- This post contains affiliate links. Read more here.
At a little over a year old, Pepper, our rescue Australian Cattle Dog mix, is the Tigger of dogs: she has boundless energy and expresses her joy and excitement with a bounce or several. It’s tough on her when weather conditions like wildfire smoke or heavy snowfall limit outdoor exercise. Enter the Outward Hound Zip and Zoom Indoor Dog Agility Kit.
Agility training is one of the best ways to offer athletic and high-energy dogs mental and physical exercise. Plus it helps pet parents bond with their pups and offers useful training, since it teaches your dog to watch you for cues and recognize a wide range of commands. But can an indoor agility kit really offer the same benefits? Can it actually tire a pup out mentally and physically? Is it a good starter kit for pet parents looking to dip a toe into the water of agility training?
With Pepper’s help, we reviewed the Outward Hound Zip and Zoom and put the popular indoor agility kit to the test to find out.
What’s In the Outward Hound Indoor Dog Agility Kit?
Indoor agility kits are by necessity built on a smaller scale than most outdoor kits, and they’re typically not quite as sturdy. But they do offer a relatively affordable entry point to a variety of different obstacles, especially for small to medium dogs and puppies.
The Outward Hound Zip and Zoom Indoor Agility Kit has a colorful variety of obstacles and its own handbook to get you started. It comes packed neatly in a bright orange sack that you can use to store all your pieces—or even take them with you if you want to play on the go.
What you get:
- Square nylon tunnel, 19 inches long by 15 inches wide by 14.4 inches tall
- Seven poles plus six bases that can be assembled into weave poles and a hurdle
- Two plastic hooks
- Carrying case
- Training instruction booklet
Training begins!
There are some brief instructions to get you started, but this indoor dog agility kit is pretty straightforward.
The nylon tunnel, easily big enough for my 40-pound pup, springs open, held up by a flexible wire frame. The yellow weave poles and hurdle are composed of plastic sticks that fit into bright blue bases. A couple of hooks attach to two of the weave poles so you can set a stick horizontally across to create the hurdle.
Note that you do have to take the hurdle apart if you want to convert these into additional weave poles as you advance your pup’s agility training.
The agility kit pieces are all extremely lightweight, which makes them easy to manage and low impact as an indoor dog toy. The lightness is also somewhat limiting—but more on that later.
Getting Started with an Indoor Agility Kit
I’ve never done agility training before, but Pepper is an eager-to-learn and athletic dog, so it seemed like a pretty natural fit. Fortunately, I had a few tools at my disposal: the kit instructions, which included tips on how to train to each obstacle, and a book that I bought when we first got Pepper, 101 Dog Tricks: Step-by-Step Activities to Engage, Challenge, and Bond With Your Dog.
While the kit instructions were sufficient for simpler tricks, like cueing Pepper to run through the tunnel, I needed a little more help when it came to the hurdle and the weave poles. The easy-to-read book by trainer Kyra Sundance and a rotating cast of dogs devotes a section to obstacle courses—massively helpful.
Per the Outward Hound instructions, we planned to introduce each obstacle separately, then attempt to chain a few together.
Agility Kit Obstacle 1: The Tunnel (Easy)
The indoor dog agility kit tunnel is surprisingly solid for such a lightweight piece. This is a pretty simple trick to teach.
The basics: Put your dog at one end of the tunnel while you are at the other end with a treat. To keep your dog at one end, you can either have a partner stand with them and gently hold them there, or put your dog in a sit-stay at the entrance. Call them from the other side and encourage them to go through the tunnel.
How it went: Since Pepper is pretty solid at sit-stay, I started with her in that position. I called her through, and she had some initial looks around and attempts to go around the tunnel, but pretty quickly she caught on that through was the way to the treat.
After a couple of rounds with me calling her through, we took the next step. Stand at the entrance with your dog and say “tunnel” while pointing into the tunnel. When your dog heads through the tunnel, move alongside them and meet them on the other side with a reward. Pepper flew through that part quickly as well.
Agility Kit Obstacle 2: The Hurdle (Medium)
I wasn’t sure how channeling Pepper’s Tigger bounce into jumping over an indoor agility hurdle would go, but it seemed like a very useful concept! It would be great, after all, to be able to ask her to jump over some obstacle on a walk or hike.
The assembled hurdle is a little flimsy, something corroborated by reviewers on Chewy. It’s also only as wide as those 18-inch sticks. I would say that our medium-sized, 40-pound dog is probably the largest dog that can comfortably jump through.
The basics: Have your dog sit a little way back from the hurdle. With a treat in your hand, guide them over the jump, saying “jump” and treating if they go over.
How it went: We started with the bar on a low-ish setting—enough that a big jump wasn’t necessary to get over. Initially, Pepper preferred to go around instead of over. I tried a few things: Putting obstacles on both sides of the hurdle to encourage her to go over, as well as paying attention to my own body language, which was not always clearly showing her where I wanted her to be.
Around and up we went—it took quite a few tries to lead Pepper over the hurdle, as she had her own ideas about this obstacle.
My husband (our designated photographer) noted that Pepper seemed to follow my body language pretty closely—so he suggested that I show her what I wanted her to do. Awkwardly jumping over a dog hurdle wasn’t something I’d planned to do, but when you’re in, you’re all in.
This is similar to what trainer Sundance suggests in the book: put your dog on a lead and hop over with them a few times. Unfortunately, navigating a dog on a leash and a human over these plastic tubes at the same time isn’t doable—there’s not enough space, and the set will too easily collapse at the swing of a tail.
Eventually, success! Between me jumping over the hurdle and being clearer in how I led Pepper over with a treat, Pepper was starting to figure out what the goal was. She got a couple of good jumps in, along with a few more runarounds.
We came back to the trick the next day, and Pepper went for the jump instead of the runaround much more quickly.
Pepper leaps over the hurdle to treats and glory.
Agility Kit Obstacle 3: Weave Poles (Hard)
According to 101 Dog Tricks, this is one of the hardest dog agility tricks to learn. Can confirm. The poles in this indoor kit are pretty lightweight, enough so there will definitely be a limit to how advanced you can get with this training.
“Let’s do this!”
The basics: Start with two poles, spaced pretty far apart, so your dog has room to go around. In the book, Sundance has you start with your dog standing to the right of the first pole, with you to their right. Holding a treat, say “weave” and lead them around the first pole, then around the left of the second one, and treat.
How it went: We did this a few times, and once Pepper got the hang of it, we added another pole. Pepper essentially follows my finger as I walk alongside and direct her around the poles. While we’re getting there, it will take some time before “weave” connects and Pepper understands what she’s being expected to do without my guidance.
Weave! Following the treat, er, finger, around the second pole.
This one is also the hardest spatially to figure out—how much room do one dog and one human take up as they’re navigating poles in a tiny living room? We definitely had some trial and error figuring out pole spacing and occasionally knocking them over. But the poles are so light that there also wasn’t a lot of drama around a falling pole, and we just set things up and tried again.
If we want to advance this trick much further, we’ll have to use more solid poles that can be moved closer together. Luckily, Outward Hound also has an outdoor dog agility kit.
Putting It All Together
Over three days, I introduced a new trick from this indoor dog agility kit. Each day, Pepper and I reviewed the previous day’s trick before moving on to the next one, starting with the tunnel and ending with the weave.
Once I’d introduced all the tricks, I played with setting up a course of two together at a time, such as the tunnel and the hurdle, or the weave poles and the hurdle. By day three or four, Pepper was an ace at the tunnel and jump combo in particular.
In the course of playing with the kit, I just put the props off to one side, rather than pack them fully away. After a couple of days, Pepper started walking over to the poles and looking like she wanted me to put the course together so we could play. It’s a great indicator that the indoor agility kit has been incorporated into her collection of dog toys!
Is the Outward Hound Zip and Zoom Indoor Dog Agility Kit Worth It?
For a fun, very basic introduction to agility or simply a rainy-day indoor activity, the Outward Hound indoor agility kit is a good investment. Its weight and size, however, limit it to small and medium dogs or large-breed puppies.
We recommend it for pet parents who
- Are looking for an indoor activity that offers deep mental stimulation, especially one with the potential for bonding beyond what puzzle toys can offer
- Want a low-cost entry point for agility training to see if their pup is interested
- Have limited outdoor space
- Want a scalable challenge that grows for long-term engagement
- Are looking for a fun new way to train
But the Outward Hound kit might not be a good fit for pet parents who
- Have a large-breed dog upwards of 40 pounds
- Know they want to dive into serious agility training
- Are working with especially limited indoor floor space
If you’ve got a bigger dog but this test kit has you intrigued, consider a heftier indoor kit—or if you’re running short on house space, try a DIY solution, like hula hoops, which can make both a hurdle and a tunnel (with the addition of some blankets).
And of course, this kit’s three obstacles are just a start. When you’re ready, you can graduate to an outdoor kit, where a whole world of possibilities awaits.
Ultimately for us, this was, and continues to be, a rewarding experience for dog and human, and a nice introduction to what agility training has to offer.
Further Reading
Looking for more training activities? Consider working with a professional trainer. Apps like Good Pup offer private virtual training—and the Rover editorial staff have had a blast working on everything from sits and stays to trickier problems like separation anxiety and leash reactivity.
