How To Build A (Passable) Earthdog Practice Tunnel From One Piece of Plywood

For the past year or so, I've had to drive all the way to St. Louis (about 10 hours, round trip) for Moe to practice earthdog.  Missouri Earthdogs has a very nice set of tunnels there, and it's been a lot of fun meeting new people.  However, after the last long driving day a few weeks ago I decided it was time to build some tunnels a little closer to home.

Most earthdog tunnel plans that I've found online seem to be for people with lots of space and room to bury them.  Since I have neither, some modification was in order. 

I started investigating, and quickly figured out that I could easily make a small, one-turn tunnel with 2 pieces of plywood.  However, that was going to leave a lot of wood left over; since we don't really have room to store it and I hated to just throw it away, I decided I needed to get it down to just one piece of wood.

Between Sweet Husband and I, it took a little math and head scratching to figure out the best way to do it, but here is basically how we cut the wood.

And here's how we put it all together.

Although I'm very inexperienced as of yet, I think this tunnel will work, at least for my purposes right now.  Moe--who is currently working on his senior earthdog title--isn't having problems with the additional tunnel length.  If he was, I don't think I would use this short of a tunnel for fear he would balk at something longer when it came time for a test.  Moe's major problem right now is recall, and I think we can work that in a short tunnel just as easily as a long one.  Or, at least, I hope so. 

There are a few more pictures here.

Comments

[Patricia Mims]

We would like to put a link to your tunnel building notes on our club website. Do you mind??

[Scot Dollinger]

Hello,
Am trying to build a "Go to Ground" tunnel consistent with what you show here out of single sheet of plywood. Am at a lose as to how you use: (1) the 2 1ft by 9.5 inch pieces and (2) the 2 4ft by 2ft pieces. All else I can pretty much figure out. More pictures and detail might be helpful.

scot

[scot dollinger]

Sorry, I should have asked: "Am at a lose as to how you use: (1) the 2 1ft by 9.5 inch pieces and (2) the 2 2ft by 9.5 inch pieces. All else I can pretty much figure out. More pictures and detail might be helpful."

[Meryl]

The 2 foot pieces form the floor and the lid of the rat box. I believe the 1 foot pieces ended up being scrap.