# Making/buying cheaper agility equipment resources



## ForTheLoveOfDogs (Jun 3, 2007)

I have plenty of room in my backyard to practice agility. My husband is currently making me some weave poles and I have some crappo jumps, but I was wondering if anyone here had cheap/easy ways to make equipment. Cheaper places to buy the stuff is acceptable too!


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## Kyllobernese (Feb 5, 2008)

http://www.caninecrib.com/dog/training/agility-course.asp Here are some directions. I had a better site but can't find it right now.


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## Kyllobernese (Feb 5, 2008)

http://emrys-corgis.com/ This one is similar but I used it when I built our A-frame. My sister and I built most of our Agility Equipment. We did start out with "kiddy" tunnels as we have small dogs but did finally go out and buy a couple of proper tunnels and a chute from NTI Global. Their prices were good and they have lots of sales. They came to us in Canada with free shipping and we just picked them up in the post office.


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## CptJack (Jun 3, 2012)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dog-Agility...007?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a91649037 This is my tunnel.

Ebay's my favorite all stop shopping place. I don't know what to tell you for contact equipment. Those are things I still need to accomplish. Soon. And also the expensive stuff.


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## MrsBoats (May 20, 2010)

I bought my table from here - http://www.carlson-agility.com/

and I bought a bunch of things from here - http://www.affordableagility.com/

Keep an eye on Craigslist...sometimes you can find people giving away contact equipment.


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## ForTheLoveOfDogs (Jun 3, 2007)

Thank you! I will look into all of those.


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## MafiaPrincess (Jul 1, 2009)

Mine was mainly trial and error. 1 and 1.5" pvc is stupid pricey here and less then that for jump standards looks often unstable. If I was going to make things I wanted them to be decentish. Bunch of pics cause when I was new at making stuff I wanted to check out other people's things 

First jump I made from plans on the web maybe 7 years ago









Teeter I made from no plans.. Have/had small dogs.. It was scaled.









Sold it later for the funds to buy a competition quality base, but hilariously my yard isn't big enough.. so it's in pieces in my garage...

Bought my tunnel from a place selling denier kids stuff.. It's more like canvas and better quality then the ones in cheapo agility sets.. Got 4 2x2 weave bases locally from someone getting out of agility and painted them last year.. Cheapo tire I made in the background when we were starting out, but it works..









Scaled table, the very first jump refurbished last year









Later made more fun jumps without plans. There are three or so others I don't have pics of









Bought a cheapy AKC chute last week on kijiji.. was super cheap.. Now I need a much larger yard


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## MrsBoats (May 20, 2010)

Nice job with the DYI equipment! 

One thing to think about about when building your own contact equipment...make sure the boards are the same length as the regulation equipment. A regulation teeter is 12' long and the planks on a dog walk are 12' each. Why you want to have the same length boards is due to your dogs striding. If your dog is used to striding on 8' at home...it's striding will be all off at a show. If running contacts are what your dog does...striding will make or break whether or not your dog hits the contact or not. I once commented to an agility instructor that I was going to make a DW with 8' boards to save room and make it easier to move. She very strongly recommended I not do that because of striding. I didn't really understand what she meant at the time because I was still new to agility...but after a couple of years into the sport...I totally get it now.


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## MafiaPrincess (Jul 1, 2009)

Thank you. My three 2o2o. But super good call on the striding. I keep hoping I'll wake up to 100x100 of pristine lawn behind my house one day so I can have an entire field.. but no go so far


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## MrsBoats (May 20, 2010)

I learned a valuable lesson about striding with Lars and a USDAA dogwalk this winter. USDAA dropped their performance heights for bigger dogs and I started to play there this winter for the first time really. Lars has a running a-frame and dogwalk which totally works in AKC and NADAC. But (and I didn't realize this at the time) USDAA has a smaller contact zone than other venues...and Lars kept striding over the yellow when he did his running DW. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why he kept getting called on it that weekend. Then someone pointed out to me that the yellow area was smaller. Whoops. Ocean I'm teaching a 2o2o for the teeter and the dog walk. Once he gets a little more mileage under this belt, I'll move him to a running a-frame to hopefully save his shoulders from years of slamming into a 2o2o.


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