OK guys, don't laugh at me...

SisMorphine said:

From what I understand it's all about seminars and apprenticing with the people who have big names and a big reputation. Well at least that's how I'm going about it.

Click to expand...

Rue2 said:

A career in dog training generally comes from years of training dogs...and then taking it one step further.

You need to undertake 'official' training, not the pet-store variety. AKC (or CKC for the Canucks) style obed. training is usually the way to start. At this point in time, you'd need to be able to do both classic training and clicker training. Once you're taken a dog through to it's CD (Companion Dog), you move up to the other levels.

As you work with a Club, you'll eventually start by teaching introductory obedience (or beginner, etc.). Once you're able to teach that, and deal with the training issues/problems of individual dogs, you can move along to teach higher levels of obedience, as you've experienced them training your own dog(s).

Once you've mastered the basic obed., you can branch out to any other areas you're interested in. Once you become confident, and show good results, odds are you'll be in demand by word of mouth...and slowly you become a speaker/lecturer etc.

In addition, you need to attend various seminars on dog training and behaviour, workshops, maybe some classes and build up the more 'formal' part of your education.

Click to expand...