Gail Fisher, All Dogs Gym & Inn - The perfect place for pets and their people

A dog trainer friend, “Karen,” who lives in another part of the country, wrote to me about an issue of integrity and professional regarding two trainers she has recently had dealings with. The first was a student enrolled in a popular distance learning course to become a dog trainer. Karen was mentoring her as an apprentice, but sadly she had poor people skills (a huge drawback with on-line or distance learning for a profession that involves hands-on skills), and Karen was planning to tell the school that she was not going to pass her. Before she had a chance to submit her evaluation, the student arrived one day and proudly announced to Karen that she had taken her first paying client—an owner with a problem dog who hired her as a behavior consultant.

What?!? She wasn’t even able to successfully communicate with an owner to help them train their dog, but she was taking money from a client with a behavior problem dog? Karen was horrified and immediately terminated their mentoring relationship, informing the school that their student, who hadn’t yet even graduated from their program, with limited knowledge and virtually no successful training experience, was promoting her services as a behavior consultant.

Following on the heels of this experience, another trainer joined a local trainers’ group Karen belongs to. This trainer claims to be a “Masters level Animal Behaviorist.” Her website states that there is no such thing as a “bad” dog—that all dogs can be made into good companions—and she offers apprenticeships for anyone who wants to become an “animal behaviorist.” The woman’s professional credentials? She is a dog trainer that has “almost completed” an on-line Masters degree program. She may even be a good dog trainer, but is she a “Masters level Animal Behaviorist”? Sounds really impressive, but what is it, anyway?

The issue, for those of us who are professional dog trainers, including dealing with behavior problems dogs, is that both of these “trainers” are falsely (and dangerously) overstating their qualifications and their (implied) promised results. In the first case, she wasn’t even a dog trainer, and in the latter, she claims (made up) professional credentials that don’t really exist, and offers “behaviorist” training to apprentices—training that requires advanced degrees from a university (more on that next week).

Last week we held our All Dogs Academy 5-day Professional Dog Trainers’ School (Course 2), with students from throughout the Northeast from Pennsylvania through Maine. These were returning students who had taken our 5-day Instructor Training School (Course 1). Following their Course 1 graduation, they completed a homework assignment training several dogs for specific tasks, spending a minimum of 40 hours gaining hands-on experience working with dogs in a shelter, daycare, training school, etc. and documenting their experience for review prior to acceptance in the Course 2 Trainers’ School. In other words, in addition to the hands-on training they received in Course 1, they had to advance their skills prior to returning for more.

In Course 2, they trained a variety of different dogs with different temperaments, learning styles and work ethics. In over 16 hours of hands-on, supervised, critiqued training they taught a wide variety of behaviors from useful tasks to practical manners to fun and entertaining “tricks.” Experienced trainers when they arrived, they were far more skilled when we proudly handed them their graduation certificates five days later. But even with “credentials” from our Academy, they recognize (and we stress to them) that they have more to learn, more to practice, more to experience and far more knowledge to gain as they “practice” their profession. Becoming an experienced, skilled professional dog trainer requires training dogs—lots of dogs.

Our students and trainers work to the extent of their abilities, referring to other professionals when faced with a dog or a behavior issue beyond their abilities. But as Karen’s experience demonstrates, sadly this is not always the case. It is difficult for the public to determine a dog trainer’s qualifications much less their integrity, but next week I’ll give you a run-down of some of the credentialing bodies, their educational requirement, titles, letters, acronyms, as well as their limitations, and how best to judge the right trainer or dog behavioral specialist for you.