Flirt Pole

Okay, it's pretty simple really and it's a great work out for your dog. The springpole is aimed for working out the jaws and neck as well as the back muscles and abs of the dog, where as the flirtpole is all about working your dog through agility and jumping exercises by zig zagging and jerking up. If you see a flirtpole for sale online.... Don't buy it!!! It's so cheap and easy to DIY. I made mine for a little over $3. You can refasion it to your taste but keep in mind, does a dog toy really need to be pretty?

So I ran down to my local hardware store (Home Depot) and hit the plumbing section. I grabbed an 8ft length 1in dimeter of PVC pipe. I then welked over to where they kkep the chains and rope and grabbed 13 feet (got 3ft free) of nylon braided rope. Thats all I needed from the store.

Time to get to work.
I grabbed my handy hack saw and cut the PVC down to 6ft (you can cut it to according to your height and the dogs height or don't cut it at all) and then I simply strung the rope through the pipe. For the dogs end, you only want to have a few feet of rope hanging out, the whole point is to make the dog chase it, only alowing him/her to catch it as a reward. Tie a couple of knots on that end at the base of the PVC. Then you'll want to pull out the slack from the other end and tie knots at the base VERY tightly. You can choose to cut off the remainder of the rope or you can just keep knotting it to save that spare rope for a rainy day.
Next is the bite pad.
Alot of people use things like squares of denim, cow hide, leather, burlap, etc.
With our first use I had to train the dogs to chase it so I used a tennis ball since they are ball crazy. At the end of the rope, on the dogs end, you'll wand to use something like a climbers clip (AKA keychain) and tie a couple of really tight knots throug it and then add you bite pad to that. In my case, I drill hole the diameter of the rope through the ball, fed the rope through and tied knots on both sides.
After that it's play time.
Drag the bite pad around on the ground to peak the dogs curiousity. If they have the prey drive, they'll go right at it!

Have fun!

I just made a flirt pole this week!! The dogs love it. I put a rope at the end of the..err.. rope.. lol. My dogs go crazy for their toy rope and they played and played till they could no more!