Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure!
I'm your host Marc Guido. In this week's episode we're going to be testing
out the Rover Roamer Sky Track doggie zip line for keeping your dog restrained
while in a campground, so stay tuned!
So up until now we've been using a cable tie out to keep our dog restrained when
we're in a campground; however, we've been really getting tired of having the
dog get tangled on furniture, and trees and other things around the campsite, so
we decided to invest in the Rover Roamer. This is ... you've seen dog runs that are
like, set up like a zip line where the dog attaches to an overhead cable. Those
are great for a permanent installation where you can screw, you know, a
turnbuckle into each end of the steel cable, but that's really not handy for
portability while traveling from campground to campground. And seeing as
how we are probably going to be in a few more campgrounds than usual this summer,
we decided to invest in the Rover Roamer. Now these are not cheap, and I
will tell you we did buy this ourselves. we made no contact with Rover Roamer
prior to filming this video. We went ahead and bought it ourselves straight
off their website, and we could not be more impressed. Worth every penny. We'll
walk you through everything, showing you what they supply, how well-made
everything is, how we go through set-up, and how Zoe likes it. So let's walk
through everything that's included. We'll start off with, I've got to tell you, this is
one of the best made gear bags that I've ever come across.
It's got tons of interior pockets, tons of exterior attachment points. It is made
with bulletproof giant oversized zippers that alone left us impressed the minute we
took it out of the box. However, I'll show you what's included.
Here in the main compartment, they come in virtually any length you want up to
500 feet long. We decided to go with a 50-foot section because that's likely to
be the most that we're going to need while we're out in a campground, but you
can you can buy any of the components separately. So if you buy a 50-foot and
decide later you want a 100-foot, you can get a hundred feet of this climbing
rope and change your setup pretty readily. This is actually something we
bought separately from Rover Roamer, this is their bungee leash, but we'll be
talking a little bit more about that in a few moments. This is the one that's
included, the bungee leash, they call it a neck saver that they include with the
Rover Roamer Sky Track system itself. This actually goes with the bungee leash, it's
a handle but again we're going to talk about that in a moment. Some handy setup
instruction cards that are really made on heavy grade lightweight cardboard.
We're going to keep those in the main compartment. Now this bag does come with
an optional shoulder strap that we haven't chosen to put on ourselves, but
there it is. Let's see here. Now, let's get to the nitty-gritty of this thing. We'll
open up these two side compartments where I've stowed some of the additional
items. These are the straps that go around posts, trees, utility boxes,
anything that you have to be able to tie off to on each end. Put those over here.
These are the bumpers that allow you to control the length of the dog run on the
line itself. This is a little ratchet tightener that you can use in case one
of these straps is meant to go around a tree that's a little too large for the
strap, but we'll talk about that as well. Let's go over onto this side. This is the
bungee absorber, which helps to take up slack and take up tension on the
overhead line. This is the little wheel ... I don't know what you call this little
doohickey, but this is the thing that runs along the line once we have the
zipline set up. Another carabiner, and clips for each end. So let's go ahead and
show you how we set this up. So these are the tree straps. They're quite
generously long to go around most trees or posts, or anything of that nature, and
they use these really heavy-duty steel buckles that just simply clip in place
like that, they buckle together. Once you select your two anchor points,
then we put one of these around each of the anchor points. We're going to use the
RV on one end, and this large scotch pine tree for the other end. So now you
want to set this up just above head height. You want to get it so it's facing,
so that the D-ring is facing the direction that you're going to have the
pope going. Put that together try and get rid of the twist as much as I can here,
doing this as one person instead of two, and simply tighten this up around the
tree. There we go.
That should be pretty good because the rope will take tension on the rest of
this. And there we have the D-ring facing in the direction that the rope will be
going. Now I want to try to kind of experiment with something. I haven't
tried this yet, so I'm really not sure how it's going to work out, but I want to
try actually attaching the other end to our RV ladder, so that way the zipline
will go right past the trailer door. So now back over here at the tree anchor,
I'm going to take our line tensioner. I'm going to attach one end to the D-ring
with the included carabiner, and we're going to take this ratchet and put it on
the other end of the line tensioner, like so. Now, next we'll take one end of
the rope. Pass both bumpers on the loose end of
the rope. We'll take one of the ratchets, pass the line through the smooth end of
the ratchet and secure it with the teeth in the ratchet, like so.
We'll take the other end of the rope, pass that through the trolley, take our
carabiner, put that through the trolley, lock the teeth. Take our neck safe strap,
also apply that to the carabiner. Now we simply have to hang the line. We'll take
the end with the bumpers, put it right here on our strap that's hanging from
our ladder, and we'll go over to the other end and hang that from the tree.
Now, back over at the tree we're going to take the other end of our line. We're
going to pass it through the ratchet in the exact same manner. Pass it through
the smooth end and we're going to pull tension until the line is as taut as we
want, it and then we'll lock it with the teeth in the ratchet.
So the final step is simply to attach her own leash to the end of the neck
saver at such a length that the leash does definitely reach the ground, but
just by a little bit. And then the dog will simply move along the zip line to
his heart... to his or HER heart's content! Speaking of "her", let's go get Zoe and
see how she likes this.
Good girl! Come here babes. Atta girl!
What do you think? Do you like it? I think we have a winner.
I know. She's not used to the collar. Usually when she's in the house she
doesn't have a collar on. What do you think, girl? Oh yeah, I know you want to go
camping, right? What do you think, you like this? Let's check it out. Good girl. Good...
No! Off! Good girl. So we definitely found ourselves a winner for RV camping
in campgrounds with our dog this summer. If you'd like to know more about the
Rover Roamer, we'll put a link down in the video description to their web page,
so that way you can check it out and see if this is the right solution for you. All
told, all these components, all these pieces cost about $120
and I'll tell you, you'd be hard-pressed to assemble the components
yourself for that amount of money. Again, the link is in the video description
down below. We have no relationship with Rover Roamer, we just wanted to share what
we think is a fabulous product. Now if you liked this episode, please be sure to
give us a big "thumbs up" down below. Also down below you'll find the comment
section, where we always love to hear from you after each episode. Now if
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