Guarantees in an unregulated profession - PSA

As a dog owner seeking help for your dog’s behavior concerns, you are in a difficult position. You are trusting your time and money to something and someone without knowing exactly what will happen or what the outcome will be.

To make matters worse, dog training is an unregulated profession where anyone from zero education to a PhD in animal behavior can call themselves a professional, give you advice, take your money, and perhaps even offer you certain guarantees.

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees with behavior. Anyone being honest and ethical with their client cannot provide a timeline on when or if your dog’s concerning behaviors can be resolved in the way you hope. There are far too many variables at play that can help, hinder, or halt training and behavior modification progress. Anyone who claims to be able to guarantee you results is not being honest, is ignorant about the truth and complexities of behavior, or is willing to do anything including inhumane methods to get results, which in the end can easily backfire or cause new behavior concerns.

You really must be careful about who you choose to hire in the dog training industry. It is not a regulated profession and dog trainers are very good at using language that sounds impressive. But when you are given wrong or outdated information and apply it, you can make your entire situation much worse and in some cases there will be no turning back after the damage has been done. In some cases there is no solution and tough decisions have to be made. Contrary to what marketing in the dog training profession might lead the public to believe, not everything can be solved through training and behavior modification.

Please follow the links below for more information so that you can make informed decisions on who you choose to hire.

https://youtu.be/XKyLqv4Q5kI
What is the difference between a trainer and a behaviorist? 

https://positively.com/contributors/should-dog-trainers-offer-guarantees/

Jamie Flanders CDBC, FPPE, CFDM