I want to Become a Dog Trainer, What Should I Look For When Picking a School?

It's hard to know what to look for when choosing a school to become a professional dog trainer. Here are a few of the things that I think are important to consider before choosing your professional dog trainer school:

1. Does the professional dog trainer school provide verifiable, science-based education in learning theory, ethology, and animal husbandry rather than "personal recipe" or myth-based training
2. Will the professional dog trainer school teach me methods I feel comfortable applying or will they teach me force-based methods that I may not comfortable using?
   
3. Will the professional dog training school allow me to speak one-on-one with my instructors or will all of my learning take place in books and online without any personal attention?
4. Does the program at the professional dog training school include the opportunity for hands-on work such as an apprenticeship and if so, will this hands on work actually be sufficient to prepare me for the work that I want to do?
5. Are the instructors at the professional dog trainer school certified professional dog trainers with the experience and knowledge to teach others?
6. Will the professional dog training program give me all of the information and tools I will need to prepare for the certified professional dog trainers' examination?

There are a lot of things to consider when looking for a professional dog trainer school but following the above tips and asking a lot of questions before making your decision will serve you well!

Susan Smith, Raising Canine

Review: Crate Games with Susan Garrett

I'm always on the lookout for new educational tools for animal trainers and I think we've found a winner with Susan Garrett's fun and effective approach to crate training. Garrett's method is not only aimed at making your dog tolerate being in its crate, it is designed to make going to its crate REINFORCING for your dog! I have a friend who owns a dog daycare and, after watching Susan Garrett's new DVD Crate Games for Motivation and Control, she'll be trying this with all of their daycare dogs. If you are a dog trainer looking for a new way to train dogs to kennel up or looking for some fun and inspirational training methods to add to your toolbox, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Susan Garrett's newest DVD! And, if you're a parrot trainer and you want some creative ideas for teaching parrots to return to their crates, you'll find a lot of useful and new ideas in the video too. You'd need to modify them to be appropriate for parrots, but I could see this method working with parrots and many other small animals!

Susan Smith, Raising Canine, Education for Animal Trainers

Science based dog training

Although many of the top-notch professional dog trainers have used the science of learning theory in the training for decades, more and more behavioral research is being done on dogs. For a great overview of some of the cutting -edge cognitive research projects read this article on canine cognition. And, if you are a professional dog trainer or you want to be a dog trainer, get with the program and get into the science!

Susan Smith, Raising Canine, Education for Animal Trainers