Jethro the Beagle/Chihuahua couldn’t be boarded. He bit people; I fixed him. He now boards regularly at his vet clinic and does not attack the kennel help.

The owner would have preferred boarding at the mega-pet-store’s kennel, but they turned him away. They do not take dogs that would require a skilled kennel attendant to handle. They have no trainers certified to fix behavior problems but do not refer customers to competent behaviorists because their store offers training... that does not fix behavior problems.

Because of their policies, they lost a client. That means that Jethro presented an opportunity to whichever kennel was willing to work with me to solve the problem – and that was exactly what happened.

The question for many boarding and kennel facilities is whether they can cash in on this segment of the market. This niche also includes existing clients with dogs who are fine at your facility but bad at home. All it requires to tap into this market is to find the right trainer to cooperate with your company. That is a win-win situation. You acquire and retain clients who would otherwise go elsewhere, and the trainer gets clients who would otherwise not know of their service. In that spirit, I offer you these thoughts about finding the right trainer to fit your business. Obviously it is not a comprehensive treatment of the topic but more of a nudge that will get you thinking.

Top Ten Questions to Find a Good Trainer
What kind of training do you do? Don’t assume that any one trainer is going to be appropriate for every situation. Just as you have multiple suppliers for your salon’s products and equipment, you may need to have knowledge of several trainers and their specific strengths and weaknesses.

Are you a good teacher? Dog training includes training the owners. How well does the trainer teach? Request a presentation for your staff to find out. Use your staff’s dogs and solve some real problems in real time. Get a consensus from your employees to help you make a decision. If the trainer is reluctant to display their methods to your staff, that might be a reason to look elsewhere.

What kind of training have you done? Five years experience teaching dogs to sit means you can probably teach dogs to sit. That doesn’t mean you have any experience solving a housetraining problem. Likewise, teaching rudimentary obedience in a parks class or mega-pet-store isn’t automatically connected to stopping a dog from biting a child or even darting out the front door.

How many dogs have you trained? To be a good trainer, you have to know dogs. That requires handling hundreds rather than dozens of dogs. While someone may feel they have a gift with animals, earning mastery is a matter of proving your ability over and over again. Given a choice between someone who claims to have an innate ability to handle animals and someone who’s handled thousands of dogs, I’ll take the latter every time.

Private or group? Group classes may be all your client needs. However, groups limit the individual attention for each student. Anything more than general control on-leash should be handled privately.

Is your current training in-home, at your facility, or both? Any serious problem requires one-on-one training in the home. You have to see the behavior at its worst with all the factors that cause and maintain it. If a dog surfs kitchen counters, you need a kitchen to elicit the behavior and eventually must fix the problem in the kitchen that triggers the behavior. Trainers who wish to teach a dog to be boarded will need to provide training at your facility and often in your client’s home.

What training materials do you use or recommend? Most owners need some kind of written or visual guide to help them train their dog. Handouts that go along with a training program help ensure success. If a trainer has not prepared materials for clients, they should at least be able to name a selection of books and videos they make available. If a trainer pitches a specific tool, the incentive may be profit and not effectiveness. Not every dog needs a choke chain, shock collar, head halter, or other device. If a trainer has developed a favorite tool, it may indicate that they offer cookie cutter training, which of itself is neither good nor bad. Some people offer services limited to their skills, which is better than someone who claims to be able to train everything but does not have the experience to back it up.

Do you handle behavior problems? Which ones? Very few trainers are effective with tough behavior issues. Knowing how to create an obedience trial champion or agility dog has nothing to do with being able to stop a dog from ingesting socks. There are some behaviors that are difficult to fix, which do not respond well to experimentation. Someone saying they can fix behavior problems should require some tangible proof, including what they did, how long it took, and how long the behavior remained arrested.

Do you work with veterinarians? There are several behavioral problems that can be the result of disease or illness. My last cattle dog, Tuggy, had Cushing’s disease. The first symptom was unexplained urination in the house. If I had only addressed the housetraining, I would have disguised the keys to diagnosing his disease. Anyone who wishes to work with behavior problems should have ready access to veterinarians who can help determine whether the behavior may have its roots in a medical problem.

How do you stop a single behavior now? A recent column in a major dog magazine quoted a noted behaviorist as saying that if you get a puppy, you must expect to lose at least one pair of $100 shoes. Think about this for a second. What if a pup ingests the pieces of the shoe and gets an obstruction? Ask your vet; it’s a common occurrence. An obstruction invariably leads to major abdominal surgery and possibly death. If you can’t stop a dog from eating an expensive pair of shoes, how do you stop a dog from ingesting anything? What if it’s a hunk of a cheap shoe? If you can stop a dog from ingesting hunks of shoes, why wouldn’t you teach your clients to stop a dog from ingesting anything of value? There’s the rub.

When someone tells you to assume that a dog is going to destroy things, what they really want is for you to drop your expectations of their expertise. They don’t want to admit that they don’t have a clue about how to stop a puppy from ingesting a pair of shoes, a cherished teddy bear, your passport, multiple pairs of glasses, wedding rings, or any other thing you might value.

Gary Wilkes is a former shelter manager with more than 25 years experience solving behavior problems by veterinary referral. He is the creator of the Doggie Repair Kit DVD, a resource for teaching meaningful inhibitions for behaviors such as darting out the front door, eating inedible or valuable objects, staying out of pantries, on-leash aggression, and a host of other behaviors that drive your clients crazy. You can find the full stand-alone video exclusively at www.clickandtreat.com. For more information, visit www.clickandtreat.com or write to [email protected].

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