Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Our Newest Toy...


This is our new-used Contact Trainer. It's very exciting, and something that we can use indoors. I'm working on making the biggest room in the upstairs/attic into our training room. It will allow Kane to get back to obedience training, and it will be a place where Syd and Hawk can work on agility and obedience. The room is not huge, but it's the biggest room in the house, and it's completely open, so it will be better than braving the elements outside when the weather is bad!

The contact trainer is an added bonus, and this weekend we'll be bringing home our new-used A-Frame! Yay! Someone in our obedience club posted a used A-Frame for sale, and I was just lamenting that I needed one at home to work on contacts and confidence on the obstacle (our agility club A-Frame is USDAA height). I happened to be the first to call, and the lady mentioned that she had this contact trainer also, if I was interested. Um, yep... For a bargain, I now have the A-Frame I need, and I have this great piece of equipment that the seller bought new from Clean Run. It folds up completely, is easy for one person to carry, and is small enough I can use it indoors. Perfect.

*Safety Note: Big Nick would like for me to add the warning that when you are a 95 pound, hyper-drive lab/GSP mix, you should NOT, I repeat, NOT run up the stairs, across the attic, and leap onto the contact trainer when it's on a polished hardwood floor. DEFINITELY wait until the mat flooring is put down!

3 comments:

dreameyce said...

An A-frame YOU can move? Wait, I need this info! I've been looking into Curt building one, but all the plans we're finding, are HUGE, and too heavy for what we want/need.

Curt is Mr Handyman so can build just about anything I give him a 'blueprint' for. Then again, he better be able to... he may someday be designing our bridges ;0P

Sarah said...

Well, it's not exactly an A-Frame. It's called a contact trainer, and it has the contact zones of the dogwalk on one side, and simulates contacts of the A-Frame on the other. The "real" A-Frame is heavy, and Don is going to help me get it transported to my house this weekend. Thank goodness for friends with trailers!

There are some really neat contact trainers out there now. Basically have a square as the basis, like the Pause Table. Then on different sides, different attachments. This website has them in all sorts of convertible configurations.
http://www.hillagility.com/dog-agility-equipment-contact-trainers.htm

Mine was cheap, local, and it suits what I need, the ability to really train contacts and do it indoors. :-)

Sarah said...

P.S. I'll try to take some photos of it from under, and from the sides. This one is very lightweight and folds totally flat. No steel frame. I don't think it would be terribly difficult to build.