As Crazy As Roger Saunders, AKA Dogman!

Roger Saunders aka DogMan is not really known as a SUP racer, as he does not compete in any major championships. However, DogMan is pretty well-known in the SUP world for all the crazy antics he captures on video. Saunders gives us an insight into his relationshp with SUP.

Can you introduce yourself ?

Hi, I’m Roger Paul Saunders, I was born in 1975, I’m Australian and I live in Minnie Water, on the East Coast of Autralia, a small country town, with a small numbers of surfers. I’m musician, and paddler during my free time.

Most people know you from your SUP videos. What’s your relationship with SUP?

I Started to paddle 12 years ago. Originally, I just paddled around the coastline when the ocean was flat and no waves. It didn’t take long for me to be hooked on paddling, and trying to workout how to ride these boards.

Then, two years later, I started up a Stand Up Paddle school in Clarence Valley, area of the north coast of New South Wales. Spreading my love of SUP to the general public and introducing it as a regular school sport into Clarence Valley high schools.

I took up a job working for Dave Byrne at Surftech Australia. Which involved me travelling around in a mega demo van and trailer showcasing the latest Surftech products of shortboards, longboards and sup boards. That was the best 4 years of my life. Travelling around to surf shops doing demo’s, and purchase doxycycline online following the circuit. Which meant getting to surf a lot of different places and riding a lot of different boards.

A few years ago I started up a clothing brand 1sup1 with a few mates. And recently started working with Simon Hunnybun from DeepOceanBoards, developing a whole range of Signature Model Boards, which is pretty exciting!

Most of us know you as DogMan. Where did you get this nickname?

As a young kid I used to camp at the beach with my mates. We would have limited food. and limited knowledge of cooking. So I self appointed myself as the gatherer of food and head  cook. I´d scavenge food and cook it into what would look like dog food, but we would be so hungry that it would taste great. The name of the “scavenging dog” was born. And as I grew older that name was shortened to DogMan.

What is your best paddling memory?

My Favorite SUP moment is at one of my local big wave spots. I was paddling over mountainous lumps of water all by myself, without anybody around. The landscape was beautiful, it was really a magical stuff, just me in the ocean, and the odd shark.

Being a metalhead, what do you do when not paddling?

The metalhead (now that im not working for Surftech and touring around the places promoting SUP gear) plays drums in 2 working metal bands, “Violent Sun” and “HeadPound”,  and in a pub rock coverband “LittleBIGfish”. Music is my life, now SUP just fills in my time between jamming music and playing gigs around the place.

In one of your videos, you’re paddling on an armchair. What other crazy things do you plan to do?

The next crazy idea I’ve got, is to attach a foil to my couch and master couch foiling. Its the obvious evolutionary next step for me just being weird, having fun and doing things people say can’t be done.