Become a Dog Trainer
There are several reasons to consider a new career in Dog Training. In the past 25 years, there have been three shifts in society that are of interest to trainers.
1) The general public’s perception of what is acceptable dog behavior has been raised.
2) People are integrating dogs into their family’s daily lives both privately and publicly.
3) An increased career workload on families and single parents leave people with less time to train their dog to an acceptable standard. This has made way for trainers to become a valuable part of the average dog-owning families’ life. It is also causing a shift from the single, often part-time, individual taking care of their limited client base, to trainers running a training company as an actual business.
When I started Best Friend’s Dog Training a number of years back, I decided to make a statement about our training with “If you need a leash….your dog’s not trained!“.
Now that we’ve started a trainers program and company, we decided another bold statement was needed. We decided to take a line from another, slightly more famous guy named Frank. “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere”. As we grew BFDT we needed more trainers. Despite looking for people trained by other schools, many of them the big and famous schools, none of them met our standards. We have had all of our trainers to date do long apprenticeships to learn the trade. We have attended, visited, and trained with lots of other trainers and schools and have been impressed by some, decidedly disappointed by others. So, why another dog training school? We feel we have something a little different to offer.
“From Childhood Onwards we are taught a great deal that is wrong about the psychology of animals. In fables, fairy tales, and stories describing animal life and behavior we are often presented with living beings that think, understand human speech and perform moral or immoral acts. If we adopt these anthropomorphic views we shall be at a disadvantage when try to train animals of any kind, but particularly when we are dealing with dogs. We can save ourselves much disappointment and ensure the dog’s more rapid and cheerful response to instruction by allowing him to learn in the canine way.”
Building a dog training business in the Metro NY area has presented itself with a variety of challenges through the years. First, the perspective client base is probably the most skeptical in the country. People around here just don’t believe anyone trying to sell them something. Second there are about TWO HUNDRED PLUS “Trainers” who have set up shop locally. This area has everyone from the sage old trainer who’s been doing this for a few decades,to the guy who worked in a pet store long enough to deem himself a trainer, to the woman who has a bachelors in Psychology, has owned dogs “all her life” and calls herself a behaviorist. When looking at the variety of so-called trainers and behaviorists, how could any pet owner actually take us seriously?
We decided, early in the development of our business, to change the way a dog training business did business. We actually decided to consistently give people impressive results! Man… we must be geniuses or something, because the company took off. Imagine that.. results based training! Ok.. well sarcasm aside, it worked well and now we want to teach other trainers what we learned along the way.
First, there are many different training methods out there. Every training method has its place and its purpose. Knowing when and where to use a specific tool is the key to good dog training. At NYADT, we teach many methodologies and encourage the students to think for themselves and problem solve to find the right approach for every dog. Secondly, action is everything. You can talk and talk until you are blue in the face. The skill of dog training does not make sense until you physically do it. Similarly, talk is cheap so show it! We will teach you to demonstrate your dog training knowledge through action and proficiency. Similarly, one of the most important concepts for the professional dog trainer to cultivate is FLEXIBILITY. Thinking on your feet and if something is not working learning to try something else. At NYADT we will teach you from day one to think and problem solve, making you a better dog trainer for it.
Another difference between us and most other schools is the amount of practical application. You will get more hands on experience here then anywhere else. Some schools seem to have hands on without good foundation, others are all foundation with very little practical applications(20 hours or less).
We expect you to handle, work with, and train somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-150 dogs during your stay here.
Even the best dog trainers will fail if they do not know how to effectively teach their clients. The person you are training is just as important if not much more important then the dog they need trained. If you can’t teach the owner how to effectively train the dog, than you are dead in the water.
The last big difference with NYADT is we teach you to train people. We have private lessons and group classes, and you will learn to be VERY EFFECTIVE at teaching both. The reason this is a 12-16 week course is some people take longer than others to learn. You are welcome to train with us longer at no additional charge to become a proficient trainer.