Maclean says they first discovered Eric’s natural skateboarding ability when he knocked a kid off of a skateboard in nearby Clissold Park. “Suddenly there was a kid screaming and Eric had nicked his skateboard and was riding it along the path,” she told The Tab last year. Since then, he’s become a fixture at London skate parks, where he’s caught the attention of local news and of pro skaters like Tony Hawk, who writes on Instagram: “My first reaction to @erocdog videos were jaded (another skating bulldog…?) but then he stepped it up with this NBD nose tap body varial thing & I became an instant fan.”
We’re not sure what that means, exactly, but we know it’s cooler than a pair of 50-inch JNCOs in 1998. The guy filming Eric’s latest trip to the skate park earlier this week makes no attempt to hide his delight, squealing, “Oh, you got it, you got it,” in a high-pitched baby voice as the little dude shreds.
You can follow Eric on Instagram here, like his Facebook page—which declares, “Eroc nah care, eroc wants to shred”—here, and subscribe to his YouTube page here.