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Become a Professional Dog Trainer

Sep.06, 2010 in Dog Training Business Leave a Comment

First Class Education at an Affordable Price!

Are you tired of working a nine-to-five job? Are you missing the passion and excitement of doing what you love? Are you wondering how your life has slipped away and you haven’t accomplished anything? Well, Raising Canine’s Become a Professional Dog Trainer course can help you find the passion and excitement you’re missing!

If you want to become a dog trainer, Raising Canine’s Become a Professional Dog Trainer course is an in-depth course that has all the right ingredients for you to become a certified dog trainer and cutting-edge professional dog trainer in the fast-growing industry of animal training. The Become a Professional Dog Trainer Course is self-paced and remote, so you can work on it when it’s convenient for you. And, the best news is that it’s very reasonably priced!

Students who have taken the Become a Professional Dog Trainer course and sat for the CPDT (Certified Professional Dog Trainer) exam, passed with an average score of 92.2%. Even more impressive, they passed the learning theory section of the course with an average score of 92.8%! Learning theory is the area dog trainers struggle with the most – and 32% of the CPDT exam is on learning theory.

The course includes the following:

* A Comprehensive Understanding of How Animals Learn
o Knowing how animals learn will help you, as a professional dog trainer, recognize causes of problems, and when and why a particular technique is not working.
* A Thorough Knowledge of Dog Behavior
o Really understanding dog behavior will get you quicker results.
* Practice in the Application of Dog Training
o Dog training is a skill, and getting hands-on experience is essential to being a great professional, certified dog trainer.
* An Understanding of How to Run Group Class
o In your career as a certified dog trainer, you will find that group classes can be quite difficult because of the different learning styles and skill levels of your clients – we help you get the best results for everyone.
* Skill in Working With the Humans that Own the Dogs
o The dogs are the easy part – it’s changing the human behavior that’s hard! We give you the information and help you need to work effectively with your clients.
* Weekly Phone Calls With Your Instructor
o The phone call brings it all together. During the call you’ll learn how to take all the things you’re learning and actually use them in real-life situations. We help you in the beginning stages of your dog training career – we talk about your current clients and help you become a professional dog trainer that people can’t wait to hire!
* Private Interaction & Support With Your Instructor*
o If you need to discuss personal issues, or other issues not appropriate for the group, you can always schedule an appointment to talk privately with your instructor.

We don’t rely on gimmicks or mythology – we teach each Beginning Professional Dog Trainer the science behind animal learning to give you a solid foundation as a Professional Dog Trainer. With that fundamental knowledge under your belt you have the ability to analyze and resolve the most difficult behavior problems and excel in the field of dog training.

This course is divided into several modules. Each module has textbooks and homework assignments. Many of the assignments are practical – for instance, you will develop a curriculum which you will be able to use when you begin teaching classes as a Professional Dog Trainer and you’ll develop handouts that you will be able to use in your dog training practice. The information you learn from this course will qualify you to become a certified dog trainer.

Our Become a Professional Dog Trainer course is based on the mastery model – in other words, you don’t do an assignment and get a grade; rather, you do an assignment, your instructor reviews it, and usually returns it with comments and revisions. This process continues until the instructor is satisfied that you have a thorough understanding of the concepts being taught.

As you become skilled in your ability to analyze and assess behavior problems, and once you’ve demonstrated a good understanding of the concepts, you will begin analyzing and reviewing other people’s work. By looking at what others are doing, you will develop your critical thinking skills to an even higher level.

Start whenever you want! Because this course is self-paced, you can start right now – no waiting until a new class begins. Part of the benefit of this school for dog trainers is learning from others who are more advanced than you.

For more information on the course, go to www.becomeaprofessionaldogtrainer.com.

Boarding Dogs

Aug.23, 2010 in Canine Health Leave a Comment

I have boarding dogs, and this year has made me hate it even more. Nothing against kennel owners, or businesses, but they are loud, stressful and its just hard on the dogs in general. I took my dogs to a clean family run kennel where they got play time, pool time and even some extra walks. In total we spent around $500 for 7 days.

I normally prefer to use pet sitters, but with our puppy being so young still, I didn’t feel right having him crated the entire time. I know a pet sitter would have let him out 3-4 times a day, but that’s about 2 hours out of his crate, which means 22 hours in. I think that can be worse. Well I have changed my mind about it all. If they can’t go to a doggie day care, then you are better off to find someone who can come spend time with them at home.

For the same cost I could have had a petsitter come 4 times a day for 45 minutes each. We got our dogs and our older one apparently had his collar left on wet. He now has a huge raw bloody mess of a neck. It smelled awful from far away. Luckily we had an antibiotic spray already and after consulting with our vet we decided to use that and see if it can get better. If we hadn’t talked to him it would have been an emergency vet visit which would have been another $150-200 bucks.

My advice, hire a pet sitter.

Rally Obedience IPhone App

Aug.10, 2010 in competition obedience Leave a Comment

Apparently there is a missing market in the iphone app development world. There are two iphone apps one of which is $9 – I dont pay $9 for a shirt so I’m not going to do it for an app. One is for APDT the other is for AKC. They are fine, they show the behaviors you need to learn rally. I’m working on an update to this app that will include sign descriptions.

Buy your rally iphone app today.

I decided to build one that encompassed all styles of rally, APDT, ASCA, UKC, and AKC. You can choose which style and level you want to see and it will show you all the signs. Pretty simple in theory. The development wasn’t that hard but getting all those graphics, that took forever! I may have gotten a few messed up too but we’ll see how many people report problems.

I also put in a practice area, this is for me. You can choose your style and level and it will give you some signs to practice. You can rearrange them, refresh them or change the size and number of images. It’ll definitely help me practice rally more since I wont have to get out my signs.

Its going to cost $1. I’ll try to keep it up to date as new signs and updates occur. Currently its in review at the app store. I’ll post a link when I have one!

Something Funny

Aug.06, 2010 in Dog Training and Behavior Leave a Comment

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
(Dog Trainer Version)

Pavlov: we fed the chicken on the opposite side of the road each day at
4p.m. until the chicken’s autonomic system actually began causing the
chicken to cross the road at 4 p.m. without even questioning the why

B.F. Skinner: on prior occasions when the chicken voluntarily crossed
the road, this behavior was followed immediately by a reinforcing
consequence.

Cesar Milan: I bullied, chased, poked, and intimidated the chicken until
it raced across the road, because I am a strong leader.

Barbara Woodhouse: You just say “Walkies” with the right accent and
place a crumpet on the other side of the road.

Karen Pryor: by associating R+ with road crossing and P+ with standing
still, with a VR schedule, and offering a reward in keeping with the
Premack principle, we increased the intensity and frequency of the road
crossing behavior.

Bill Koehler: a few well-timed pops on the choke chain and the chicken
was cheerfully to crossing the road.

Nicholas Dodman: I gave the chicken fluoxetine, sertraline, paroxetine,
carbamazepine, and azapirone and then it was happy to cross the road.

Patti Ruzzo: I crossed the road, pausing every step to spit a treat out
of my mouth like a human pez dispenser and the chicken followed along
catching the treats.

Electric Collar Advocate: whenever the chicken does not cross the road I
give it an electric shock. But do not worry, the shock is no more than
you would feel if you walked on a carpet wearing socks and it does not
bother the chicken at all. The feathers standing up and the smell of
burning flesh mean nothing. In fact, they are happier having nice clear
communication than they would be otherwise.

Yuppie: chickens are just like little people in feather jackets, and if
you love them and give them diamonds and feel sorry for them all the
time, they will be happy to cross the road for you.

Paris Hilton: Because I put it in a Gucci bag and carried it.

Shelter director: Any chickens that do not cross the road will be
euthanized for their own good, and the others we will
âEUR~adoptâEUR^(TM) out tomorrow for only $200 each. Please send us
money so we can keep doing more of this important work!

HSUS member: I do not know anything about animals, I have never been
around animals and am not really fond of animals, but we passed a law
mandating that chickens be kept without cages because animals belong
only in the wild and cannot be happy coexisting with man, so now they
are walking wherever they want.

PETA member: chickens have the right to live in world without roads. Any
chicken that lives within a hundred miles of a road is suffering an
inhumane existence and might eventually be hit by a car so we should
kill it today to ensure that it does not die tomorrow.

Shedding Lab

Jul.10, 2010 in Canine Health Leave a Comment

Holy cow, we have a lot of dog hair! Typically we spend 50 bucks on grooming our labs every so often when they are blowing coat. So imagine 50 * 2 dogs * 4 times a year? Math anyone? That’s 400 bucks. For the same amount of money, we can buy a crazy beast high velocity dryer. Does it work? Well, heck yeah!

I did my research and found that the K9 III high velocity dryers are rated the best. They have two motors and two speeds. It blows air and you can dry your dog or you can blow out the hair. Now my dogs are pretty laid back and don’t mind much but I can see if your dog has noise sensitivity this might not be for you.

We washed our labs with very warm water. I use a nub brush in the bath from furminator to help rub in the shampoo. Then I towel dry. From there I move to outside and the low speed dryer to get the dog dry. When they are dry, we blast them with the high velocity two speed k9 III dryer.

From what I read its best to start from the tail and work your way up blowing the air towards their head (do not blow their faces!). Having two people is super helpful if you want to keep the dog still unless you have a fancy table to stand them on.

I wish I had recorded the amount of hair that came out. I think we will try to blow them out each week followed by a good brushing. Hopefully our vacuum will be saved!