We love to have fun with our animals…  and agility is something that is very fun and rewarding for dogs.  And apparently, goats as well!  Haha…  Daisy and Buttercup are totally interested in anything we do in the middle yard and well, who knows, we might have invented something neat… Livestock Agility Trials….  Actually I have seen other critters enjoying the sport on YouTube…

We created our course from garage sale items, homemade things and a few dollar store purchases.  Over all, we spent less than $20 so far.   We are missing a functioning teeter totter and the a-frame to climb up and over, but we’ll consider adding those things eventually.

We used pool noodles as the jump bars.  We found that they worked pretty well if you stuffed a small cut piece of hard pvc into the ends to have something hard to slip into the holders of the poles.  We duct taped canning rings to the poles to slip the noodle bars into.  They are big enough to slip easily out when the dog bumps them.

We found fun colored pvc pipe at the hardware store in red and blue.  We just shoved them into the ground at the various spaces.  Pretty simple.

We made our table from a solid pallet.  We used a dollar store hula hoop as the ring jump.  We actually found some parts in the trash on the curb of a local city’s big trash day.  (We are not huge trash pickers, but I will admit, we have found some neat big stuff when the cities have their special “throw out big stuff for free” days.  These folks had a a-frame and more stuff but it was in really bad shape, and just too big for me to cram into the car.  So I took the parts that I could…  like the cool teeter totter base!  (Just needs a board and some clamps…)  We used another small pallet as the “walk on a board” object to help train them to walk on something unusual.  Which Daisy has mastered!

We found the children’s play tunnel at a garage sale for $1.  Not too shabby!  All in all, it’s just for fun with the dogs.  Evee, especially, needs to have something to do outside that she has to learn some commands and such.  She is so smart and talented… in the house!    I’ve never seen a dog that is so uninterested in behaving outside.  It’s like she thinks all bets are off.  Once outside, she is just a live wire and crazy.  We are hoping that some fun play will reward her with learning that she can do as well outside as she does inside!

Jessy has done agility training with our other dogs and always enjoyed it.  It was one thing we always wanted to do here at the farm… and so, we’re getting it started!  Evee has never seen a course but was doing fantastic, this first time out.  I could not believe how quickly she understood the weave poles!  She would be a fantastic agility dog… if we could only get her to obey off leash!  Oh well….  Jessy is very diligent!  If anyone can get Evee to learn it will be Jessy!

Ratchet was interested for about 10 minutes and then decided it was not for him.  He’s so funny… he would rather just bark at everyone and then chew up sticks.  Maggie will keep working with him so he learns what to do.  In the meanwhile, Maggie has been working with the goats!   Which I will say are pretty quick learners!  And it’s very funny to watch!

So, enjoy these silly pictures of everyone playing with our new agility course!  You can build one yourself, too!  It was very easy and lots of fun!