Competitor Spotlight: Mary Ellen Barry

Meet an agility innovator, trainer and champion from Pennsylvania.

This article was originally published in the April 2026 OVERview digital magazine.

Mary Ellen Barry and Maizy

Mary Ellen Barry of Norristown, Pennsylvania, has been a longtime member of the USDAA community, having started training in the sport in 1994. In February 1999, she was the first to envision an indoor winter trial at a horse barn in the Northeast. After finding a barn to rent that could handle a competition-sized ring as well as crating, her ideas came to fruition with the help of Keystone Agility Club. Entries for that first winter show were so large that after realizing how much time was lost to handwritten scribe sheets, she helped to conceptualize the idea of preprinting them.

In 2001, a year after USDAA moved its Dog Agility Masters^® National Championships from Fair Hill, Maryland, to another venue, Mary Ellen founded KineticDog to continue bringing agility opportunities to Pennsylvania and its neighboring states. She and her team worked alongside the Keystone Agility Club to run one of USDAA’s largest local shows in conjunction with Fair Hill International from 2002 to 2009, consistently hosting over 2,500 runs in three rings over three days. To this day, KineticDog continues to host USDAA trials alongside its regular classes and seminars.

“Group FH Mud” from their final show at Fair Hill in 2009 at the end of the weekend after packing up the trailers

Previously a CPA and accounting manager at various companies, Mary Ellen made agility her full-time career after spending the summer teaching it in 2003. Her ability to break down and explain concepts to students has made her a popular seminar presenter, and she is one of only a handful of OneMind Dogs coaches in the U.S. Additionally, she was a contributor for over 13 years to Clean Run Magazine, the world’s largest agility training magazine before it ceased publication in December 2020.

After leaving accounting in 2003, Mary Ellen began full-time instruction at Orchard Hills Training Center in Barto, Pennsylvania. This was one of the first full-time indoor dog training facilities in the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast U.S. In 2006, Mary Ellen began researching alternative flooring as she was frustrated with the performance of the dirt floor. She contacted Sprinturf, and after explaining to them that she wasn’t crazy for wanting to use their flooring for dogs, Sprinturf was laid at Orchard Hills. This was the first application of their artificial turf for a dog training facility.

Orchard Hills eventually became such a popular venue for USDAA trials that there were more than eight clubs regularly hosting trials. At one point, there were 18 USDAA trials per year being held there, with most of them offering two rings of competition. Pennsylvania got its own course reviewer to help carry the workload!

One of the highlights of Mary Ellen’s dog career was being invited to have the dogs perform at the Philadelphia Phillies Phanatic’s 40th birthday party in 2019. The KineticDog team entertained the fans with a knockout competition in which the final round included the Phanatic himself running Mary Ellen’s Border Collie, Z.

Philadelphia Phillies Phanatic and Mary Ellen Barry's Z

Mary Ellen and her dogs have had great success through the international level, earning six gold medals and multiple other podium finishes across six IFCS and WAO World Championships. She also coached the 2015 WAO team in The Netherlands and became a USDAA judge during the pandemic to further support her local community. Now, she shares her home with her dogs Styx, Joe, Bantr and the retired Z and Athena.