You can get rid of the dock when you have the cursor away from it. Check your preferences to change this. I also aligned the dock to the left-hand side to make it less obtrusive.
"Let me just grab the edge of this window OH HELLO THERE MISTER DOCK! Glad you decided to pop up right where I was clicking, now we can enjoy the wait while OpenOffice loads!"
This can also be set by hitting, uh "option command D," I believe.