Clean Run - October 2012 - 49

A Look at Natural Outdoor Agility Footing
By Brenna Fender Whether you are outfitting your backyard for agility training or preparing an outdoor ring for your agility club or training center, the options are many. How do you decide what natural surface will provide the best footing, while still being affordable with maintenance you can handle? First, you need a flat surface. Holes, hills, and humps can provide challenges for handlers to navigate and may even cause falls. “I think what people like most about our facility is that the running area is nice and flat and handlers don’t have to worry about stepping in a hole or rolling an ankle,” says Burl Cavanaugh of the Manitowoc County Kennel Club in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The MCKC’s facility comes highly recommended by competitors who like the footing there. Getting a flat surface to begin with isn’t always easy. Cavanaugh says, “What is now our one-acre agility trial area was a low wetland area 10 years ago. I called local construction companies asking them for clean fill. After one year we accumulated about 2,000 yards of fill.” Lee Carr of Hog Dog Productions, another agility facility that competitors rave about, says, “[Our] field was a cornfield when I bought the property. I had the farmers turn under the corn and till the land. I then raked the surface to a fairly flat level.” Bonnie McDonald of Sonlight Ranch also had challenges while building her now excellent agility rings. “I hired a construction contractor to do the site prep and leveling. The area was not level initially and had to be ‘carved out’ of the landscape.” Costs for preparing your surface could range from just the cost of equipment used to up to several thousand dollars or more. Do you want your field perfectly flat or do you want a crown (where the surface is slightly higher in the middle and slopes down on all sides) or a gentle slope to assist with drainage? Weather in your area and personal preference may help you decide. Dave Scheuner of the Western Agility Group says of his outdoor agility fields, “We had about 30 double dump trucks of fill dirt brought in to raise the back lawn area and add some slight sloping for drainage.” Crowns can decrease the amount of space that can be used for a ring. Cavanaugh says, “I wanted a nice crown on our field in case we had rain during an agility trial. Because of the crown on the field the outside

If you live in an area of the country where grass grows fairly easily, and your agility area is not extensively shaded by trees or a roof, you may want to use a grass surface since it generally provides good footing and is fairly easy to maintain. But, providing a high-quality grass surface often requires more than putting up ring gating and mowing every so often. Creating a great grass-filled agility ring may require you to do some major prep work.
October 12 | Clean Run

The Grass Is Always Greener

How do you dec ide what natural surface will provide the best footing, and th at you can afford with maintenan ce you can handle ?

Clean Run - October 2012

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