Looking for ways to keep his 10-year-old son busy during the pandemic, a Canadian father has come up with the perfect project for his kid to work on that would also keep the neighborhood dogs entertained.

After many months devoid of fun activities, David Carter, an educator in Saskatchewan, realized he had to get creative in order to keep his son Jeremiah busy during the quarantine. Drawing inspiration from a social media post, Carter decided that building a stick library — a place to keep sticks for dogs that want to play fetch — would be the perfect activity for his son.

“We had to do a lot of measuring and figuring to cut the wood and put it all together,” Carter explained. “Plus Jeremiah got to use the power tools, which always makes it a good time.” After they finished building the stick library, they headed to a local dog park, zip-tied the wooden box to a fence, and filled it with sticks.

The duo was surprised when they came back to the park a couple of days later to see that the stick library was a great success. “When we would go to the dog park, there would be no sticks in there or lots of sticks lying around,” Carter said.

He and his son are now planning to build more of the stick libraries and install them at other dog parks in the months to come. “It seems to be a good thing for the community,” Carter said. “It can connect us in a way when we’re not as connected as we normally are.”