1987MACPLUSDUDE  You can manually shrink the dock to its smallest scale, then use a dock-hacking app like SuperDocker to change its location to an area of the screen you don't click much, and set its visibility to Hidden.

It might pop up briefly every once in a while when you mouse all the way to that edge, but you shouldn't even notice most of the time.

Turning the dock completely "off" is difficult since it's coded right into the OS.  
(Version 1.4.7b3)