Dog Health Questions: Professional dog trainers - how did you start?

I was hoping some professional dog trainers (no matter what specialty - behavior, obedience, agility, K9, working dog...anything) could give some details of the beginning of their training careers. what inspired you?

for example, did you start your own business or join another dog training business or shelter? did you get a degree, training, or any formal education in dog behavior? what kind of experience did you have prior to starting your career? if you started your own business, how did you get it off the ground? how many years have you worked in dog training and how successful is your professional career? what kind of dogs and owners do you work with on a regular basis? overall, do you enjoy your work? any interesting stories? best moments? worst moments? etc....any details you can offer would be appreciated.

thanks.

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Okay well i wouldn't exactly say Im a professional trainer but hopefully I can help. Well my family has had a farm and we needed a hearding dog. So we got Australian Sheppard( Auzzie). We soon got more Auzzies and decided to bread them. Before we knew it we had about ten dogs that we breaded with each other and were selling the puppies. We were making a good bit of money for it but at this time we were just breading for a good hearding dog and everybody that bought from us wanted hearding dogs or pets. We did have dogs all over the south of the country though. Well soon we had some issues and had to give up the business and sell all our dogs. We did start again and when we did we started with atchual show dogs. The more we bread the higher class of dogs we could get. Im only 14 but im working on becoming a Junior handler. if i start now i can become a Judge for dog shows and make a lot of money. I haven't had really much of training. I grew up with the business and just learned. Also i have always had a natural love for dogs. We do have professional trainers we work with and help us with our dogs in shows. As far as dogs go now all our dogs and puppies have champion blood lines. We own dogs that are in the thousands. Most are around $5000-$10,000. Then we just bread and sell the puppy's for money. We have a room set up in our garage with dog cages, places to groom the puppy's, two rooms that have air conditioning and heat to keep our puppy's in, and all our supplies. We only work with champion show dogs now or at least dogs with champions parents or grandparents. We have dogs in every state besides Hawaii and alaska. We also have sold over 1,000 puppies. I would say having a website is the best way to get started. Now like i said im only 14 but im working on getting up there.

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• If you want to start the path to becoming a trainer I would apprentice with a local trainer. You can find one at ccpdt.org. It takes years to become a good trainer with apprenticing, seminars and practice. There really is no short cut, you will only let down your future clients by doing that. Jean Donaldson also has a training academy, it's about 6 weeks long. Pat Miller has multiple week long academy that would be good in conjunction with apprenticing.