STEELE COUNTY (AP) - The German wirehaired pointer plowed through the prairie grass, her nose combing the surroundings for a scent of sharp-tailed grouse.

Watching her work, Keith Kemmer wore the look of a proud owner. For good reason: There was hunting to be done, and Tess was all business. He'd trained her well.

"She's got tons and tons of desire," said Kemmer, of Casselton. "She just loves to hunt."

Not bad for a three-legged dog.

For Kemmer, or "Keemo" as he's known to his friends, seeing Tess in the field marks an awakening of sorts from a nightmare that began just after Thanksgiving last year.

It was a Friday night, and Tess had run off after being let out of her kennel. Less than a year earlier, Kemmer's first German wirehair, Griff, had been killed by a vehicle. Hoping to avoid a repeat, Kemmer got in his pickup and started searching for Tess.

She'd only been gone about 20 minutes, but by the time he saw her in the headlights, it was too late.

"She ran out across the street," Kemmer said. "I barely saw her, and then I ran over her."

Kemmer brought Tess to a veterinarian in Casselton, who told him the bones in her rear right leg were crushed beyond repair. That left two choices: let the vet amputate or put the dog to sleep. It was late, so the vet sedated the dog and told Kemmer to decide the next morning.

His voice still wells with emotion when he talks about that night.

"We sat in the vet's office that night, and I just cried," Kemmer said. "I didn't sleep hardly a wink."

Kemmer had purchased Tess from Jeff Jalbert, a good friend from Horace who runs Top Shelf Kennels and breeds and trains German wirehairs. When the phone rang late that night, Jalbert says he knew the instant he heard Kemmer's voice that something had happened to Tess.

"I could just tell it in his voice," Jalbert said. "I said, 'What happened to Tess?' and he said he'd ran her over."

The vet who checked Tess found no other injuries beyond the crushed leg. Another vet also had looked at the dog. By the next morning, they confirmed what Kemmer had decided during the course of that sleepless night.

Tess, it seems, had made quite an impression.

"They both looked at me and said, 'We're not putting her to sleep,'" Kemmer said of the two veterinarians. "By that time, there really wasn't any question. I just wasn't going to do it."

Tess recovered well from that disastrous night, and she was hunting pheasants on three legs a month later during a late-season hunt near Hettinger. The scar from her amputation was still in stitches.

Before the accident, Kemmer had big plans to enter Tess in a state Utility Test sponsored by the North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association.

German wirehairs are among about two dozen "versatile" breeds - natural pointing dogs trained to be proficient in retrieving both upland game and waterfowl. She still had the desire, Kemmer says, but he figured her competitive days were over.

The big unknown was whether the missing leg would hamper Tess' swimming skills for the water-retrieving portion of the test. Once she got into open water in April, though, Tess proved that concern unfounded.

"She could still swim," he said.

So Kemmer, Jalbert and a couple of other buddies - they call themselves "Team Wirehair" - started a training regimen to prepare for the late-August competition. Tuesdays and Thursdays after work and all day Saturdays throughout the summer, they prepared for the state NAVHDA test.

The last month, Kemmer says, they trained almost every day.

Watch Tess at work on land or in the water, and it's hard to tell she's missing a leg. She makes up for the disability with stronger front legs and incredible balance.

"When we run them in a pack, she runs just as fast as the rest of them," Kemmer said. "It's actually easier for her to run than walk."

Tess doesn't have the classic wirehair point, locking up like a statue when she comes up on a bird. That's tough to do on three legs, but even before the accident, she had her own style of pointing, Kemmer says.

With their stiff hair and scruffy beards, wirehairs might not be the most beautiful dogs in the world in the eyes of some owners, but they make good hunting companions, Kemmer says. And they thrive on cold-weather hunting.

As for desire, well, Tess is a picture of that.

"I've got a three-legged dog who will burn through cattails all day," Kemmer said. "If she didn't have the desire, she just would have given up."

Tess showed that desire at the NAVHDA test, where she earned a top Prize One score and a berth in the national Invitational. During the blind-retrieve portion of the water test, she became tangled in the tether of a decoy while searching for a duck.

No matter. Tess kept swimming, decoy and all, until she found the dead duck hidden in the marsh and delivered it.

The crowd gathered to watch gave her a standing ovation.