Weekend Project: Organizing Agility Equipment

Over the years, our agility equipment has slowly taken over our backyard.  With the recent addition of our $40 jumps, we had to do something to get everything out of the grass.  The pieces of equipment that posed the biggest problems were the weave poles, the tunnel, and the two new jumps.

 We needed to keep them somewhere dry, and preferably off the ground, to prevent mold and spiders from living in them. The happiest option would have been getting a special shed just for agility equipment and dog related training tools, but that was also the most expensive option, and we had a limited budget.

After walking around the yard, we decided that the best spot was the wall next to the back door.  This wall is under the porch overhang, so it provides protection from the elements, and is in a convenient location for us to be able to access our agility equipment.

So, with a quick trip to the hardware store, our dream came to life.   Here is what we did, and how we did it.

Materials:

• A screw gun, with a drill bit and a Phillips head screw driver bit
• screws
• a level
• utility brackets, these came with screws
• bicycle hanging brackets, these ones have foam padding

Total Project Cost: $20 (we already had the screw gun, screws, and level)

We decided to hang the tunnel first.  To mark where to hang it so that we could easily reach it, we slipped the bicycle hanging brackets into the tunnel and spaced them so that the tunnel sat snugly in them.  Then, Olivia heaved the tunnel up and held it in place, while I quickly marked the holes for the screws with a pencil.

The next step was to drill the pilot holes into the wall at each pencil dot.  Once that was completed, Olivia held each bicycle bracket in place while I put the screws in the wall.  Once the first screw is in place, the bracket can be scooched back and forth until it is level. Don't worry if they aren't 100% level, remember: you're hanging agility equipment, not artwork.

 

Now that we had the tunnel happily in place, we moved on to hanging our new jumps.  We hung these much the same way as the tunnel, except that instead of needing one person to hold the jumps while the other marked the wall, we each took one bracket.  With one jump across the brackets, we held them against the wall and put a level on the jump to make sure it was hanging flat.  Then we each marked the spots for the holes and drilled.  We then screwed the brackets into place and hung our jumps.

 

The last problem we had was how to secure the weave poles.  We wanted to be able to leave the stick-in-the-ground end (if you don't know what I'm talking about go here) on the poles, but scratch up the porch. And, of course, we wanted them to fit prettily with our newly organized tunnel and jumps.

So, we hunted around until we found this! It was originally intended to be an umbrella stand...

When we bought it, it was a mottled red-black, but we didn't like it, so we spray painted it robin's egg blue. Now we have a nice, neat back porch and our agility equipment can stay safe when it rains!

-- Emma & Olivia

Meaty Monday: Raw Cat Food Resources

In all our research, the web has definitely been our best resource-finding tool.  To begin learning about raw feeding cats, we searched for others who switched their cats and kittens to raw food.  Our favorite site we stumbled across is rawfed.com. Through this we were able to find information on raw feeding both dogs and cats.  Following the link to rawfedcats.org, Linda Zurich's website about the ins and outs of feeding cats a biologically appropriate diet. Being a cat aficionado herself, Zurich understands and addresses the difficulties of switching cats from kibble, or "doom nuggets" as she calls them, and gives a step-by-step guide to converting your cat.  We also searched through Amazon.com to find any raw feeding book specifically for cat owners.  The only one we found was Whole Health for Happy Cats by Sandy Arora.  In this book, she gives an in-depth explanation of not only feeding raw, but also providing holistic care for your cat.  Arora provides numerous recipes and colorful pictures to make the book an interesting and fun read.

Meaty Monday: Freezer Organization

With five dogs on a raw food diet, we have to stock pile meat and veggies, unless we want to go on daily visits to the grocery store to feed our dogs.  We decided that we did not want to have to go to the store weekly, either, which means that we can not simply refrigerate the dog food.  So, that means that we buy in bulk and freeze the dogs' meals.  In the books we read, the recommended method was to buy a big box of meat, stick it in the freezer, and chip off the parts we wanted to feed every day.

Since a giant 40-pound block of chicken backs will not fit in our tiny freezer in the laundry room, and the kitchen freezer was declared "human food only", we couldn't freeze the way the books taught.  We also wanted a way to facilitate feeding, and so we would remember what to feed who and when, so Olivia came up with what we dubbed "the bag method." This consisted of having a baggie for every meal of the week for each dog.  Then, we put the bags in containers labeled with the dogs' names and stuck them in the freezer.

 This method sufficed for a little while, however there were some pretty prevalent issues that could not be over looked.  First and foremost, this method took up wwwwaaaaaaayyyy too much room in the freezer.  There was also the problem of the meat freezing to the bag, so if we ever forgot to thaw the dogs' breakfast or dinner, we had to pry the meat off of the plastic while praying that we didn't rip a giant hole in the bag and have to replace it.  We also had to wash the bags by hand if we didn't want to spend a gazillion dollars buying plastic baggies.  This meant that at the end of each week we ended up with a sinkful of dirty bags that no one wanted to wash and dry.
So, that left us stumped. We wanted a simpler storage method that also had an easier washing solution.  Ideally, we could toss the meat into containers and stack them in the freezer. But how could we make the RMBs not stick together? 

Here is our solution:

Chicken wings are Tucker and Spryte's favorite RMB!

When we buy the food, we grease two of our "dog" cookie sheets with olive oil and lay out the meat so that it freezes in individual pieces. That way, when all of it is put in a container, it doesn't stick together.  The first day or two is spent freezing all the meat, but once it's done, it will last for three or four weeks! After freezing, we pull the trays out of the freezer and quickly dump all the RMBs into their designated container.  Daisy's RMB's are too big to fit in any of our containers, so we still use baggies for her.  However, instead of putting individual meals in the baggies, we use them as mass storage devices. Usually, we can fit 4-5 chicken leg quarters or 6-8 chicken backs into one gallon-sized freezer bag.

We found an old dry-erase calendar, wrote out the feeding schedule with the amounts for each dog and stuck it to the front of our freezer. Now, we just check the schedule and pull out the pieces we need as we need them.  Then, when a container is emptied, we can just throw it in the dishwasher and grab a different one to fill! Our freezer is also now spacious enough for the all important half gallon of ice cream that can't fit into the kitchen freezer.

So much more room!

 Eventually, we removed the ice maker to create even more space, and now we can fit in enough meat and veggies to last us almost a month and a half!

--Emma