Take your dog to someone else's work day, and DIY agility

I work at a doggie daycare/boarding center, and usually Dragon comes to work with me. Unfortunately when we're in a busy season and filling up, as we do in August, staff dogs are not allowed to come in for free. I've been recruiting my roommate and neighbors to take Dragon out for a potty break midway through my shift. Today none of them were available, but my landlord offered to take Dragon to work with him. This was a brand new adventure -- being taken away from Momma and spending all day in a new place with people he doesn't know very well. I was very nervous as I watched them driving away with my pup. All went well, though, and this was the text I received at the end of the day:

"Dragon was an angel. He never seemed bothered by anything and was very attentive to my wishes. I put him back inside your place."



Good dog! He was even loose in the house for an hour between that text and my coming home, and nothing was chewed up, and Jasper did not seem stressed out by possibly being chased around the entire hour. I don't usually leave him out of his crate when I'm out but it's good to know that (sometimes) he can behave himself.

Since I had a couple dog-free hours between seeing Dragon off and going to work myself, I took a trip to Urban Ore, a center for buying all kinds of used household construction/remodeling stuff. I purchased six cabinet doors, two thin, rectangular wooden boards, three door hinges, nails, a stack of long and thin wooden slats, and PVC. Then I went to OSH to buy more PVC and a foam tube.



This stuff is going to become my low-cost, small-sized agility practice equipment! After I get some paint and sand and one metal tube, I'll be able to turn this stuff into a pause table, wobble board, a-frame, dog-walk, teeter, and jumps! Once again the advantage of Tiny Dog is that his practice equipment can be much smaller and less sturdy compared to competition equipment.