It’s not just puppy love with owner and exceptional dog

Scott Dickensheets

Thursday, March 28, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Henry Pfiester has a "Beware of dog" sign outside his southeast Las Vegas home, but come on, it can't have anything to do with Keleigh. The 5 1/2-year-old border collie couldn't be more even-tempered and nuzzle-your-hand welcoming. The sign obviously applies to Pfiester's three other dogs.

But as you park your keister on Pfiester's couch, idly scratching Keleigh's jaw as she rests it on your lap, you'll want to avoid glancing into the den. That's where Pfiester hangs a huge photo of Keleigh, all chomp and aggression, trying her doggonedest to bite the padded arm off a "bad guy" in a protection-dog exercise. And now she's resting her head where?

Niiiiice doggie ...

But don't worry, self-control is her strong suit. Anyway, that big picture is only a small part of the picture when it comes to Keleigh, who, if Bruce Jenner had been born a dog, would be that dog. A regular five-sport puptathlete.

"I might be wrong, but I know of only one other border collie in the U.S. that's titled in as many areas," Pfiester says. "And I think we're tied with that dog."

Keleigh -- pronounced "kee-lee," after a town near the Scottish-English border, where the breed originated -- has earned high marks in schutzhund, obedience competition, flyball, agility contests and herding -- all of which may be gibberish to you, but which means Keleigh is one driven dog and her owner one committed cat. (Of course, you already know that from the sign on Pfiester's door: "This house is maintained for the comfort and security of my dogs. If you cannot accept that, you cannot accept me. So go away!")

If it's true that owners and pets begin to resemble each other, then Pfiester still has a long way to go. For instance, he doesn't yet have brown and white fur sprouting all over his body. Rather, he's thin and wiry-haired, and his demeanor suggests a certain intensity you'd expect of either a clinical virologist or hobbyist dog-trainer, both of which Pfiester is. On the other hand, Keleigh's easygoing manner offers nary a hint of the intensity she's capable of.

"She's very unassuming, very docile," says animal photographer Tom Nanes, who's snapped many of Keleigh's exploits. "But when Henry gives her the command, she can rip you to shreds."

Dog and man do have some things in common, particularly a love of competition and a keen understanding of each other. She's a thinking dog, and he's a thinking dog's man. "Sometimes I'll look at the dog and know exactly what she's thinking," says Pfiester, who once owned part of a dog-training business. "Sometimes I'll be thinking about something I want her to do, and she'll just start doing it." That sensitivity to each other's body language has been built up over countless hours of training together.

Another thing they share: three languages. "Platz!" Pfiester barks, German for "down," when he wants Keleigh to stay. She's also fluent in English dog commands and, because was around when Pfiester trained a dog in Japanese, Japanese. Let's see Lassie pick up an Oriental tongue by accident.

The German comes in handy during schutzhund competitions. Being a purist of a sort, Pfiester figures German sport, German commands. A multipart trial testing a dog's obedience, tracking and protection skills, schutzhund was initially designed to test German shepherds and it retains a strict Germanic ethos: Unlike many animal contests, this one makes no allowances for differences in breed. Competing dogs are expected to do everything a shepherd can do.

Like not flinch at gunfire. To test the animal's mettle, a gun is fired during the dog's heeling routine. That separates the dogs from the pups. "The dog can show no fear or break from the pattern," Pfiester says.

Keleigh's self-control really comes into play during schutzhund's protection phase. Owner and unleashed dog enter a field of teepee-shaped objects. Hiding by one is a guy -- the agitator -- swathed in padding. Following its training, the dog circles the objects in search of the bad guy.

"When they find him, they are to sit and bark without biting," Pfiester says. After 20 or 30 seconds of that, the agitator makes a sudden move. The dog pounces. Once Keleigh has latched onto the perp's arm, he smacks her twice with a padded stick.

"It's not just a threat, but an actual physical attack," Pfiester says. "If the dog drops off the sleeve or shows shyness, it's failed.

"What all of this shows is a dog that is well-trained to perform its protection aspect but is under control at all times," Pfiester says. "This is not a dangerous junkyard dog. She will only attack under certain circumstances."

As part of Keleigh's protection training, Pfiester takes her to the park to observe kids roughhousing with each other. "If she shows any form of aggression, she's immediately corrected. She learns that that's inappropriate."

Not to worry -- Keleigh's a natural. "Of all the dogs I've owned over the years (about a dozen of his own; he's trained more than 120), she's the best complete protection dog."

All of the above, mind you, is just for one competition.

Nanes has accompanied Pfiester to many competitions and documented Keleigh in a disparate range of obedience, agility and herding trials. "I started to tell Henry, 'What she's doing not a lot of other dogs can do.'"

"Very, very, very few dogs have the temperament to do all these kinds of work," Pfiester agrees. "She has what I call a fire in the belly. She wants to work. To a well-bred border collie, work is play and play is work."

Last weekend, Pfiester and Keleigh competed in an American Kennel Club agility competition in San Diego. Competitors run an obstacle course made up of various jumps, tunnels and other impediments. "The one thing judges want to see more than anything else is control," Pfiester says. "Speed is secondary."

An example of the control required: On the seesaw, dogs have to go up one side, pause at the fulcrum and wait for the other side to come down before continuing. Keleigh came in second.

She did better at her last AKC obedience trial, about two years ago: first place. As for flyball -- in which teams of dogs relay-race down a hurdled course -- Keleigh's team took first place during its most recent outing, four weeks ago in Las Vegas. It must run in the Milk Bones: her daughter, Nell, was on the third-place squad.

But for sheep thrills, nothing beats herding competitions. Typical was the one Pfiester and Keleigh went to in September in Pomona, Calif. At one end of the grassy infield of the Pomona racetrack, five sheep loitered. At the other end, so far away he could barely see them, Pfiester stood at a handler's post.

Using shouted commands and whistles, he sent Keleigh circling behind the sheep. She then had to drive them down and across the field, through a series of obstacles and into a pen. Without touching them. Without deviating from a straight path. She placed seventh among 20 dogs, not bad when you consider she was up against professionals.

"You have to understand that the dogs she was competing against were working sheep-ranch dogs who do this every day of their lives," says Nanes, who was there.

At one point, Keleigh went eye to ewe with a recalcitrant sheep. Imagine the control it takes for a dog trained to attack bad guys to refrain from biting the face off a snarky sheep.

"It's an extreme control exercise," says Pfiester, who keeps several sheep in Calico Basin to train his dogs.

Alas, the competition doesn't test how well dogs guard against those sneaky wolves who tunnel beneath the flock and yank unsuspecting sheep down through small holes in the ground. But you know Keleigh would be poised at the tunnel's mouth when the wolf emerges, ready to drop an anvil on it.

"There's literally nothing that dog cannot do," Pfiester says proudly. She was even in a local car dealer's commercial, pretending to drive a BMW, which she probably could do if Pfiester would teach her to drive a stick. "She's more versatile than most people I know." And he's probably closer to her than most people he knows.

"The bond -- it's as close as I can think of coming to communicating with an alien being. And it's not just one-way; they communicate back to me. Getting into the dog's head, seeing the world the way the dog sees it -- when you get that bond, you can get the best of what that animal has to give."

The human, too.

"The second I step foot on that field, nothing else in the world exists other than me and the dog. And during the six to 10 minutes it takes to run the trial, I feel more alive than at any other time of my life." Work is play, play is work. If you can't accept that, go away.

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