Do you love dogs? Do you like working with dogs? Do you have a lot of patience?

If you answer yes to all the questions, then a professional career in dog training can be tremendously rewarding for you.

However, at the same time, a career in dog training can also be very challenging and it is going to take you a great deal of time, patience and determination to become a successful dog trainer. This article will show you how to become a dog trainer.

Therefore, let’s first examine your motives and ask yourself a few questions before you go enroll yourself to become professional dog trainers.

• Do you love all dogs regardless of age, breed or temperament? Can you really work with them even if the dogs are behaving badly, stubborn and aggressive? Dog agility trainers must be kind and patient teachers since most dogs cannot be trained in a couple of minutes. Many hours of dedication and patience will be required to work with the animals to achieve the desired results.
• Are you respectful and comfortable working with people? A professional dog trainers job is not just about training dogs. It is also about training people, specifically the dog owners themselves on how to handle their animals more effectively.
• Are you willing to put in a lot of time and effort to become a successful professional dog trainers? In your dog training career, you will come across many different types of behavior problems with different breed of dogs therefore you will need to be committed to keep your dog training knowledge up-to-date by attending seminars, workshops and conferences. By understanding a wide variety of dog behavior, communication, conditioning, training techniques can help you become a well-qualified, knowledgeable and skilled dog trainer.

Let’s say that you have decided that you are truly passionate about dogs and committed to make handling dogs a successful career, the next big question is how to do you start your dog training career?

A career in dog training can begin in a number of ways:

• By volunteering at one of your local rescue centers or animal shelters, you can pick up lots of great hands-on and observational experience. Often dog shelters will also have some form of training program for their volunteers or you may also be assigned to help one of the trainers. As your experience progresses, you will be given more responsibilities to help out in the training.
• While expensive and quite a time commitment, attending a professional dog training school or a K9 academy can give you a more formalized and complete education as a dog trainer. To get started, check with your local pet stores or veterinary hospitals for reference and recommendations.
• You can also contact local breeders and dog agility trainers in your area and become an apprentice to take lessons from them directly. Alternatively, some guide dogs training centers offer apprenticeship programs for anyone interested in becoming instructors for the school.
• Another way to start your dog training career is through self study. Read as many dog training books as possible and attend lots of seminars, workshops and conferences to learn about dog training and behavior modification. In addition, you may also want to volunteer to train your friends or neighbor’s dogs to get some hands-on experience and improve your training skills with dogs.

As you make the transition from trainee to dog trainer, you can start your professional career in dog training working full or part time.

According to a recent survey, there are approximately 63,000,000 owned dogs in the United States. And as more dogs take on active roles in security, law enforcement, rescue operations and human assistance projects, employment opportunities for dog trainers are expected to rise more than 15% through 2012 – that means more and more opportunities for dog trainers.

As a professional dog trainer, the income that you could earn can be attractive. The salaries for full-time dog trainers are around $150 or more per hour depending on experience, reputation and location – and for part-time trainers $15 to $20 per hour.

As mentioned before, a career in dog training can be extremely satisfying and rewarding. If you truly care about dogs and can work with both dogs and humans on a daily basis, then becoming a dog trainer would be an excellent and fulfilling career choice for you.

As a professional dog trainer you will need to prove your skills to your customer. Having a dog traner certification is another advantages to show to your customer that you already prove your skills for training their dogs.

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