Re: How to become a dog trainer

[suebee]

Dog training, the all evasive term could mean anything but quite a lucrative selling item.There is no qualifications for ‘dog training’ or ‘behaviourist’, sure you can tie in to someones (or organisation or groupss) methods, but train for what? toilet train? stop digging the garden? recall?
Al the organisations such APDT are are simply groups of private individuals working as a commercial co-op type group, paying an annual contrinbution to a central fund which pays for one web site and they have most of their names on it, it is free enterprise private commercial training, but, there are no recognitions of any formal nature, in any case training techniques varie from individual to the other.
In short anyone thinking of buying some kind of course needs to understand that in dog training there is no such thing as a recognised qualification although one group may recognise another grpoup on a purely private basis, but, that means nothing.
Be very very carefull of buying any course for the above reasons, most exagerate or make entirely false claims, such as COAPE, that claims to be ‘accredited’ by National Open College Network. The COAPE course is not recognised by them at all, they are not even on its list.
Thats only one example BUT people pay good money for such mirepresentations to loads of other study courses which in reallity amount to nothing except if you, the individual, want to recognise it/them for reasons of your own then fine, but thats as far as it goes.
The moral is, if anyone is going to spend time and money on any course, be damned carefull, it is a selling point for pet owner obedience cause they have been sold the idea there is/are some kind of qualifications, but now they are becomiming aware they mean nothing and very soon the market for these training services will be gone, good whilst it lasted though.
You dont need any course to put letters after your name, PDTP is good enough, I just made it up, it stands for Pet Dog Training Proffesional and it means just as much for a qualification to work as anything going and unlike COAPE, it costs nothing, means as much and has as much legality as anything else.