Contact Wicket
04 Mar 2007
Previously, I had made a Contact Hoop for helping Meeker hit his contacts; after working with Dana Pike on contacts she pointed out I needed to change his contact point for the smaller USDAA upside dog walk contact. So I needed to make another contact hoop. This time I decided to make a wicket style hoop.
Wicket hoops are simple and cheap to make, here is the parts list:
- One 10 foot length of 1/2 inch PVC
- Two 90 degree PVC connectors
- Two "T" connectors
- PVC glue (optional)
The PVC parts were less than $10 and you just need a hand saw to cut the PVC.
The only decisions to make are how high and wide to make the wicket. I went with a wicket a little taller than Meeker; he is just under 21 inches at the withers so I cut the vertical pieces to 26 inches, I figured about 8 inches for each of the four legs, that left 36 inches for the width. For a bigger dog or if you want a wider hoop for use with wide A Frames you might need a second piece of PVC (then you might as well make two while you are at it). Here is a picture of the assembled hoop with Meeker standing under it:
Meeker and His New Contact Wicket
Since I transport these to Meeker’s classes I decided to not glue the pieces entirely together. I only glued the legs and uprights to the “T” connectors and glued the 90 degree connectors to the vertical piece. At class I just jam the pieces together.
Disassembled Contact Wicket
So by placing the first wicket about 4 feet out from the upside and the second wicket about 5 feet out from the downside, Meeker is now consistently hitting the up and downside contacts on the dog walk at full speed. I will remove the downside wicket and start adding his stops once the weather allows us to work outdoors. Then I’ll start removing his upside wicket after that.
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