In the early 1990’s, there were in existence only 2
flavors of agility: USDAA and Kramer. NADAC came
swiftly afterwards and then AKC. Kramer became UKC
Agility. Into this fledgling world of agility came some
stalwart souls from Kinder-Pup who had either seen
agility done at a demo or on TV or they had been to a
intro seminar and they wanted to continue.
There were 10 people in the first agility class, taught
by Kim Duff. Within 6 months we were up to 20, many who
stayed with us for many years.
The first agility dogs we had were all heavily
obedience trained and Velcro to the max because of
their training. The explosion of learning for humans
about relationships, working confidently at a distance,
teaching without correction, accepting that dog errors
were only a reflection of human errors was so extreme
that it could only be called life changing.
Our first agility dogs suffered the penalties of our
ignorance in so many ways but perhaps the worst part of
their lives is that for all of them, retraining
happened way too frequently as we discovered better
ways to teach and train and had to go back and undo and
redo what had been previously taught. There is not one
human who was with us then who does not crave the
impossible dream of being able to have those first dogs
back if only for an hour to share with them the legacy
they helped create.
There is an old photo, faded now and getting harder to
see, of the original dogs that started agility with us.
There were other dogs that came along during the first
year. These are the founders of PAWZAZZ: Blue indicates they
have gone ahead of us….
Debi Hutchinson, Joppa &
BG
Pam Sutterheim & Spaulding
Karen Koenig &
Mohe
Lynn Sipe & Logan
Karen Chandler & Bud
Terry Wright & Kaji
Followed swiftly by:
Paula Goss & Emily
Jack Bonecutter & Gussie
Ginger Couch & Chelsea
Cindy Knowlton & Zena
Lucy Peacock & Radar
Lynn Sipe & Keegan
Teresa Robinson & Sailor
Debi Hutchinson & Gage
And these are the foundation dogs of PAWZAZZ. To them,
honor beyond words.