I wonder if there isn't a way to stop it from showing. You can't KILL the dock, it's required by the OS and app switcher, but maybe there's a defaults you can use to stop it from showing at all?
you could pin it to somewhere else... left or right side? maybe that's something you'd like to try, in combination with changing its size, turning off the animation and magnification, and even turning off the glass table effect? there's also a less-used "pinning" option to change it from centered.
try hiding your dock, and then enter this in terminal:
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -int 20; killall Dock
