STARKVILLE – When asked about a race, most people may think of cars. Starkville native Alden Thornhill thinks about dogs.
The Starkville Derby is an annual festival of wiener dog races, attracting thousands of people to this college town.
The event — which was started by Thornhill in 2023 — was originally meant to fill a void between spring activities in the college town. However, it has since grown to become the world’s largest wiener dog racing event.
“A lot of people just come up and see the day of and don’t realize the logistics that we start planning this thing back in December for late April or early May,” Thornhill said. “Its pretty incredible what my team can do and what we do when we get together.”
The multi-award winning event takes place every spring in the downtown Cotton District directly next to Mississippi State University. This year’s derby, on April 25, hosted over 315 dogs across 86 races.
Maui and his owner Chino Nguyen traveled from Houston, Texas, to be a part of this year’s race.
“It’s his first year racing in Starkville,” Nguyen said of Maui. “We’re just doing it for fun.”
While numbers have not been provided for this year’s attendance, Thornhill told Mississippi Today that it exceeded last year’s 80,000.
The Oktibbeha County Humane Society is the main beneficiary of the derby. The event raised over $75,000 for the nonprofit group this year.
“They rescue dogs and this is a dog-centric event,” Thornhill said. “So it was a match made in canine heaven.”
The Oktibbeha County Humane Society manages the Starkville animal shelter. It also provides low-cost spay and neuter operations, and it relocates animals to other areas where they might be more likely to be adopted, helping to serve more than 6,000 animals each year in north-central Mississippi.
The society’s executive director, Michele Anderson, said the derby has boosted awareness for the organization.
“I think the biggest impact that the derby has made, aside from the significant fundraising that it does for us each year, is just creating the awareness and getting the word out,” Anderson said. “We still get people that reach out and say they haven’t heard of us before.”
