Kim Berkley: How the Star Obedience Handler Got Her Start

Originally published here at AKC.org on July 6, 2025 by Melanie Haid

Kim Berkley_ How the Star Obedience Handler Got Her Start.pdf

Download PDF • 1.30MB

---

If you’ve ever watched a national obedience competition, you’ve likely seen the name Kim Berkley high up on the ranks. If her name doesn’t ring a bell, her dogs’ might: Border Collies “Zayne” and “Zuko,” and English Springer Spaniel “Dolly.” All three are competing again in this year’s AKC National Obedience Championship at Purina Farms in St. Louis, MO. The event is happening in conjunction with the 2025 AKC Rally National Championship, in which her dogs are also competing.

Despite the packed weekend of competition handling multiple dogs, Berkley of Caseyville, IL, is no stranger to the national stage. But before she was a successful dog trainer and handler, Berkley was a passionate young girl with a love for horses.

Showing Horses on a National Stage

When Berkley was 4 years old, her dad won a pony in a poker game. He built a little house with a fence for the pony in the backyard of their home in Missouri. By the time she was 13, Berkley was just over 6 feet tall, and had outgrown it. The next logical step? A horse.

“It was kind of a weird thing,” she recalls, bringing us back to 1974. “These girls just walked by on my street, and said, ‘If you have a pony, I know there’s a horse for sale. Are you interested?'” They got to talking, and Berkley, freshly a teen, rode her bike with them 3 miles, all uphill, to an old farm. She met a couple, in their 90s, who were offering to board horses for $15.

“That’s where I learned all the horse stuff. Nobody in my family did it, I just got obsessed with it,” Berkley says. Her passion grew as she did. After she taught herself how to train and show horses, she later helped 20 kids make it to the national championship. In 1984, she got her first reserve national championship. She went on to win seven national championships with her Arabian horses.

In the 90s, she began to explore dog sports alongside showing horses. Her first dog, a Great Dane named “Alaina,” taught her a great deal, but wasn’t the best obedience dog.

She loved the career she’d made training and showing horses, but after an accident in 1992, she was forced to reevaluate her priorities. She kept going for some time, but by the 2000s, she needed to make a decision. “I realized I can’t do horses and dogs both,” she says. “My friend took over the business. She found a facility across the street from where I kept my horses, and thought, ‘I’m going to build my own place that anybody can come whenever they want and train dogs.'” And so “Dog Sports at Kim’s,” or DSK, was born.

A Life of Dogs, Always

Berkley had dogs growing up, including a Chihuahua and a Poodle, but they were vastly different from those she’s used to competing with now. Though she didn’t get into dog sports until the 90s, her great aunt showed Schnauzers, perhaps planting the seed for Berkley’s future career in a way.

Even while she was showing horses, she was never without a dog. “Horse people always have dogs,” she says. “I had a Labrador Retriever that we took everywhere, and that’s when I first thought I’d like to learn about dog obedience.”

Agility piqued her interest first: while showing horses in Louisville, she remembers watching an agility competition as part of the Louisville Dog Show. “Then, I went to an obedience trial and saw a pretty Golden Retriever doing heeling, and I just thought, ‘I want to learn how to do that,” she says. “I did dressage with horses, and I think obedience is kind of similar to dressage. Every little part of it matters, and that’s what I love to do with horses.”

Her One True Love

Over her career, she’s put OTCH titles on many different dogs. Her first OTCH was “Bruno,” a Miniature Poodle, in 2006. Since then, she’s put 13 OTCH titles on her and other people’s dogs. She’s working on the 14th now. She estimates that she’s put MACHs on 30 different dogs over her career — so far.

“It’s just my love,” she says. “I love doing obedience, and I love teaching obedience to people.”

She trains her own dogs practically all the time, since she’s always at her facility. Even when she’s helping train other people’s dogs, she can use her dogs as models, or work on keeping them focused with many distractions around. She has three obedience rings set up at all times, along with a huge agility training room. Since 2020, she also has a pool to help dogs practice for dock diving.

Obedience Success Over the Years

Berkley has been finding success at the AKC National Obedience Championship for over a decade. These accolades don’t even begin to include other obedience, AKC Rally, or agility competitions, where she also has an impressive resume. “Dani,” Ch OTCH MACH4 PACH Polesitter’s Danica Dazzles UDX8 OGM VER RAE MXB2 MJB2 MXP3 MXPB MJPB PAX OF, an English Springer Spaniel, was a history-making dog. She got her breed (conformation), obedience, and agility championships (CH OTCH MACH) at only 2-and-a-half years old in 2011.

Nearly every dog Berkley has handled over the years has found success in one or more dog sports. She’s taken home top three wins at the National Obedience Championship, Westminster’s Obedience Masters Competition, and AKC’s Obedience Classic, part of the AKC National Championship.

Father-Son Champion Duo

Her current team also has an impressive record across sports. Zayne, Zuko, and Dolly have all placed in the top 20 of the National Obedience Championship the last two years. “The goal is always to make it to the end,” Berkley says. “Anything can happen in the blink of an eye, so I never take anything for granted when I walk in the ring.”

Zayne and Zuko have racked up many top-five wins across competitions, especially in recent years. He was the AKC Rally National Champion in 2022 and 2023, won the 2023 Obedience Classic, and won the 2024 Masters Obedience Champion at Westminster. He placed second at the 2022 and 2023 AKC National Obedience Championships.

Zuko, his son, is quickly up-and-coming in both sports. He was the 2024 Rally National Champion and placed second in the 2023 Rally National Championship. He continuously ranks highly in obedience as well, placing fourth in the 2023 Obedience Classic. At the AKC National Obedience Championship, he placed fifth in 2023 and seventh in 2024.

Training Dogs for Obedience

As driven and passionate as Berkley is, she recognizes that it’s not the sport for everyone. Obedience requires a great deal of training. “People really need to want to learn,” she says. “Things that are hard, people don’t really want to do on the whole.”

Berkley says her own dogs require a great deal of training to remain at their current obedience level. “I think it’s the same with any sport. When somebody does it well, it looks easy,” she says. “But it’s hard work no matter the dog.” At this point in her career, Berkley only shows about once a month, mostly since she’s busy with her dog sports facility.

And training varies from breed to breed. It’s more common to see Border Collies and Golden Retrievers at obedience events, but less common to see English Springer Spaniels, like Dolly. “Springers are way harder to work with than Border Collies,” Kim says. She trained three English Springers before Dolly, and that experience allows her to know what works.

Training people and their dogs in obedience is what Berkley is most passionate about, even decades later. “I get excited helping people have their dogs be a team partner, and really show the exuberance that they can when they enjoy doing obedience,” she says.

For Berkley, the dedication to the sport and her dogs is unmatched, and the results prove just that. Her willingness to learn and her commitment to perfection have made for an incredible dog sport career — and it’s nowhere near over yet.