How To Become A Professional Dog Trainer by Ed Frawley

[Music] my name is Ed Frawley I only work and today I’m going to talk about my ideas on how to become a professional dog trainer it’s a great goal but it it takes a lot of work when you start this it can be a little scary because you’re going to have to take some time to build your reputation as a dog trainer and this doesn’t happen overnight so you may have to have a full-time job and training dogs in the beginning has to be a part-time job or working for someone else training dogs has to be a part-time job and you’re going to have to move into it and it’s not easy and I kind of compare it to a journey because there’s so much that goes into so much work that goes into becoming a successful professional dog trainer but I’ll tell you how I came to want to do this video and that is we’ve produced dog training videos for 40 years I did my first one in 1982. and we get a lot of people that buy our online courses and our old DVDs and our streams and they come back and they say if I buy these can I go out and become a professional dog trainer and the answer is no you cannot there is so much to becoming a good professional dog trainer that our online courses and our streams and DVDs are only part of the process it’s a good part of the process but there’s a lot to it and I’m going to talk about that in this video I want to make it clear that this isn’t a step-by-step by step path to becoming a pro what it is is more of me talking about the various things that you have to learn to develop your business to becoming a professional trainer I’ll say that when people first start this be it young people or be it actually a lot of people decide to change careers in Midstream and move into it because they love working with dogs so much and that’s really cool but the fact is it can be a little scary because you can’t start a business and go from zero to having a lot of clients bringing their dogs to you for training in no time at all so there’s there’s a window that you have to live through to get to the end result that’s what we’re going to start to talk about obviously you have to be a good dog trainer dog training has to be your passion if you’re getting into this just for the money don’t waste your time because it’s not going to work unless you’re a very very lucky person and a good salesman but that will still catch up to you I’ll also say that just because someone has had four or five dogs in the last 15 or 20 years doesn’t qualify them to be a pro it doesn’t qualify them to hang a shingle out and bring in dogs that owners say have behavioral problems like overly aggression reaction reactive dogs four or five dogs is a good start but you need more than that and I’ll talk about that in a minute I should say that the fact that you may have had three four five dogs in your lifetime and they’ve all turned out to be very nice dogs and you love all the work you did with them uh is good background it’s a start but obviously you’ve worked through some of the issues or you’ve managed your dog pretty dogs pretty well as they’ve grown up and and that’s all good but keep in mind that most of the people that come to you that want to learn how to train their dog are most of the people that bring their problem dogs to you have problems and you may not have had the experience at how to solve those problems you got to be careful you don’t want to hang a shingle out and say that you can do everything to fix uh dog aggression problems you don’t want to hang a shingle out and say uh you’re going to train puppies we’re going to talk about that in a minute too because you better know what you’re talking about if you’re going to do this correctly and to do it correctly takes time and experience I’ll tell you something that uh I always tell people that talk about problems and where they get the information to fix their problems I always say that you know you can go anywhere you want and you’re going to get advice on how to train dogs ask your family members ask your Barber ask your mailman uh ask anybody you want and they all have an opinion on how to train dogs they’re all well intended on how to train dogs they have good intentions and they’re good people the problem is they don’t have the experience to offer correct advice most of the time so you have to be a little bit careful there where do you get your experience and that’s the important thing too in what I’m going to talk about because there’s a lot of places you can go I mean I’ll just give you a few ideas you can go and work at your local volunteer at your local Humane Society you can take dogs that are at the society at the rescue and bring them home and work them through some behavioral problems you’re going to learn a lot doing that you’re also going to build a reputation if you volunteered to do all of this because long term if you do it long enough long term when you move out and you hang your shingle out that you are going to take business these people are going to refer people to you that come to the rescue and get a dog and they want to know how to train it because it’s the first dog they’ve ever had if you have a groomer in your area you can work for the groomer for a while you can even go to the point of of bathing dogs for that groomer there’s a lot to be learned about dog behavior from being a groomer just ask Cesar Milan season Milan never competed in a in a competitive dog sport he was a groomer his whole life my my wife was a dog groomer for 20 years in my opinion she’s a way better dog trainer than I am but a lot of that came from the experience in getting these dogs in that don’t want to get groomed and they try and bite the groomer and you do that for a while and you’re going to learn how to handle these dogs how to be fair to the dogs so that’s important too you could also learn a lot by dog training schools there’s a lot of them around the country I’m going to give you a caveat that goes with that though this is a buyer beware issue on the on these dog training schools because there’s a lot of people that are very good salesmen that lack experience but they got money to start a school and they know how to talk to you and have you spend a lot of money to go to their school and what you’re going to learn is questionable the only school that we really recommend is the Michael Ellis school for dog trainers out in California I can’t tell you or I won’t tell you who these bad schools are all I can say is that if you’re looking at a school other than Michael do your homework do your due diligence and talk to a lot of students that have gone there get some recommendations from the school call those people and say hey who else went there do you know anybody that had problems did you know anybody that left you know check it out real close because I know a lot of places that really ripped young people and old people off for a lot of money and these people left and they were no better off than when they started a couple of other areas that you can get experience in handling dogs is go to work for a vet ask the vet if you can come in tell them what your game plan is tell them what you want to do tell them you want to learn about how to handle dogs even if you have to go and clean his kennels I mean when I was in college I wanted to be a vet I worked in a vet on the weekends I would clean kennels on Saturday and and Sunday morning get there at five o’clock in the morning I learned a lot about how to deal with dogs I learned how I did not want to be a vet because the vet that I worked with in La Crosse Wisconsin was the Humane Society for the city dogs would be turned in there and they only had a certain number of days for the owners to come and get them or to be adopted out and on Saturdays we put dogs to sleep I decided this was not for me but I will say this it’s one of the things that became a driving force in my life on wanting to learn how to go out and be a professional dog trainer how to be a better dog trainer I didn’t start with the goal of being a professional dog trainer I just love training dogs and I’m assuming if you’re looking at this video you walk in those shoes too and there’s nothing wrong with that be an apprentice for a professional dog trainer that’s in your area I’m not sure you have to tell them that you you plan on becoming their competition but you can say that you want to learn as much as you can about how to train dogs because you love training dogs and that’s good because you may see a lot of good things you may see The Good The Bad and The Ugly the whole thing comes down how much research you do and how much time you’re willing to invest in it one of the things that we recommend Cindy and I my wife and I recommend to everybody is to get involved in a competitive dog sport the fact that you have to train a dog to do a very specific behavior a very specific skill and then be judged by another person on how good your dog does to perform that behavior is really good it forces you to rethink how are you going to train things that your dog doesn’t know how are you going to train how are you going to layer in the various training steps to make this dog do something that an outside judge is going to say yeah you did it right so you can do AKC obedience there’s nose work out there there’s a million different Dog Sports there’s dock diving there’s the various biting dog Sports we were involved in in schutzen now it’s called IPO in the Ring Sports those are the sports that that all of the police dogs in the United States come from those biting dog sport bloodlines so there’s so much to be learned and it’s fun it’s a way for you to develop a relationship with a dog and make the dog want to do make the dog like you make the dog want to work for you not force him to work for you you’ll learn a lot there one of the things that you have to learn how to do is how to advertise yourself how to promote yourself and there’s a lot to that too you have to become a very good photographer you have to have good photos of you working with dogs to promote in your advertising you have to figure out how to make good short little videos that you can use in your Market because you have to sit down and figure out what is your Market if you are in a large city like Minneapolis or Saint Paul or Chicago you’re lucky you get a lot of people to work with but if you’re in a small town a town of two thousand people or our town of Sixteen thousand people you need to do you need to approach these small markets differently than the big Market because the big Market if you have a professional looking facility and you get out there and you advertise the people are going to come that may not happen in a small town but that doesn’t mean you can’t advertise correctly and promote yourself correctly to have them come I always and I’ve been involved in the internet I was very lucky I got in it and 1994 one of my best friends was in charge of all of the computers for the University of wisconsin-stout here in town and he kept nagging me to come to his office and see this thing called the internet and at the time I was a canine Handler in the sheriff’s department I didn’t have time didn’t want to take the time until he drugged me over there screaming and hollering at 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning and we went into this was before Microsoft and all these Google and all this stuff and we went into a library in Australia and read articles on How to Train Police Service Dogs and they said that’s the future and then I tried to find somebody to do a website and nobody did websites back there at the whole university there was nobody doing websites so I had to teach myself my point in this is that it wouldn’t make sense to me if I wanted back then to be a professional dog trainer to get onto the internet and do videos there for YouTube where everybody in the world looks at them but you live in a town of 2000 or a town of fifteen or sixteen thousand you need to find the market that you’re going to go to and then you need to find how are you going to touch that market on the internet in our town we have things like what’s happening in Menomonie there’s a town of sixty thousand people 20 miles from here what’s happening in Eau Claire Wisconsin that’s where you need to put your emphasis on Advertising to do it and to to get out there and put a lot of videos together for YouTube that’s okay but is it going to bring business to your door maybe but not as much as would be if you were advertising just in your town and when you do your own uh when you do your own website and I don’t know a lot about it but I watch videotape training videos all the time not videotape Cindy always hollers at me calling it videotape that’s my old school thinking when I watch YouTube videos on these new cameras that we buy they’re more complicated than computers and I’m using one right now uh I hear people talk about an advertised Squarespace I’ve never been on it but the people that I respect that I watch that uh to learn my equipment better always are sponsored by Squarespace so it was certainly worth going and looking at I would also recommend you starting a podcast or going to the local if you have a local radio station offer to do a podcast there pets are a big thing especially after the pandemic everybody in the world’s got a new pet and most of the people have never had one before so your radio stations may be willing to have you come in and try it take some podcasts into them let them listen to the work that you do one of the keys when you do things like this is don’t be cocky be nice be helpful offer good information you don’t have to sit there and tell them how great you are and how great your business is and how they can bring their dog in and you’re going to fix it but those are just ideas on how you can promote yourself we have a friend who has who is a professional dog trainer makes a good part of her living training dogs for people and 20 years ago she did some cool stuff that I will always remember I have a lot of respect for her for doing this she would go to the parking lot of Sam’s Club or Walmart or Costco or whatever with her dog and she would work her dog in obedience in the parking lot on leash and people would watch and they’d come up and they’d talk to her and and she said I’d love to I’d love to talk to you about this but I don’t have time right now because I’m doing my own working with my own dog or I’m working with a dog that is a client’s dog here’s a card you can go to my website and you can see the prices and all the services that we offer and the services and I’m going to stay what with this one March 2nd because she would take a flyer and she’d put it on the windshields underneath the windshield wiper on cars and in parking lots she’d go to the vets talk to the vets if she could get in and say this is what I’m trying to do this is what my experience is here’s my fees if you get people come in and you don’t have anybody to recommend I’d be happy to help you and I’ll do everything I can to make sure I take care of your customers in a way that will benefit the customer and that’s important too you want to become a valuable tool for your clients and for the people that recommend you very very important being cocky is not going to get that so one of the things that’s also important is for you to determine what income stream you’re going to work for and by that I mean there’s a lot of different services that you can offer you’re the only one that can figure out what you want to do do you want to have six or eight week group classes do you want to have board and train now if you’re not familiar with a board and train that means you’re going to take a customer’s dog into your house and you’re going to keep it for three four six weeks and give the dog back to the customer we’ll talk about that in a minute too are you going to work for a groomer are you going to be a groomer will you take dogs and give them baths if you do these things will you go to the people’s houses and pick them up and bring them to your facility and then deliver them home are you gonna are you gonna board dogs for people you don’t have to have a boarding facility if you have a home with a garage you can put dog crates in your garage as long as you don’t have that many and you have the time to be able to get these dogs out walk them train them spend time with them so you can you can bring dogs in for the weekend you can bring dogs in for the board and trains that’s up to you you can go to people’s homes and set an appointment where you go and you let them watch you work their dog and you then counsel them on what they’re doing correctly or incorrectly when they work their dog I’ve heard of some people that will deliver food once a month once every two weeks a lot of professional dog trainers sell equipment they sell good quality leashes there’s a they sell good quality dog collars they sell good quality remote collars prong collars whatever doesn’t matter what whether you agree or disagree with a prong collar or a remote collar you don’t have to sell them you don’t have to promote them if you don’t want to but you need to think about that and you need to pick your services and then don’t be afraid to post your fees tell people what it costs because you don’t want people to come to your facility with a problem with their dog and you spend a half hour or an hour talking to them about it and then you tell them what you charge and they say oh I can’t afford that that’s way too much money no don’t do that you may think you’re going to lose business by putting your price out there you’re not gonna it’s gonna long term it’s going to save you a lot of time and another thing you really want to do is you want to get a contract written you absolutely want a contract and the most important people that you want contracts for are your friends because your friends are the ones that always want something for nothing they know you they think oh Ed’s going to do something he’s going to help me train my dog he’ll take care of it and then it comes time to get paid and that can be a problem it might be a way of losing a friend so everybody signs a contract no matter what and with the contract here’s an important thing don’t offer too much don’t claim that you can be the end of all ends for behavioral problems in the amount of time that they’re going to give you to work and fix that problem don’t do that just tell people I’m going to spend the time that we are committed to that we agree to here and I’m going to do everything I can and I think I can fix it but I might not be able to fix this and it might be an issue where I can get this dog to work for me and to solve the problems that you’re having when he’s with me but he goes home and he has the same problems with you you the dog trainer has to figure out you have to be in a bit of a psychologist you have to figure out how to politely tell them this dog has problems because of the way you live with this dog this dog has problems because of the way you manage this dog this dog has problems because of what you do let this dog get by with it so if you say that wrong you’re going to piss people off sorry for my language but it’s the truth so be very careful here and give some thought to how you approach it how you’re going to say how you’re going to say what you do but very important here don’t promise too much that’s how you’re going to make people mad because if you take them if you take their dog and you make them mad because you said you would do this and they got home and a week later it wouldn’t do squat they’re going to tell all their friends and then there goes a bunch of references that you didn’t have to have going against you so think about that and going along right with that is be very careful if you’ve never handled a dog with aggression problems don’t tell people don’t take clients that have aggression problems with dogs if you don’t have any experience with it because you can get in trouble that way you might get bit but be careful about that the same thing goes with promising too much for a young puppy there’s a limited amount of things that you can train a puppy to do in a short period of time for a client you might be able to take a puppy we can take a puppy and we can do a lot with our puppy but we have months to do it so you have to determine what you’re going to say you can get by with and you can’t force a puppy or you’re going to wreck that puppy you’re going to wreck his temperament by trying to put too much force on it I mean we just had this couple of days ago a woman that wrote us that has a puppy that was I want to say 10 or 11 or 12 weeks old and she’s bought she’s been a really good customer of ours but she buys things and I don’t think she reads them or that reads them I don’t think she listens to it because she’s talking about putting a prong collar on a puppy and putting a remote collar on a on a three-month-old puppy to stop it from barking and and now the puppy doesn’t like her and you know it’s just a it’s a train wreck so be careful of this you know there are certain things and the same thing if you’re going to offer a puppy day care we’re not a fan of this and you’re going to get a lot of people watching this video they’re going to get pissed when they read this and they’re going to say I’m full of beans but I’m not full of beans I bred dogs for 35 years we had a breeding facility I bred imported working bloodline German Shepherds for police work and the biting dog Sports and we averaged many years over 10 letters a year I also had five full-time people working for me that we trained right now I got a really nice dog kennel ceramic tile and everything breeding rooms it’s empty I haven’t bred dogs in 10 or 11 years I kind of miss that I don’t miss having to deal with Airlines and all the things that go along with it but the one thing I will say do the math on how many litters I was having in a year for 35 years and then you’ll know what my experience is in raising puppies and Cindy’s way better at raising puppies I learned so much from her because she forced me to bring my puppies that I wanted to raise myself into our home and that’s where you learn I’ve got some good videos we have a we have a uh how old is tip now I think she’s about five and a half months old a chihuahua puppy I love her I had German Shepherds my whole life now I have a a shitzu a border terrier a Chihuahua and a two-year-old German Shepherd that’s tougher nails that I love too so back to this puppy issue if you’re going to do a puppy Day Care you need to set it up correctly and I’m I’m not trying to tell you how to do it but you better have dog crates there and you better have the time to let them come out on leash and you don’t let the whole herd out to run around because you only have to have one puppy jump on a timid puppy once or twice and all of a sudden it don’t want to come to your facility it’s pulling and trying to get back in the car when they bring it and that’s a bad deal that doesn’t do anything for you recommend that doesn’t do anything for your for your reputation and when we’ve said this before in other videos we get like 90 percent of the comments telling us how wrong we are well they go with the they go with the barber and the postman and and the other well-intended people that uh want to do the right thing but don’t have the experience on what they’re talking about one of the most important things that you can do besides not being cocky is to understand that you will never stop learning if you think you know everything you need to know to get out there and be a professional dog trainer and you don’t have to go to other seminars and you just don’t you know enough well don’t get in the business because it’s going to end up being a short-term deal or you’re never going to reach the full potential in the market you decide to work in I’m 75 years old I went to my first professional seminar on dog training back in 1974 and I was addicted I mean before that when I got out of college I worked for a company and I would I dread everything I could on dog training it was before videos I envy people that these days can get a video on basic dog obedience can get a video on how to well puppies like we have or some of the videos and online courses with Michael Ellis who in my opinion is one of the top two or three dog trainers in the world we didn’t have that back then and I went to this three-day seminar and holy geez I couldn’t believe what we learned and I got addicted to going to seminars and I’ve been to literally hundreds and hundreds of seminars over the years and I still go a story in closing is a lot of people I did my first training video back in 1982. and from 1974 to 1982 I don’t know how many seminars I went to but a ton of them and I was competing in AKC obedience I was competing in tracking I was competing in schutzen I would decide that I wanted to do a video on a specific subject and I would pick these subjects that I didn’t know anything about and then I’d find a trainer to work with and I’d go and videotape them and then I knew that I was getting good material because I didn’t know anything about these subjects that I was producing and I figured if they could teach me what and it made sense what I was filming then I could edit it out and it would help other people too that’s kind of a roundabout way of saying how stupid I was back then but the fact is I was and as you go on through the years you’re going to you’re going to gain experience you’re going to learn more about different types of dogs you’re going to learn more about advertising and then it’s all going to come together so just have some patience if you’re going to get into this business it’ll come if you do the work and if you network and you learn how to advertise your business you’ll be successful even in a small market and for those people that watch this on YouTube if you haven’t been to liberty.com go there we have over 1500 free short little videos and then we have a ton of online courses from very good professional dog trainers very good instructors so take the time it takes to learn how to become a professional dog trainer [Music] …

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