17/08/2025
Linda consistently shares high quality, in depth content based on decades of experience as a trainer and in the dog industry in general. Give her a follow if you’re interested in learning from someone I, myself, enjoy learning from regularly. She always gets my wheels turning.
While my current business is just over 5 years old, I’ve been training full time for over 12 years and have worked in the pet industry continuously since 2008. Experience matters!
Finding a capable trainer is the same as finding an honest mechanic or a doctor that respects your observations. I mean, it's your auto, body, or dog. Nobody is more familiar with these things than you.
I counsel laypeople to not only research, but interview prospective service providers. If you're not going to like them, if they don't resonate with you on some level, you're not likely to take their advice.
Even then, things can go wrong, but at least you put in the effort to start out on the right foot, anyway.
Service providers are dime a dozen, but good ones require effort to locate. I offer consultations for folks to get a sense of me, and me of them. It's a two way process, because I want people to be confident in their choice. My biggest issue is time wasters- every profession has them; they expect easy solutions to complex problems and are constantly poking for information that when taken out of context can be harmful.
I charge for that service. That is one of several barriers that determine commitment. If they don't perceive the value, they will move on to the cheaper alternative.
The internet is a scary place. If one has no knowledge of a subject and they seek information on the internet, it quickly becomes Alice through the looking glass. The proliferation of bu****it on Google is in direct correlation to the commonality of the subject.
Little known fact- some of the first internet content was dog training specific. Back in the annals of time, in order to test markets, dog training and diets were the first two marketing paradigms offered on the world wide web. No s**t.
Historically, finding a decent trainer meant going to your local kennel club. Now, with the exponential growth of the all positive movement, finding timely, salient solutions to serious problems is difficult. It has become an either/or scenario and that's not safe nor healthy.
As in this post and in previous posts, there is more than one influence on the success or failure of any venture.
Can the trainer convey the information sufficiently to achieve a result? Is the owner capable of understanding and following that advice? Are they willing? The dog itself poses a question; age plays an influence, as does experiential influences. Breed proclivities, nature/nurture, purpose-bred working dog in the wrong environment? Street dog wrangled off the hellscape of some inner city and dumped into suburbia with 3 kids and a picket fence?
These are just a part.
Social media is great for a lot of things. It enables you to watch the trainer. Watch their hands. How do they handle the leash. Are they inclined to sn**ch at the leash and jerk the dog? Are they quiet handlers or are they miming the Celebutant trainer as seen on TeeVee. How long have they been around? Less than 10 years? More than 10?
Longevity matters. If the trainer has a long history, it's more likely they have survived the true test of professional success- the ability to make a sustainable income as a trainer. That is telling, in a trade where folks bob in an out like dunking for apples. I think the average small business failure within the first 5 years is pretty high. Trainers stepping outside their scope and getting injured is much sooner. Getting bit is a big deterrent.
If we start making access to services contingent on both the behavior of the client and their dog, you'd be surprised how many would opt out entirely.
Is that a bad thing? I don't believe so. It helps as a bellwether to determine relative success, usually, but even then, mistakes happen.
Most people don't really want a dog. They want the idea of a dog.
As a collective, we need to set aside this notion that owner surveys are science and that collars are inherently bad.
I am probably one of the only trainers on this side of the ocean that believes if we don't start policing our own, we won't like who polices us and what policies are created to govern us.
But first we have to decide what actually constitutes a trained dog, and heaven forbid, nobody wants to qualify THAT.
This originally appeared in September 2023. I reposted it because it is still relevant and people have short memories.
