5. At all times wear a whistle around your neck. Shopping. Weddings. Funerals. Always wear a whistle around your neck and have a leash hanging from your back pocket. If anyone is confused and asks you why you are wearing a personal safety alarm, tell them: “No. I’m a professional dog trainer. Now, sit!”
4. Never, ever, ever, EVER agree with another dog trainer about ANYTHING, EVER! If you’re committed to convincing people that you really are a pro dog trainer you will fail immediately if you agree with other dog trainers about a single, solitary thing. Particularly dog training methods, techniques and philosophies. You are a pro dog trainer. You, and only you, know what methods are the ‘best’. All other dog trainers are only there to be disagreed with. However, if you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of being in a room where there are three professional dog trainers you must simply work with one of the other dog trainers to agree that the third dog trainer is wrong about everything. That’s the only time you can agree.
3. Seen a dog trainer on TV? Any dog trainer? Well, they’re wrong. About everything. Got it? They’re wrong and you should make absolutely sure everyone knows that YOU know they’re wrong.
2. Heard about someone else’s dog training qualifications? Discredit them. Immediately. Doesn’t matter where they got them, how hard they worked for them or who issued the qualifications, they’re no good. You have a choice of three responses – a) “That’s a bogus qualification from a discredited teaching establishment.”
b) “That qualification is outdated and anyone can pass an online course that takes just three minutes.”
c) “I don’t believe in qualifications. I’m a university of life professor. In fact, dog trainers that are qualified are probably dangerous and will definitely try and make your dog join some sort of cult.”.
1. There have been thousands of books written about dog training over the past hundred years. Millions and millions of words committed to print on the topic. Guess what? All wrong. Every last one of them. If you meet an ‘ordinary’ dog owner and they tell you what book(s) they’ve read, scoff. Scoff loudly. Doesn’t matter if you’ve heard of the book or its author, that book is wrong, its advice is dangerous, the author is (probably) a drunken fraud who has been discredited by the Internet. If anyone ask you what books you would recommend, the answer is obvious. Your own books. If you haven’t written a dog training book yet then get it done. Come on. You’ve been pretending to be a professional dog trainer since you started reading this article. That’s plenty of time to get a book written on the subject. Get on with it!
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