Dogged dedication

 Six dogs bark furiously at unfamiliar guests visiting a small ranch in Schertz. It's difficult to distinguish the words of 18-year-old Aubrie Dahle, but in the midst of this chaos, she is the conductor of a howling symphony.

With a simple hand gesture and a voice command, the dogs perform feats that some humans can't, yet there is no cracking of whips. Dogs of various sizes maneuver through an obstacle course and leap to catch tennis balls in midair. They know their reward will be an ear scratching and possibly a small treat. They are trained dogs, two of them for service, four for agility events.

Dahle received her first dog, a Yorkshire terrier, as a birthday present at age 10, but she started training the family dogs on the agility course when she was just 3.

"I'm not the best," Dahle said. "I'm good, but I'm not making my own DVDs or anything. I'm just a kid who likes running with my dogs."

Although Dahle may not be ready to make her own training videos, the American Kennel Club ranks her 36th in the nation in agility. The AKC ranks all ages together, so Dahle is ranked against those who are younger and older.

Aubrie, a Clemens High School graduate, has turned her lifelong passion for animals into plans for the future.

She will attend Texas State University in the fall and major in animal genetics. She would like to find a cure for canine lymphoma.

She said she also plans to continue her work with nonprofit agencies and with dog therapy.

Three times a year, Dahle does agility presentations and lectures about dog owner responsibility at the Humane Society of San Antonio.

Dahle and her family also take their dogs to the Silver Tree Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Schertz to comfort the elderly.

"Having an animal at the nursing home has an interesting effect on the residents," Dahle said. "There are Alzheimer's patients that haven't been in the present for years, but when they see a dog, they snap back to reality, if only for a few moments."

Tara Walter, a San Antonio dog trainer who competes in agility, has known Dahle since she was 8 years old and is impressed with the teen's dedication to both agility and public service.

"Service dogs can be used in so many ways, it's amazing. They can be used to help seizure victims or even alert diabetics about when they need to inject insulin," Walter said.

Silver Tree Activity Director Shari Bridgeman said she and the staff are very fond of Aubrie.

"We've seen her twice a month for the past 3½ years, and we've watched her grow up. More teenagers should volunteer. They would appreciate what they have more. She's an angel," Bridgeman said.

Earlier this year, Dahle began training two service dogs for a woman with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the same disease that her grandfather has survived for five years.

"Her sister called one day and said, ‘We heard you do dog training, and we were wondering if you could take care of my sister's border collies,'" Dahle said. "Then they said she has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma so then I knew we had to help her because we knew what she was going through."

While the woman is hospitalized in Pennsylvania, Dahle is fostering her dogs, Tommy and Meg. Dahle is teaching the border collies to work as service dogs to aid their owner. They are learning to pick up the phone and open the refrigerator because their owner is weakened by her illness.

While Dahle loves all of her dogs, training them is a lot of hard work and responsibility.

"You can't just adopt a dog, you have to take care of it. A free puppy on the side of the road isn't free," Dahle said.

However demanding the workload, Dahle never tires of her true passion.

"Some days, you feel too tired to go to a dog show, but when you get there you ask yourself ‘why did I ever consider not doing this?" she said.

Aubrie's mother, Karen, also competes with dogs in agility and said it seemed natural that her daughter would be a trainer.

"I remember this little girl that wasn't even 3 feet tall going over the last two jumps yelling, ‘Mommy! I did it!'" Karen said.

It is clear that the Dahle family dog-training legacy will not end with Aubrie. Her 10-year-old sister Anneka is making a name for herself in dog training as well. She is nationally ranked in the intermediate level and was even featured in American Girl magazine earlier this year.

"There's a lot of pressure from my family to do well in competition," Anneka said.

Anneka spends most of her time in the agility ring training Tucker, an Australian shepherd. She said she plans to continue training and doing public service like her sister.

Dahle plans on one day being a part of the World Team, which is like "the Olympics of dog training." Her most recent agility competition was at the River City Cluster of Dog Shows in San Antonio.

Next, she heads to Ouachita Valley Dog Training Club in Louisiana June 24-27 and then Houston Kennel Club July 7.

Dahle used to get frustrated with her dogs if they made mistakes, but she said she now understands that people and dogs are very similar.

"It's taught me patience, helped me with my people skills," Dahle said. "If you can be patient with dogs, you can be patient with people."