Atos Diary October 2001
I am now five months old and my owners have decided we have to go to class. My owners have chosen the class: “your dog trained in ten lessons”. (Ha, ha, we will see about that) the class is given at the “Martin Gaus” dog school. Jeroen Oomen gave the classes, and I must admit he’s a nice guy. The learning method is done with a clicker and positive rewarding, and that offers perspectives.

I must honestly say my owners are fanatics. The class takes a month and that means three evenings in a week we have to go to school for 2 ½ hours. On those evenings my owners practice with me for half an hour to ¾ of an hour. The rest of the time my owners have theory lessons about me, and they thought I was the only one who needed to be trained. Ha, ha. But it’s all good fun. I’m learning to sit, lie down, follow, wait and stay. I do try to make a mess out of it, by jumping against my owner or biting in my lead. But then they put me on the side and I don’t like that.

In the mean time the instructor notices that I’m limping a bit. The vet say’s that I sprained my paw and if after a week the medicine doesn’t help it’s probably in between my shoulders. I also got medicine for that. In the mean time I get more problems with it and you see me lying down more and more. And then it’s exam time. I notice that my owner is nervous, that’s why I tease her a bit and jump against her. But still I pass the exam and get my diploma.