Making the Plank

Work is progressing on Henry's practice plank. I ended up using a 2" X 12" X 10' board from the lumber section of Lowe's. I started out with a 10' particle board shelf, but quickly returned it when I realized it was far too slick. Henry couldn't walk across it completely flat on the ground without slipping.

Here's the primed board. I used old exterior latex paint for the priming. As you can see in the picture, I managed to get one can of flat and one can of satin paint because I bought them on separate Lowe's visits. Oh well, that's the least of our worries. I also picked up some pricey anti-skid stuff to add to the paint, but I'm not going to use that unless I have to. It was almost $5 for the little package.

I went with 30" contact zones instead of the regulation 42". I'd like to say I planned this, but actually I just eye-balled what I thought would be a good ratio of yellow to blue paint and completely lucked out getting it right. The regulation board is 12' long with 42" contact areas. Mine is 10' long with 30" contact areas.

Oh yeah, that yellow will wake you up! Initially I planned to leave the contact areas white, but when I looked up the size of the contact areas I saw that the AKC specifically said contact areas shouldn't be white for competition boards, so...I made yet another trip to Lowe's for the yellow paint just in case there's some reason white is bad. It seems to me as long as it contrasts with the darker shade in the middle it shouldn't matter.


I won't be needing the base until after the first of the year, so I'm not going to make that now. I'm just going to use the board for contact practice, maybe raising it just slightly to mimic what we were doing in our last class.