Last Updated on: 11th September 2020, 10:31 pm
DIY dog obstacle course for under $100
In today’s video, we are going to build our obstacle course for agility training for less than a hundred bucks. I know usually, we’re into the bird hunting or basic obedience drills, but I wanted to dabble in the agility world a little bit.
I’ve been watching some of those on YouTube and it looks fascinating. It’s some of the coolest stuff ever and so I wondered you know what would it take to train a Labrador like mine and get them used to the agility training?
I think it looks like a great mental as well as physical exercise, and so I did some scouring. Well, I found my four favorite obstacles and now I’m gonna build them today with you for less than 100 bucks.
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DIY dog obstacles
Let’s go out back and I’ll show you the four obstacles that I’m choosing to build.
DIY dog walk
So the first thing we’re gonna do is our dog walk and what I’ve got is enough pieces here cut out so that I can do two stands or two bases that give me a ramp up I’ll walk across in a ramp down I’ll get the planks later and show you how I put those on there.
But in order to do that, what you’re going to need – you need 12-inch pieces of one-inch 4t schedule 40 PVC you’re going to need 16 1 inch T’S you’ll want 16 of the 1 inch PVC pieces cut into 6-inch pieces and then you’re gonna want 8 of the elbows.
The 1-inch elbows now keep in mind again. This is for 2 stands. So if you wanted, if you were the earth-2 basis, if you wanted 3 bases, you’d need to add half of this again to your total but to get started.
Basically, what we’re gonna do is we’re going to just take our 2 of our 6-inch pieces and one of our 12 inches.
I like to use a little rubber, mallet, just to kind of make sure that things get seated in there the way they need to and then I’m gonna do the same thing on the other side.
You’re in here tap those down, then we’re going to take my elbows and build the tops.
Don´t Use PVC glue when you don´t want your dog agility obstacles permanent
First and again I don’t use the PVC glue. You could use the PVC glue if you wanted to make these permanent. I like to leave them in there, so that if I want to make it a little taller or shorter, later on, I can adjust these.
So I actually don’t use the PVC cement and then I’m gonna take one last tee put them on here. More of my 12 inches. This is going to be my cross-section at the bottom, and now you can see it kind of starting to take its shape.
Now you could use elbows at the bottom, but I like to use the tees just because this gives it. This is going to give us some traction into the grass when I’m in the backyard using it. So that’s why I’m using tees on the bottom instead of the elbows like I do at the top and then just follow suit and then two more of my six inches, let’s see where my elbows and then two more on my 12 inches.
Other dog agility equipment
Okay, there’s your two stands. I’ll add the planks in just a minute, but first I want to get to some of these other agility skills. Some of the other dog agility tools that you’re going to use, let’s get to the teeter-totter. Next, all right, the next part of our agility course that we’re gonna build is the base for our seesaw, and for that again we’re still using a one-inch schedule 40 Pvc.
You want four pieces cut at 14 inches. You want one piece cut at 12 inches, six pieces cut at eight inches, you want two pieces cut at two inches and then you’ll need six elbows and four of the one-inch PVC tees.
So the first thing we’re gonna do is build our base. A rectangle base, I’m gonna, take two of my 14 inches. It pieces I’ll move these over here, so I can build my base. Take two of those and I’m going to put elbows on each of these corners and I’ll use the sledgehammer in just a second.
Now I’m going to want four of my eight-inch pieces and my T’s. Those will go in the middle like this and now we’ll just kind of go around and tap everything into place. See something doesn’t quite look. Oh, I used the 12-inch piece. That’s the volts!
Agility course seesaw
All right set that aside, you don’t need that right now, let’s get an actual 14-inch piece in there, and then we’ll actually have a rectangle and not some kind of a weird goofy piece that we can’t do anything with okay.
So next we need the two-inch pieces and our tees, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to insert that 2-inch piece into the bottom of one of the tees like that, and then those go into the 2-inch piece goes into our tees like that setting it up.
Take your next two eight-inch pieces. Those go like so and now you’ve got a 14-inch piece across here, and that is your first level and you might think for you know: a full-size Labrador or Golden Retriever that’s not very high, and it’s really not. But it’s really a good starting point. It also works for smaller dogs, but when your dog is advanced and he’s comfortable with that movement of the seesaw going down or the teeter-totter going down.
We’re going to have our other 14-inch piece up here and we can move that over there and then eventually we’ll move that plank up here onto the top, which gives it way more movement. And then, if you want, you can replace these eight inch and you can get up to a 12 inch seesaw and give it just even more movement again.
We are building a DIY backyard agility course
This is just kind of a backyard agility course. The 12-inch piece we’re going to cut this in half and I’m gonna screw this to the bottom of the plank, and then it will kind of a slap in place here.
That’ll help keep it in place, so it doesn’t slide off when the dogs going over it. That’s it there’s your seesaw base. Let’s move to the next one!
Dog course tire jump
The next part of our course. Next, we’re gonna build, maybe the most easily recognized of all the agility obstacles, and that is the tire jump.
To be within regulation, you want to be somewhere between 18 inches and 24 inches wide for this hoop. I’m actually for this tire, PVC hoop I’m actually building it a little bit bigger because it’s I’m using it to introduce my dogs to the obstacle, and so I want it to be a little bit easier at the beginning.
Also, I’m actually building the stand so that I can raise and lower it as the dogs get more proficient I’m going to want them to be jumping through it, instead of just stepping through it when we get started with the training and so to begin.
Let’s just kind of tell you what you need: I’m using three quarter inch schedule 40 Pvc. Schedule 40 just means that the wall is a little bit thicker, which I’ll give it some sturdiness. But I didn’t think you needed the one-inch as we did for the basis of our last two obstacles, because this isn’t going to be weight-bearing this is gonna, be something that hopefully they’ll be able to just jump through.
So you want two pieces of 3/4 inch Pvc cut at 24 inches apiece. You want eight pieces cut at 12 inches. You want six of these little tea couplers or tea joints. We want six, well, we want five pieces cut at five inches long and then you want two pieces cut at four inches long, so I’ll put those there.
So you see the difference. We also need eight of these 45-degree joints. You want you it’s up to you. You can use two or four of these couplers and then you need six pieces cut at nine inches. I know I wrote 12 on there, but I ended up cutting them down because it ended up making a hoop that was too big, so cut these to nine inches, and you want six of those.
Let’s go ahead and build the hoop first and then we’ll build the base for that. We’re going to take our nine-inch pieces and our 45-degree joints and we’re going to build the top half and then the bottom half and then we’ll join them together like this.
So I’ve just used all of my 9-inch pieces and I’ve got two halves of a circle. Now what I’m going to do is I’m going to take my five-inch pieces.
I’m gonna put those into each of these like so, and then I’m going to join them with a tee, but I want to make sure that this connecting part of the tee is facing outward. I don’t want it facing into the hoop, because this is how it’s going to connect to the base.
So let me get one more of these. So we’ve got the circle. We’ve got the tire part. Let’s build the base to do that. You’re gonna want four of your 12-inch pieces. These will be the legs and one of your tees, and that will form the base that way, and then one of your 24-inch pieces goes in here like that, and you want a tee on top of your 24-inch piece with one of your smaller three and a half to four inches there like that and then you’re going to take one of your 12-inch pieces and stick it up top like this.
Now, let’s do the same on this side, 12 inches for the base 24 inch for the upright our last tee. At our 12 inches here and now, we can go ahead and add the hoop and give you an idea of how big its how tall it’s going to be.
So that’s kind of this is kind of the introductory stage for a bigger dog. If you had a smaller dog, you could cut these pieces down, you could cut them down to say 6 inches that’ll, give you a smaller hop, 7.6 inches.
That would give you a smaller hoop and then you could put your you know. You could cut this to have 18 inches. That would get this piece as much you know down around right here.
Then they could just use that for stepping through that’s if you’ve got you know smaller house dogs, where I’m using Labrador retrievers. This is perfect for them to step through and kind of get used to that.
The purpose for these up here and the reason why I’m going to use the couplers is that when my dogs get proficient stepping through at this level, I want to raise the bar literally.
Actually, I want to raise the bar and require a little more of them, and so to do that, I’m just going to pull this off. Make sure you watch our upcoming videos if you’ve never taught a dog how to go through an agility course or any of these obstacles make sure you watch in the next week or two I’m going to be introducing my dogs to each of these obstacles so make sure you catch those in the next week or so, as I start crashing those out. If you haven’t already, please make sure you subscribe below so that you don’t miss anything.
The dog course weave
Let’s get to our last obstacle. That’s the weave – all right now for the last of our agility obstacles. We’re gonna build the weave course or the weave poles, and to do that, you can make this as long and add as many weave poles as you want.
I’m going to limit it to just eight – they’ve got eight of these 3/4 inch Pvc again just like with the tire. These are 30 inches. I think that’s pretty standard for the height of the weave poles, so I have eight of these cut at 30 inches then I’ve got seven of these 21 inch 3/4 inch PVC pieces.
This is going to be my spacer. This is going to be how much distance is between each weave Pole.
I’ve got two of these eight and a half inch pieces, and this is gonna be my divider at the end, from the base to the first pole, then I’ve got ten of my T’s and then four of my four pieces at 18 inches, and these will be the the base or the the foundation at the ends that keep it from tipping over.
So to build this simple enough, especially if you’ve been doing some of the other things, I’ve got that we’ve done. This might be the simplest of all the construction that we’ve done.
There’s your first base, we’ve got two 18 inch pieces and then you’re going to take an eight and a half inch and then you’re gonna slide another tee with it facing up. There you go, then your spacer, your 21 inch spacer like so another tee.
Another spacer again, these are your 21-inch pieces, and there you have it. If you want these, if, the wobbliness of it is bothering you or we may find that when Odin starts going through him he’s knocking him over, I may add some PVC glue to the long pole down there just to keep those teeth straight so that he doesn’t do that.
I do want to be able to remove these, though, so I don’t know that I’ll ever put the PVC glue in these ones in the uprights and you’ll understand why when you get to the video on how to teach your dog to do the weave pole because you’re gonna want to be able to use these separate from the base?
Okay, the next thing we’re going to do is to make the act the planks for the dog walk, and I just have a couple of 1×8.
I’ve got three of them actually and one 8-foot section and then two four foot sections for the ramps and I’m just gonna screw a standard door hinge on the side of the main plank and then what I’m gonna do is screw attach that to one of the 4-foot planks, and now I’ve got my ramp – the nice thing about the hinges is it’s gonna make it super easy to put this away when I want to get rid of it and move it out of the yard when we got to mow the lawn or something.
I do the same on the other side and you’ve got your dog walk all right for the seesaw or the teeter-totter or whatever you want to call it the first thing I’m going to do is find the middle of the board – and I want to screw my PVC piece anywhere from three or four inches off-center so that it so the seesaw rests at one side or the other you want once your dog is done.
You want it to go back and rest on that on that downward side – so the next thing I wanted to do is to build some brackets on the side of this to keep the plank from from slipping off.
So I took a tee and I cut it in half and then I cut it in half again and created these two little brackets and now all I’m gonna do is take a pan head self-tapping screw and drill that into place one on each side just to keep the plank in place as it’s as the dogs going over it.
All right there you have it there are my four favorite obstacles for the agility course that I’m gonna put in my backyard, at least the ones that I could build on my own.
We’ve got the seesaw or the teeter-totter, we’ve got the tire jump or in our case just the hoop jump, and then finally, the dog walk.
I’M super excited to get Odin introduced to these, he’s never done anything like it.
I’ve never done anything like it, so you know maybe some of you out there might have some tips you might recognize some things that I did wrong or that I did right.
It’s gonna be at this point.
It’S just taking what I know from previous dog training experiences in other settings and I’m gonna try and transfer that over into the world of agility dog training, so hope you stay tuned for those videos.
Hope you enjoyed this video.
