I remember my immediate thought the first time I booted into OS X: "Oh my god; that's got to go!"
It was, of course, in reaction to the Dock, and I went on a mission...
The closest I ever came was when I beta-tested an app that, as opposed to grelber's assumption that the two must march in lockstep, totally got rid of the Dock, itself, while perpetuating its other functionality, but, unfortunately, its dev never got it to work at 100%, and it's no longer available for d/l.
The best I could ever do with no issues is
this, after running
KnockOutDock. (My Dock is that little thing in the lower right hand corner...Finder, 6 app icons, divider, Trash)
You can actually make the Dock one tick smaller, like
this (Same configuration), but the tradeoff is that for some unknown reason, Trash disappears, and that can be a hassle if you ever want to click on it to see what's inside.
I just ran V1's Terminal command to see what it would do, and I like the way it slows down the Dock's rising up from, and descending back into, the mists of invisibility if my cursor accidentally touches an edge of my screen (or I hit command-D), but I don't really need it, because I'm running
Wraparound, so if my cursor does hit an edge it goes right past it and comes out on the the other side/end. (Note: Takes some getting used to.)
If you want to opt for the Trash-less, smaller Dock, let me know and I'll help you out.
Note that I'm running OS X 10.6.8, so my fix is applicable to your 10.6.3 installation.
