Anyone comparing Cleopatra, a 450-pound pygmy hippopotamus that lives at the Franklin Park Zoo, to Fiona, a 60-pound Irish water spaniel that lives in a Victorian house in Amesbury, would probably find little beyond four legs and warm blood that the two mammals have in common.
To Kim Kezer, however, they're both animals that, with patience and praise and tasty rewards, can be trained to obey a human's command.
Kezer, 41, is a part-time animal training adviser who oversees three dozen training programs for Zoo New England. Part of her job is to acclimate Cleo to being touched and teach her to position herself so zookeepers can draw blood from a rear leg and otherwise care for her without exposing her to the risks of anesthesia. Kezer is also a part-time dog training instructor entering her 4 1/2-year-old spaniel in next week's Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in Manhattan.
"Most people start out training dogs," Kezer says. "I started out training seals and hippos."
Fiona is a tall, elegant dog whose black ringlets Kezer keeps soft with Pantene Hydrating Curls Shampoo. Cleo is a stout, sturdy, rough-hided 16-year-old responsible for bathing herself in her pool. "We just clean up after her," Kezer says.
Fiona has competed in so-called conformation contests since she was 9 months old, showing off her gait and posture and expressiveness. Fiona is entering Westminster for the first time, 3 1/2 years after she earned the champion designation that qualifies her. A friend, Lena Amirian, whose dog Rufus, a spinone Italiano, won best of breed in 2004, is helping prepare Fiona for the big show. She's loaned Kezer the opal tear necklace she wore at Westminster.
Kezer takes Fiona to Fit-N-Trim Dog Sport Training in Rowley one snowy morning. She runs the ring with the dog, encouraging her with "good girls" and strategic dangling of a tuna treat to hold her head high. They practice "stacking," or standing still, with Fiona's gaze forward, front feet directly under her shoulders and back legs planted slightly wider and behind her rear end.
"If I'm up and confident and sure of what we're doing, she's confident," Kezer says. "If I'm low energy, she's low energy."
At the zoo earlier in the week, there's none of the petting and playful interaction Kezer has with Fiona. Cleo and her zoomates are dangerous animals, always separated by bars and doors from their keepers. Holding a plastic-tipped pole, Kezer works to teach Cleo to move to different positions within her pen. "Target," Kezer says, and when Cleo moves, slowly, to the pole and touches it with her nuzzle, Kim blows a whistle and rewards her. She rubs the hippo's legs with a cloth-tipped pole to give Cleo practice being touched.
"The similarities are we do it all through positive reinforcement," Kezer says. "Lots of baby steps. Making it fun and interesting. Keep the training session short and fun. You have to find out what motivates them. For Fiona it could be tuna or duck treats. For a hippo it can be a piece of lettuce or a peanut."
Kezer, whose father operated a charter fishing boat in Rhode Island, grew up near the water in a family with pet dogs. She majored in aquaculture at the University of Rhode Island and also studied animal behavior and psychology. "Animals are all individuals. They make you laugh," Kezer says. "Animals bridge the gap to people. There's a calmness that they bring me."
Kezer got her first dog, a Rottweiler named Brewster, in 1989, when she was training sea lions and dolphins at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, where she worked for 13 years and where the emphasis was already shifting from flashy tricks and toward training the marine mammals to demonstrate their natural abilities. "We showed how they jump out when they're porpoising in the wild and how they use echolocation to find things," Kezer says.
She enrolled Brewster in a dog training class but quickly quit. "It was a lot of the old yank-and-pull method," Kezer recalls. "I left saying I don't treat animals in the aquarium like this. Why would I treat my dog like that?"
So Kezer trained him with positive reinforcement, as she trained her seals, and entered him in obedience competitions, one of which he won. The prize was a trip for two to California. "Brewster did his tricks," Kezer recalls. "He'd hold a cookie on his nose and catch it. He played dead. Rolled over. He wore sunglasses the whole time."
Now Kezer prepares to enter Fiona in the Oscar contest of dog shows, where she'll be among six Irish water spaniels, one of them her brother Lazarus, competing for the title "Best of Breed," and one of more than 2,600 dogs vying for glory in Madison Square Garden. Fiona won't show off her tricks, won't demonstrate how high she can jump or how nicely she can bow, with her nuzzle on the floor and her hind end in the air. She certainly will not wear sunglasses, although Kezer will have meticulously snipped the frizzy tips from her coat.
Kezer, who favors casual attire at work and at home, will wear a beige suit she bought for the occasion, in the pockets of which she will carry liver treats. It is the second suit she's ever owned, the first being a green one she bought in 2004 for a dog show in Delaware. "And I'll be wearing pantyhose," she says. She got her hair cut last week.
If Fiona wins that first round on Tuesday she will compete against sporting dogs of other breeds, and if she wins that she'll compete for the coveted "Best in Show" award. Only once, in 1979, has an Irish water spaniel taken the top prize.
"I still can't believe I'm going to Westminster," Kezer says. "I want to enjoy every moment, not be distracted by nerves. I'm just going to go and focus on Fiona."
At the Franklin Park Zoo in Dorchester, meanwhile, Cleo the hippo will be putting on a show of her own. She and the white vulture with an 8-foot wing span who shares her habitat will be on display in the Tropical Forest pavilion.
