Wall jump

I decided to try to make a wall jump out of some old and new interlocking foam mats.

You can tell that the pillars are faded and made of the old mats.  The wall is made of newer mats.  I also chose yellow and blue as my main colours because dogs are essentially red/green colour blind.  Everything but the curved top pieces are made from 2 foot by 2 foot mats (most recently I bought them from Walmart).  The top pieces are made from thinner 1 foot by 1 foot mats that I bought at a dollar store years ago.   I first tried duct tape and that was not holding so I switched to hot glue. 

Since I train at a place where my friends also train their 26" jumping dogs I made the maximum height 28".  I was actually aiming for 26" but to be able to get all the heights that I wanted (8" to 26" in 2" increments) I ended up with a total of 28".  In retrospect I could have made two 6" pieces instead of the 8" and 6" ones and ended up with a total of 26".  The base and curved top pieces total 8".  The additional pieces are  2", 4", 6" and 8".

A nice feature of the jump is that all the pieces fit in the pillars for easy storage and transport.  I will admit that it is a good thing that the pillars are flexible as I had to force them into the back of my CRV.  I am planning on taking it to the training facility this week and giving it a better test what I could do in my backyard in the snow.

Another very important feature to me is that this jump is less likely to cause serious injuries if a dog hits any piece of it. 

I am not sure how much wind the jump can take and it will be a while before it can be tested on grass.  It will hopefully be fine for indoors and calm days.

Here is a video of me assembling the jump.



Nessa and Taari testing it out in the backyard.






After more testing I can write out the way I would make it the next time (I learned some things along the way) and post it if there is interest.