Have you just gotten a new puppy and you’re reveling in the love and affection it is giving you? Few feelings are greater than that. Dogs can really show you what unconditional love means. There’s no doubt the new puppy will be a great addition to your family and everyone will fall in love with it the moment they see it. Yet, apart from love, your little furry friend will also need discipline.
This goes not only for new puppies you’ve added to your family. You could have a grown dog already, but you’re noticing some signs that it may need to be trained on certain things. You could have previously assumed that training wasn’t necessary, but now that the animal got bigger, you realize such assumption was very wrong. Here are some of the signs your canine may need to be trained.
Whether you’re dealing with a grown dog, or still a young one, and you’re realizing it may need training, one thing is for sure. You won’t entrust your pet to just anyone. Meaning, you’ll want to find the best dog trainer near you, instead of just going for the first one you come across, without doing any kind of research and without checking anything. If you’ve never had to work with these professionals before, or if you weren’t happy with the last one you worked with, you could have a bit of a hard time finding and choosing the best experts for you, which is where I come in to help. With this, I’ll help by providing tips that will lead you to finding and choosing the perfect dog trainers near you.
1. Get Recommendations
You’re not the only person in your circle of friends and acquaintances that has a dog, are you? Probably not. Therefore, why not talk to those people and check if they have had their canines trained and where. Let them give you recommendations for certain professionals if they’ve been happy with the quality of service they received, but also hear them out if they have some complaints to share about some of these experts. After all, they’re probably complaining for a reason, and you don’t want to face the same disappointments as they did, meaning you should try and stay clear of those trainers that people complain about a lot.
2. Go Online
The above step is great for finding out about some of the trainers that work in your specific area. It is, however, not the only step that can help you do that. Searching for them online is also important, and it will lead you towards getting a lot of names that you’ll then research in more details later on. Therefore, together with the step above, you should also go online and browse the Web in search of these professionals, aiming at making a list of those trainers you think could be right for your dog.
3. Always Check for Certifications
Do you want your canine to be trained by some people that don’t really have certifications to do this and that will just, well, wing it? Not exactly the best idea, is it? Definitely not! So, when searching for the best dog training near me – search for certified puppy trainers, because you want to be sure that your pet is in good hands and that the professionals you hire will know what they are doing. If you go for uncertified ones, be prepared for them to do more damage than good, and since I’m sure you don’t want that to happen, the best thing to do is avoid the uncertified trainers.
4. Don’t Take Experience for Granted
Certifications are, clearly, not to be taken for granted. It is one of the crucial things to check before going any further and before checking the professionals from your list in more details. Once you’ve narrowed the list down to only the certified professionals, you’ll absolutely have to start digging for some more information, aiming at ultimately choosing the best possible trainers for your puppy. What’s one of the first things to check when you start doing the more detailed research?
Experience, of course. If I asked you whether you would rather entrust your dog to experienced trainers or to some amateurs that are just getting started and that will probably be practicing on your canine, you wouldn’t hesitate to answer. You would, of course, want to choose the experienced ones. Therefore, take your time to always check the experience level of these professionals, aiming at choosing those that have been in the business for a while and that will, thus, know exactly how to treat your dog and how to teach them what you want them to be taught.
5. Don’t Ignore Reputation
Reputation is not to be ignored either. In fact, it could be the single most important thing to check here. You want your dog to be treated nicely during the training process, so checking reputation to determine what other clients think about the approaches that certain trainers have been using to teach their dogs certain things is a must. If their reputation is not that great, and if a lot of people are complaining – through reviews – that the professionals haven’t been able to teach the animals anything, or that they’ve treated them unfairly, you should stay clear of them.
Here’s some more info on how to make the choice: https://www.caninejournal.com/dog-trainers/
6. Discuss the Training Approach & Discuss the Fees
Speaking of the approach these pros are using, you may not always get to find that out through reviews. This is why you always have to talk directly to your potential trainers before you agree to working with any of them, aiming at figuring out the exact approach that they employ in the process and understanding if they will treat your pet nicely or not. Apart from that, discussing the fees will also help, as it will give you a clear idea on what’s reasonable and what isn’t when it comes to the costs. Remember, though, to always keep quality in mind and never choose based on the fees alone.