Please click on the picture below for a bio about each of the 2025 Judges and sample course plans:
Aaron Froude, originally from Newfoundland and currently living in New Brunswick Canada, has been competing in agility since 2010, and became an agility judge in 2014. Aaron is an agility coach with FlatOut Dogs, with students across the globe, and was The FitPaws WAO Team Canada coach for 2018 & 2019.
Aaron is also on Team Canada, with his dog Crave, competing at the 2023 FCI Agility World Championships.
Aaron has judged all across Canada, from local trials, UKI Canadian Open in 2018, the UKI US Open in 2022 and again in 2023. He also completed the Global Judging Program in early 2020, receiving his International Judging Accreditation.
He is super excited and honored to be invited to judge the 2025 FitPaws World Agility Open!
I am an agility lover from Norway. I started my agility career with my Flat-coated Retriever 20 years ago. Now I judge, hold seminars and we have our own amazing agilitycenter in the South-East of Norway.
I am very passionate about dogs feeling of empowerment in the agility course, that the lines makes sense for dogs and that the team get to show the skills that they have trained.
I am Marko Mäkelä from Finland and I've been competing in agility since 1995, with various breeds - Shelties, Border Collies, Spanish Water Dogs, Papillon etc. At the moment my full-time job is teaching and coaching agility under my company Ykslysti. I do it in Finland and also in other countries.
I have now been a judge since the end of 2017. I feel truly honoured to be invited to judge already so many cool competitions both in Finland and internationally. Now being invited to judge The FitPaws World Agility Open is just amazing! A huge honour, I can't wait to see you all running on my courses.
Personally, I like to run challenging courses with speedy lines and hopefully with some possibilities to have variations both in dogs' lines and handling options. And of course, that's also my goal when I'm designing courses as a judge - to have a course with speed, a proper amount of challenge for the level of class, safe lines, options, and variations for handling and dogs' lines.
I always enjoy seeing dogs and handlers having fun on the courses I judge and teach! It keeps me going on - the joy and fun of agility! See you at FitPaws WAO 2025!
