At School

Some children really love learning, it's such a pleasure to see children eager to learn! You would think children long for holidays, especially at the end of the school year, but you might be surprised how enthusiastic they are about learning, if only marks aren't involved. Children love learning, but they don't like being evaluated. During the first week of holidays we organised a kind of a workshop for children at our school (OŠ Komen). The workshop mostly included English lessons for small children (6, 7, 8, 9 years of age), but pupils also had some Italian and some sports, art, dancing and singing lessons inbetween.

I just couldn't help myself brniging my little Ben to school with me. Ben is just brilliant with children, he loves everybody and everybody loves him. All he needed to do was to stay with us all day until 4.p.m. and do some tricks with children, play and pose for the camera. A piece of cake for little Ben. I've always been saying that if Ben was a pupil, he would sit at the first bench, with glasses on his nose, the geeky one. He's sure proven me right :) Just look at the pictures of him, what a geek :)

However there are some things to be taken into consideration before taking a dog to school.
A very important thing is that the dog is comfortable with children, that he enjoys being around them, that he enjoys being cuddled and that he enjoys working with them. Children don't have a good self-control, they would all gather around the dog at once and try to cuddle him and boss him around. Ben enjoys attention, he would work with any child and he feels very comfortable and happy around them. It's also much easier if the dog is small, for a simple reason - children are less afraid. Big dogs can be a lot nicer than smaller ones, but big dogs are more likely to stir fear than small ones and I've never seen a child being terrified of little funny Ben. Another quality of Ben's is his coat. Poodles don't shed hair and their coat is hypoallergic (allergen free), so eventhough we had an allergic girl in the class, she was completely fine working with Ben.

I think Ben was born to work with people, children, to play a clown, to be cuddled, to be a mascot. I really enjoyed the whole week, but it felt kind of sad when it ended, knowing I'll never teach these children again, they are so special and so good. But it makes me happy to see how much fun they had and how much they loved every minute spent at the workshop. The whole week was very full and stressful, I needed a lot of preparations, but it was worth every extra minute of my free time.