Dog Shelter In Mexico Update

In the last post, I talked about balance. Hmmm... Right now the scale is tipped way over toward dog rescue. Here's an update on how things are coming along with the shelter. If you want to read about each stage in more depth, I'll provide the appropriate links to the shelter blog, Friends of RCA Colima.

click to see lots of before photos 

I rented an abandoned house. It's large and excellent for our purposes, and the owner is installing light and water.

click here to see all the clean-up action

Next step was to clean the floors. A whole crew of volunteers worked all last Sunday and cleared out three years of debris. Then the concrete floors were hosed down and scrubbed with soapy water. A lovely neighbor let us hook up hoses to her house, since our water wasn't hooked up yet.

click here for photos of the installation process

We got electricity! Yeah! Now we can work later into the evening.

This afternoon we will finish cleaning bat guano off the walls. Our team of young neighbor helpers is awesome, and keeps growing.

Click to go to the Facebook album with more photos of planting the gardens.

A neighbor offered us plants, and last night we cleaned out the weeds and put in a lovely garden in front of the refugio. As we worked, more and more neighbors gathered to help. I love Mexico!

click for dog pen instructions

In the meantime, we are working on building dog pens in my garage. Whew! It's a LOT of work but also saves a ton of money, which is in short supply. Complete step-by-step instructions for building a 1 meter by 1 meter pen are here. The cost for a pen (no roof) is about $25.

We are also filing the necessary papers with the city. We will be the first legal in-city shelter in Colima, complete with inspections, etc. We're compiling a resource notebook for the shelter in English, and Marissa will be translating the relevant parts into Spanish over time. Looks like our Spanish language shelter resource guide will be a first for Mexico. Woohoo!

If you would like to contribute to Refugio Cachorros y Abuelitos (Safe Haven for Puppies and Good Old Dogs), you can do so through Friends of PATA. They are a US non-profit set up to collect contributions for Mexican animal rescue organizations. Just specify that your donation is for RCA Colima, or put my name, Mary Carol Moran. If you live in the US, the donation is tax-deductible.

Thanks, everyone, for following along on our adventures! Giant world group hug!

Here are some other posts about our animal adventures.

• Love, rescue, spay, neuter, adopt out, vaccinate, and have fun with dogs!
• Miracle Puppy Needs Our Help
• Mighty Hercules: The Story of a Puppy 
• 519 Spay/Neuters in 5 Days!
• Dog Agility: Homemade and Fun!
• How to Build a $5 Dog Agility Jump in 10 Minutes
• Colima Mexico FREE Spay/Neuter Campaign, Day 1

How to Build a $5 Dog Agility Jump in 10 Minutes

Marissa and I bought some PVC pipe yesterday, and decided to try our hand at building our first ever 'professional' dog agility jump. We figured it would take about an hour. Ten minutes later, it was ready for painting! Here are the steps.

The star in these photos is my amazing assistant, Marissa Lepe Preciado.

Step 1: Materials

We bought three pieces of half inch PVC pipe, each one meter long. We also bought four connectors. Be careful to buy connectors with no inside threads. Total cost of all materials, excluding spray paint which we already had, was under $5.


Here are the specs on the pipe we used. It's sturdy enough to withstand slight knocks, but still flexible enough to fall over rather than crack.

You'll need a saw. We happily learned that PVC cuts pretty easily. You'll also want a tape for measuring the height of the jump. A piece of string would work just as well.

We were making a one-pole jump. If you want more levels, just buy one and a half more pipes plus two more connectors per extra level.

Step 2: Design

Decide on a height for your jump. We decided on 35 centimeters, about 14 inches. This is a good height for medium-sized dogs. Chihuahuas will just run under it.

Step 3: Start Cutting

Now take one pipe and measure and cut at 35 centimeters.

Make another 35 cm cut on the same pipe. You should now have three pieces, the third a slightly different length. The two 35 cm pieces will become the sides of the jump.

Step 3: Cut Some More

The third piece becomes a base piece, of which you need four total. Measure the length of the base piece along the second pipe.

Just keep measuring and cutting the second pipe at the same length as the first base piece. When you're done, you'll have four base pieces, including the one from the first pipe, and a little bit left over. Here's the whole assembly, including the third pipe for the crossbar.

Step 4: Assemble!

Now comes the fun part! Make a base by putting two base pieces on the T arm.

Now add one side piece on the third opening.

Make the second base the same way.

Add another connector to the top of each side bar.

Attach the top bar, which is just the uncut one meter third piece of pipe.

You now have a dog agility jump! Total time for us, with NO construction experience, ten minutes!

Gemma approves! My beautiful rescue dog Gemma is twelve years old, and she doesn't jump! Each Saturday, she watches the dog agility antics of her doggy friends with the slightly skeptical eyes of an indulgent great-grandmother.

Step 5: Painting

The painting actually took us longer than the construction. First tape strips of paper to the crossbar and the sides of the jump, keeping the intervals even.

Then spray paint the crossbar and sides. Be careful not to paint across the connections, so the jump will come apart easily for storage. We left the base pieces white, so they wouldn't get mistaken for side pieces when we take the jump apart.

Here's the finished product, ready for jumping!

I'll add a photo of the hurdle in use after Saturday's Dog Agility Club event.

Marissa and I were thrilled that it turned out to be SO EASY and SO CHEAP to build a dog agility jump. Even if you don't do full-on dog agility with your pet, you could have a lot of fun with one or two of these jumps in the back yard. Kids love them too! One day I'll write a whole post about the benefits of dog agility for children. They learn so much about how to respect, to communicate with, and to train dogs.

I hope you've enjoyed this little foray into DIY! We certainly had fun making the jump and documenting the process. I'd love to hear about your own experiences with dog agility or with other DIY projects. If you have any questions, please ask. I look forward to reading to your comments.

Check out these related posts:

• Dog Agility: Homemade and Fun!
• Love, rescue, spay, neuter, adopt out, vaccinate, and have fun with dogs!
• How to Evict a Gecko from the Toilet

Dog Agility: Homemade and Fun!

A few weeks ago, a friend and I started a dog agility club in our home town of Colima, Mexico. With no expertise, no equipment, and no money, we've still attracted a good crowd of enthusiastic club participants, human and canine.

If you've ever thought about trying agility with your dog, but thought it would involve a big investment of time and money, here's how we did it almost for free, and in an hour a week. As you'll see in the photos, the dogs learn really fast!

Videos

The first thing we did was to watch a bunch of Youtube videos. The selection is wide, and they range from professional guidance to finding do-it-yourself props. The link above is to a fairly random page of agility training videos. You can take it from there.

Props

The next thing we did was brainstorm some props. Here's our first.

Buy a plank and put it on some bricks. That's it! The trick is to make sure it doesn't wobble or make noise. Most dogs take a few tries with treats to get the hang of it. Then there's no stopping them! This cutie Schnauzer is Popis.

If you take the plank, turn it on its side, and prop it up with the same bricks, you have a jump. Voila! Popis was a little reluctant at first, but she followed Susie the cocker spaniel right over.

By week three we had two planks at different heights. One a little shorter, lower, and wider for beginners. The other a little longer, higher, and narrower for the pups who wanted more of a challenge. You can see that we hold the club in the side yard of a residential house. Not a lot of space, and we have to use leashes all the time because of the street, but we appreciate having a free, clean space we can use.

We started with holding a hula hoop for a jump. Since we have one person per dog, it was a little awkward keeping the non-jumping dogs out of the way. Prada, a Siberian husky, didn't mind. She loves to jump!

One of our participants had an old bed frame to donate. We cut off the legs, pointed the ends, and made a jump out of the headboard. Sparta, a pit bull, loves it!

We decided to duct tape the hula hoop and some sections of garden hose to stakes, so they would stand up by themselves... sort of... The hula hoop is more rigid and turns out to work better than the cut up hose. We've since graduated to using plastic cable ties, neater and quicker than duct tape. You can see that sometimes the owner needs to go through first, to get the idea across. Cosmo, a Schnauzer, is a champ who runs the whole course with great joy! 

We found that by keeping the stakes longer, we could put them either side up, creating tunnels as well as jumps. We make the tunnels by stretching a black garbage bag across two hoops. I don't have a tunnel picture yet, but will post one this Saturday.

Of course, the most important part of any club is having fun!

Do you have an idea for easy, inexpensive equipment for dog agility? Please share! Next week one of our members is bringing an old tire. I wonder what else we can come up with?!

As always, I look forward to reading and responding to your comments. Thanks for dropping by!

Carole