First thoughts on building a backyard dog playground

Guest post by Sean as we move into our new house

We recently bought a house. Haley, Scout, and I are all pumped!

Coming from an apartment, we’re most excited about having a yard. (Or, at least Scout is, considering she immediately plopped herself in the mulch and sunbathed while Haley and I worked on the remodeling.)

We’re lucky our yard has a tall, solid fence. It gives us a nice level of isolation and containment — and means we can let Scout run around carefree in our yard without either us or her having to worry about anything else going on in the environment.

This gives the yard the perfect energy for it to become Scout’s new playground. (And as I wrote about before, I think the right environment matters a lot for playing with our dogs.)

Childhood reminiscing: flexible, fun playgrounds

When I was a kid, the best play equipment sparked creativity. And that creativity made for better play, creating a positive feedback loop of childish joy.

In our backyard growing up, we had the classic playset with a slide and swings (which we regularly used in ways the creators probably never intended). Ten-year-old me loved to kick footballs over the bar that held the swings, pretending I was making a game-winning field goal.

But the best was when we went to one of those parks with the big, new, shiny playgrounds. You know — the ones where you could play “the ground is lava” and actually not get bored within two minutes because you were just hopping back and forth between two platforms.

Here, we could play for hours and have a blast without ever really defining the rules of the games we were playing. The same piece of equipment could be used a dozen different ways.

What is a dog’s play paradise?

So what is Scout’s ideal playground? How can we turn our new yard into a wonderful play space like the ones from my childhood? What do we need to do to make it an environment that all three of us can have fun?

As someone who has been pulled into the dog world (kicking and screaming), I’ve seen all the classic dog agility equipment and obstacle courses. And honestly (please don’t hate me), I’ve never been very impressed.

Mostly, that’s just really not my thing. I’d rather be doing nerdy science stuff than watching a dog jump through hoops. To each their own!

But also… agility looks a lot more like precision training and repetitive behaviors than a good old-fashioned fun time. I certainly have an appreciation for all of the work and relationship building that must go into training a dog for any sport now, but from my perspective, I still see a lot less smiling.

Precision has a place!

Some of my days as a kid were spent kicking a football at the swingset (field goal), missing, running to grab the ball, setting it back up, missing again, all to finally make it over the bar on the 20th try. Then I would back up even farther and begin again.

This pursuit of a difficult goal through repetitive, intentional behavior gave me valuable life skills. I learned about perseverance and fortitude. It taught me to push through discomfort and deal with frustration healthily (that is, after I kicked the playset in anger and stubbed my toe… for the third time).

So does “unrestricted” play

Open-ended play taught me a whole host of other things, like cooperation and creativity. Because of these experiences, I’m much more open-minded. I’m comfortable in new environments or with little direction. I’m confident solving problems (sometimes too confident, ask Haley about remodeling our house).

All of these lessons I’ve learned — both “diligent” and “out there” — would be great things to teach Scout. While I find that the skills from precision work and open-ended play are both awesome, I think play is a lot more valuable for our unique lives and personalities. Shy Scout isn’t that unlike young Sean.

Decision time: what does this actually look like?

Homemade dog sports sound cool

As a working breed, Scout would probably get into dog sports, but I think with that drivey, manic energy rather than loose playfulness.

There definitely are a lot of positives, though. It would fulfill some of her desire to work for us and could build her confidence and strengthen our relationship by bonding over difficult tasks. (Maybe wall climb is in our future? Agility?)

I’m not really that into precision training, but I know Haley enjoys the feeling of having taught Scout a difficult behavior.

The question is, would we even use agility equipment when we could be doing some ridiculously unorthodox wacky shenanigan instead? Probably, but not as often.

Creativity is the top goal

Most of all, I want to build equipment in our yard that inspires creativity and play. I don’t want there to be a “right” way to do it before Scout has even set a paw on it for the first time.

The dream is to have cheap, do it yourself equipment that doesn’t take up too much space (or better yet, can be put away once we are done with it).

I think this would give us a nice mix of being able to work on specific tasks and just have a good time. I still plan on playing with Scout with classic toys like frisbees and ring tugs, but I want to create a playground that provides an entirely new level of enrichment.

Conveniently, it would also satisfy my engineer’s itch to build things. Let’s see how it goes!