MICHAEL SCHWARTZ/Courier-Post Dog trainer Sarah Atlas watches as Betty Fehlinger works with her dog, Maddy, a 5-year-old chocolate lab, at Fehlinger's Barrington home on Wednesday. Atlas shows dog owners how to use dog biscuits to teach commands.

If your dog is ruling the household - from jumping on visitors to chewing everything not nailed down - Sarah Atlas may be just the person to help.

A dog trainer for nearly close to a decade, she has worked with several hundred pets and their owners to develop loving, companionable and trouble-free relationships.

"She's very dedicated to her work and very dedicated to the animals," said Betty Fehlinger of Barrington. "She truly believes in what she does and enforces what she teaches."

Fehlinger received Maddy, a 5 1/2-year-old, chocolate Labrador retriever as a gift on her retirement from the Camden County Fire Marshal's Office, where she worked for 20 years as a secretary.

The dog previously belonged to John West, a deputy fire marshall who was killed in a Gloucester City fire on July 4, 2002. West had acquired Maddy after she failed arson training school for being too unruly and excitable.

Fehlinger had met Maddy many times and fallen in love with the dog.

She made an offhand remark that she would love to have her. Thinking nothing of the comment, she was shocked when the dog was given to her four years ago.

Fehlinger had heard of Atlas's success training dogs. Knowing Matty's excitable nature, she contacted her for behavioral training.

"We took the whole six weeks and Matty is now very well behaved. She doesn't jump up and she sits and shakes hands," said Fehlinger. "She's a wonderful dog."

Atlas was drawn to the field after she took her own dogs to obedience classes at the Doulphin Training Club near Harrisburg, Pa.

She became interested in learning how to train dogs from this experience. Club instructors allowed Atlas to observe classes and trained her, eventually allowing her to assist them. In time, she began instructing classes at the club.

She learned of the benefits to training animals in their homes after assisting her friends with obedience classes in this manner. She had such success training dogs in their own environments, that she started the business, Good Dog, based on this traveling premise.

The sessions normally last one hour a week over a six-week period of time. For young puppies with shorter attention spans, the sessions are broken down into half-hour sessions, she said.

"By training them at home, it's geared toward real life, which is difficult to teach in a classroom situation," said Atlas, who owns search and rescue dogs and participated with her animals at ground zero during the 9/11 tragedy.

She believes consistency is the key to successful training.

"Dogs are capable of learning word association. I teach people how to communicate effectively with their dogs so the animals know what their owners want," said Atlas. "It's a matter of getting respect. There's no free ride."