Clean Run - April 2020 - 36

doing in our own agility classes. Bud was a judge as well as
an instructor and competitor, and he shared reflections on
what was happening in agility training and competition in
different parts of the country. He got instructors from the
different clubs he visited to share their training plans with
the newsletter. Often, hand-drawn sequences from people
would just be pasted in with the text." In fact, one of the
first issues included a photocopy of a fax from Stuart Mah
sharing training ideas he had after attending a trial. Monica
recalls, "Although Clean Run continued to be written and
produced as a weekly-since weekly lessons were how we
approached training agility-we started mailing two issues
every two weeks to save postage and labor. None of us were
being paid back then."
Click here for a complete copy of Vol. 1, #1 with Stuart Mah's fax

4. Agility competitor, instructor, and contributor Nancy Gyes
has many memories of the evolution of Clean Run.
"My first article for Clean Run
was published on October 25,
1996. It was a "Handler Spotlight," which became a regular
part of Clean Run for some
years. This first article was
actually the second part of an
interview I started with Susan
Garrett and had been originally published in a different
U.S. agility magazine. That magazine went out of business,
and Monica Percival asked me to finish that article in Clean
Run. I did not start writing monthly agility exercises for
Clean Run until a couple of years later. I stuck with interviewing other handlers for the publication and the occasional educational article.
I have every issue of CR since 1995 and have been a subscriber all that time. In looking through some of the old
issues, I found what might have been one of my first real
training article from 1999. It was a collaboration on teaching recalls. What fun to look through old issues and see
that so many of the exercises that all the great instructors
created for those issues in the early years would still be
useful and fun to run today.
At some point, Monica asked me to start doing monthly drills/
courses, and they were titled Thursday Nights at Power Paws. I
think I resisted for a while, but she bought a laptop for me and a
couple of other writers so we could get work done on the road,
and it was all uphill from there! Those original 'Thursday nights'
morphed into the Power Paws drills, which I still do today for the
magazine. Clean Run also published my first book, Alphabet Drills.
It's been quite a ride, and I thank Monica and the entire staff for
my almost 25 years of association in publications, camps, and
books and for supporting all my writing endeavors. I look forward
to many more years of friendship with Clean Run Productions."

5. Linda Mecklenberg, who eventually became part owner of Clean
Run for a time, shares her early
memories:
"When agility began in the USA,
few agility enthusiasts had much
dog training experience, but none
had agility training experience
because the sport was brand new.
There were no agility books, no
DVDs, no seminars, and no online
classes to refer to. There was no Internet to facilitate the transfer
of information. Agility was taught primarily at clubs scattered
hundreds of miles apart; communication between them was
very limited. Different styles of handling and training techniques unique to that regional area often emerged.
In 1995, Clean Run became an important resource through
which aspiring agility instructors and trainers could share information. A scientist by nature, I loved agility back then because
there were so many puzzles to solve. About halfway through
Clean Run's first year, I started contributing and sharing some
of my ideas. One of my first articles was about how I trained for
distance control. Agility was growing and changing rapidly; I often wrote that year, as did others. Through Clean Run, we shared
ideas with the rest of the USA, for the sheer love of the sport. I
wrote about wait-for-release contacts, rudimentary versions of
which way to turn, the dog's line, shaping, layering, and other
topics that were novel back then. That year I happened to be a
member of the USA World Cup team that competed in Belgium,
so, along with Stuart Mah, we filled two issues analyzing the
courses and designing drills based on them. Those were likely
the first FCI courses most handlers in the USA had ever seen.
Clean Run was not only a source of training and handling ideas;
but now course designs of different judges and organizations, and
even different countries, could be shared and learned from.
For me, it has been amazing to watch the sport of dog agility grow over the years. The difference between agility when
I started, and what it is now, is mind-boggling. Thank you
to Clean Run for the role you played in the evolution of the
sport, and for giving me a platform from which I could contribute to that evolution as well!"
Linda joined Bud and Monica as an editor of the magazine in
1997 and served in that position for many years.
After attending the 1995 USA World Cup in Belgium, Linda
along with Stuart Mah filled two issues analyzing the courses
and designing drills based on them. Those were likely the first
FCI courses most handlers in the USA had ever seen. Click here
for a complete copy of these issues.

6. It wasn't long before Clean Run, the magazine, became Clean
Run, the store, at least on a very small scale. Monica says, "The
first product we sold was the Introductory Agility Workbook in
1996. We created two more books in that series." Sales occurred
at Monica's seminars and at agility trials, so in addition to the
workbooks, "we started carrying a few other things: Zuke's
Clean Run | April 20

https://www.cleanrun.com/feature/clean_run_25th_anniversary_part_4/index.cfm https://www.cleanrun.com/feature/clean_run_25th_anniversary_part_5/index.cfm https://www.cleanrun.com/feature/clean_run_25th_anniversary_part_5/index.cfm https://www.cleanrun.com/feature/clean_run_25th_anniversary_part_5/index.cfm https://www.cleanrun.com/feature/clean_run_25th_anniversary_part_5/index.cfm https://www.cleanrun.com/feature/clean_run_25th_anniversary_part_5/index.cfm

Clean Run - April 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - April 2020