By Jim Hannah
The Cincinnati Enquirer

It was the final round of the American Kennel Club National Agility Championship held in Long Beach, Calif.

Contestants walked up to the course, dog in tow, as the announcer for the nationally simulcast event rattled off each dog's long lists of accomplishments - from championships in Europe to taking part in the dogs' version of the Olympics, the World Team.

As JoJo walks to the line the announcer pauses ...

"This is a Shetland Sheepdog and handler Tom Reed from Dry Ridge, Kentucky," the man with the radio voice says.

Then: Dead silence.

There was nothing else to say. Reed was just an out-of-work widower from Kentucky.

The next 36.96 seconds would guarantee that announcers in the future would have more to say about this unlikely duo.

JoJo, a 14-pound dog once destined to be a little girl's pet, ran the obstacle course 1.26 seconds faster than her nearest competitor, the legendary Kathie Leggett and her champion Shetland Sheepdog, Heather.

It was a large margin of victory in a competition where winners are decided by tenths of a second. The crowd gathered at the convention center for the prestigious American Kennel Club show was stunned: Who was this guy? Where did he train? What line of champions did this dog come from?

Spectators began to spread the news of the upset via mobile phones and laptops wired to the Internet. Dog enthusiasts say Reed's victory was the dog world's equivalent to Seabiscuit winning the Kentucky Derby and the U.S. hockey team beating the Soviet Union in 1980.

An Internet page dedicated to agility enthusiasts came alive with accounts of the victory. One surfer posted a message in response to another's puzzlement about Reed: "He is just a good ol' boy from Kentucky," read the message.

Northern Kentucky dog handler and Reed's friend Diane Carr got a call at work.

"Have you heard the news," Reed's veterinarian bellowed. "Have you seen the Internet? Tom and JoJo won!"

Six years ago, Carr, 59, of Elsmere gave Reed the first dog he ever entered into a competition. That dog, a Border Collie, was a great learner but never achieved the success of JoJo.

"It's just a real Cinderella story," Carr said. "I knew that dog was good, but for him to go out there and smoke all these people is amazing."

She said Reed was up against the best - handlers who command $250 per head at weekend speaking engagements, write articles for dog magazines and build their own training centers.

"They were blown away by this mysterious man who showed up in a white van with an unknown dog," Carr said. "They couldn't believe they were beat at their own game, in their own back yard."

What's more amazing, Carr said, was that as these dog handlers stayed in their $300,000 motor homes or $150-per-night hotels, Reed slept six nights in his white Dodge van parked at a homeless camp on the Pacific Ocean.

The van is retrofitted for trips to dog shows in far-off places. It even has a working coffeemaker. Caffeine is one of Reed's only indulgences. The 5-foot-9, 145-pound nearly bald man with spectacles eats lots of rice and vegetables so his body doesn't succumb to heart disease, as others in his family have.

After pulling off the upset, Reed didn't go to the after-show gala. He took his trophy back to the homeless camp and shared his exploits with the homeless.

"I can see it now," Carr said recently from her home. "Tom at his van drinking coffee with homeless people while the sophisticated California dog owners were at the after-event party sipping wine and wondering who that guy was that just beat them."

Carr said handlers, who often spare no expense on their dogs, have been laughing behind Reed's back for the six years he has competed in agility events. She said every time Reed walks up to an agility course with a yellow boat rope tied around his dog people roll their eyes and say, "Why can't this guy buy a 'real leash.' "

Reed acknowledges people in the dog world criticize him for how he trains and runs his dogs, but he says he can't afford the traditional way - where people spend thousands of dollars on equipment and pay thousands more for puppies.

"I'm never included in any of those dog 'cliques,' " Reed said. "When I go to a trial, I really have to focus. A lot of people go and do a lot of socializing."

Reed's wife drowned in Lake Michigan during a freak accident in 1978. He lost his job as a maintenance machinist seven years later when Wiedemann brewery closed in Cincinnati. He has three grown children who, he says, have no idea about his recent achievement, and lives with four dogs in a brick ranch overlooking Interstate 75 in Dry Ridge.

In his living room is a worn-out recliner sitting in front of a television screen Reed uses to watch tapes of agility contests. The rest of the furniture had been removed to set up a series of poles, called weave polls, used as an obstacle in agility competitions.

"Taking care of my dogs is all I do, other than taking care of the home, and you can see I don't do much of that. I got the dirtiest house and the highest grass in Grant County, but my dog can do a weave poll in 10 seconds," he said, referring to the time it takes his dog to run through the series of poles.

The only knick-knack in the living room is the trophy he was awarded - a 12-inch round ceramic globe with a beach scene painted on it that uses a light to create the illusion of a sunrise.

"I would have much rather had a traditional-style trophy," Reed said, "but this will do. You know a lot of people would kill to have won this."

For more information

See it on TV: Animal Planet cable network will air the American Kennel Club National Agility Championship at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Feb. 8, 9 p.m. on Feb. 13, 12 a.m. on Feb. 14, and 3 p.m. on Feb. 15.Check it out on the Web: Information about the AKC National Agility Championship can be found at www.akc.org. The site include pictures of Tom Reed of Dry Ridge and JoJo competing in the championship, complete results and more about agility competitions for dogs.

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E-mail jhannah@enquirer.com