About Us
Barbara Emma Speck Meridian Strider Alphie
Barbara
Barbara Persson has been competing in agility since 1999 first with Maddie (a Border Collie from the Clackamas County Animal Shelter), and then with Emma, rescued from PNW Border Collie Rescue. She also has competed with her German Shepherd Dog, Strider. Currently she's competing with Emma, Speck, and Alphie, and in active training with her newest dog, Meridian. With Maddie, Barbara learned many skills on how to work with soft and easily stressed dogs. Although Maddie was retied in 2002, many of those important lessons continue in the classroom.
Teaching Agility since 2005, Barbara currently has students competing in all venues. Her students run with all kinds of dogs from Terriers to German Shepherd Dogs and everything in between.
Competing in USDAA, CPE and AKC have taught Barbara many different skills as all those venues require slightly different skills sets (distance, discrimination, games, etc). Barbara has been active in trial management for all three venues (trial chair, trial secretary, and has done every other major job involved in an agility trial), so is very knowledgeable on each venue's rules and requirements.
Barbara is actively continuing her agility and canine education and regularly attends agility and canine specific seminars around the country. She believes it is important to learn new skills and new methods of handling and passes that information to her students.
Barbara is a Senior Quality Assurance Engineer by day, working for a Fortune 500 company in Beaverton, Oregon.
Back to the TopADCH ADP MACH C-ATCH Emma LAA-Bronze
 Photo by Tien Tran |
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USDAA: ADCh, ADP, Tournament Master-Gold, Standard Champion-Bronze, Relay Champion-Bronze, Snooker Champion-Bronze, Jumpers Champion, Gambler Master, Performance ADCH. LAA-Bronze
AKC: Master Agility Champion, Master Agility, Master Agility Jumpers, Excellent FAST, Herding Started Arena (sheep)
CPE: CPE Agility Championship (C-ATCH)
Multiple High in Trial, and Best in Class wins
Barjor's Virtual Reality Emulator was born near Fossil OR, on a cattle ranch in August 2001. Originally given to one of the ranch hands' family, Emma was kept in a goat pen until the goats needed it and then tied to a tree for a few months. She was finally placed into Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF) rescue and onto the PNW Border Collie Rescue website before she turned 1 year old. She was a blank page, had no training or any idea on how to play with toys, but loved to run and was people oriented. Barbara learned a great deal on how to teach adult dogs how to play, and how to teach fundamental skills to adult dogs.
Emma has been ILP'd as a Border Collie in AKC, although many people assume she is an Aussie because of her docked tail. She competes in USDAA, AKC and CPE agility, and has her AKC started herding (HSAs) title. Known for her tight turns and uncanny ability to read movement, Emma is certainly an exciting dog to watch run (and to run!).
Emma has qualified for USDAA nationals every year since 2004, reaching the Grand Prix semi finals each year. She nearly made the finals in 2007, with a run that was just half a second out of finals. She qualified for 2008 AKC Nationals with previous limited AKC showing in the past and placed 8th in the 20 inch class at the 2009 AKC Nationals.
In the past, Emma ran in the extremely competitive 20 inch (AKC) and 22 inch (USDAA) classes and won many big local competitions. Now that she's over 8, and suffered a back injury in the summer of 2009, she's running at 16 inches in both USDAA and AKC.
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Speck
 Photo by Heather Christenson |
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AKC: Excellent Agility, Excellent Jumpers, Open FAST, Herding Started Arena (sheep)
Multiple High in Trial, Best in Class wins
Keen-Eye Speck was born in Canada on April 12, 2006. Speck comes from nice herding lines, and has many relatives that have done well in herding trials in British Columbia. Long and lean, Speck is proving to be a crowd favorite with his enthusiastic attitude and stunning athletic ability. Standing at 20.5 inches tall, Speck easily clears the 26 inch jumps in competition. After his first year of competing, he is competing in the Excellent Level in AKC and hass qualified for 2008 and 2009 USDAA Nationals, competing in the Master level in USDAA. In 2009, Speck was Demo dog for World Team Tryputs in Hopkins, MN.
Speck has his herding AKC HSAs title and will continue to train and compete in Herding Trials as time allows. Speck is a gifted herding dog, and is amazing to work with both in agility and herding. He is a very biddable dog, and wants nothing more than to do his job.
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Meridian
 Photo by Barbara Persson |
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Keen-Eye Meridian was born Feb 2, 2009 in Canada. She's got an impressive pedigree with Canadian, US, and International Herding Champions scattered throughout.
She's extremely fast, and learns very quickly and a lot of fun to be around. I am currently training her Foundation skills and her training videos will be available on the link above as they become available. Meri will be doing running contacts, learning to weave via the 2x2 method and learning how to jump using Linda Mecklenberg's Developing Jumping Skills. (This is the same method I used with Speck)
Expect her deput in both herding and agility in summer of 2010
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Strider
 Photo by Matt Sachs (Agility Images) |
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AKC: Novice Agility Preferred, Novice Jumpers Preferred
CPE: Level 2
Highest Scoring GSD win
DeBrut's Damn the Torpedoes is the only German Shepherd Dog in the household. He is from nice herding and obedience lines. He has been trained as a Search and Rescue dog (Urban Tracking and Trailing) and is semi-retried from Agility, as he spends most of his time hiking and training in herding with Barbara's husband.
He loves to run agility though, and has taught Barbara many things about how to move effectively with a large dog (he stands 28 inches tall and weighs in at 85 lbs.), who doesn't exactly turn on a dime.
Strider also suffers from performance anxiety at trials and has taught Barbara how to run well with a dog that easily stresses in the ring.
Alphie
 Photo by Joe Camp |
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USDAA: Agility Dog, Starters Standard, Starter Pairs, Starters Gamblers, Starters Snooker, Starters Jumpers
Multiple Best in Class Wins
Alphie is a Papillion and is owned and loved By Judy and Peter Bluett. He's a lot of dog in that little 12 inch body, his nickname is "Cheeky". One of the fastest papillions out there, he's a certainly one to watch in the 12 inch jump height.
Running and training Alphie is a valuble experience. With Alphie, my timing has to be even more precise. He turns tighter than Emma and loves to run agility.
Alphie has acheived his CPE C-ATCH and also his AX, and AXJ in AKC with Judy.
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