Alright, well we’ve got a fun episode lined up today, just you and I. 

Yep. Just the two of us. 

So this one has been a long time coming, ’cause obviously we tried filming this before. No one else knows this, but that was a fiasco. 

Yeah. Not a good, good night. 

I left a work event to do that and the next day everyone’s like, how did it go?

Is it a good interview? I’m like, I don’t even wanna talk about it, 

man. We changed equipment, locations, internet access, we changed it all. Nothing. Nothing up. 

I’ll tell you what though, with how long we’ve been doing this podcast a while now, and we’ve never had to bail on an episode, we’ve never had to bail on a guest.

We’ve never once had issues until we tried to do an interview of you and that. That’s it. So that’s pretty darn good. Yeah. For that to be our first. 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I got pretty lucky there. It’s been almost a year. 

Crazy 

coming up on a year. It’s hard to believe, but yeah. 

Alright, well today we are interviewing you, Jason Ferguson, owner of Highland Canine, and I don’t know what will title this episode.

I guess that’s probably up to Emily, but I know a lot of PE myself included, are a lot of people are interested just in what is it like to run a dog training school, because obviously you’re a dog trainer, you do all the dog training stuff, but on top of that you run a dog trainer school, which is way different than training a client or training a dog as your training trainer.

So I think that’s a. Pretty cool thing to focus on today. ’cause I think you’ve got a, you’ll have a lot of insight. Most trainers won’t have. 

Yeah, it’s, so this year we’ve been, it is the 20th anniversary of our school. We began in oh six. So we’re happy, happy to be celebrating 20 years. It is 20 years of, you know, again, training, training people who are going out in the industry.

It is 20 years of story, so I’ll just tell you it’s, uh, it’s a very interesting situation. Ours is a little unique in that we’re. I’m at our main campus, which is here in North Carolina, and it’s pretty remote, rural. Uh, we’re right here in the foothills of the mountains. No hopping nightlife here. So it gives people an opportunity to focus on training dogs the entire time they’re here.

We’re not, we’re not quite that remote, but, uh, it does, it does give people an opportunity to focus on their craft while they’re here. Get their hands on a lot of dogs. Our classes typically here, typically we have about 30 people in a class. On average. It’s, it’s interesting because our, our, our dynamic of our class.

S ranges so much. Everything from people who are just getting outta high school who don’t feel like college is a good fit. Uh, they wanna work with animals to people who are, you know, 50 who are getting outta corporate America and wanna start a business doing something they’re passionate about. We get veterans coming outta the military of all ages.

You know, some of ’em, even in their twenties and thirties, others retiring after 20 years of the military wanting to be dog trainers. So, yeah, it’s, um, it’s a pretty unique mix of. People in our programs here. 

I can imagine. And you, you said about 30 students at a time. 

We do about 30 students twice a year.

So our programs are, uh, the programs here at our main campus are, and we’ve got three campuses, but one’s here 24 weeks long, so we only run two a year. We start our, what we call our winter semester in January and our summer in July. So one class gets a start when it’s freezing outside and end when it’s hot and the other one starts when it’s hot and ends when it’s freezing.

So everybody gets a little bit of pain. 

Yeah, 

absolutely. 

That’s important. You had mentioned this already, but you said there’s just all kinds of people coming through there, which I can imagine because I, I see that just in the industry, people applying for dog training jobs are all over the map as far as life experience and age.

So with 30 people at a time, I’m assuming then you’ve got a wide variety in any given class. Is that a good thing? Is it a challenge? Is it hard to mesh when you have, because I’m assuming you have people with a lot of dog experience, but also some people with less dog experience. Is that a challenge?

Typically, no. I mean, it can be. Our program is set up so that regardless of what experience you may or may not have, we really begin week one of our program as if you have no experience with dogs. So we start with just fundamentals. From day one, it’s, it’s super basic and I, you know, I have to, I have to go in on day one and tell everybody, you know, if you don’t know which end of a dog to feed, relax, we’re gonna teach you.

If you’ve got a ton of experience, bear with us. There’s a method to the madness. Uh, and it seems, it seems to work really well. It seems as though people who come with experience still have. Considerable number of takeaways from the information that’s being provided. The people who don’t have any experience seem to figure out how to absorb the information without being completely overwhelmed.

Um, so, so it does seem to work, but yeah, we, we start everybody off really with a, with a real solid core foundation those first four weeks. 

Okay. Now, how do you go about evaluating applicants? Because, uh, once again, I’m sure it’s all over the map. Is that a, is that a challenge? 

It can be. We’ve, um, so we’ve.

Modified our application process. Over the years, we’ve changed it a lot, really over 20 years to make sure that we’re getting or doing what we can to get the best candidates into our program. I mean, for many years we had wait, you know, just waiting lists. We would, we would bring in 30 people, we would turn away, uh, some, some years, almost as many.

Uh, so we had to be, we had to be really selective about who we’re bringing into the program and work really hard to try to make sure that we were getting. Those people who truly were, you know, committed to making this work. You know, they really were invested and really wanted to work with dogs. They had the right mindset and the right work ethic.

’cause you know, as well as I do, being a dog trainer is not easy, right? This is not an easy profession. So 

it’s not, 

we had the, 

I thought it was gonna get easy maybe next year. Is that not how it works? 

We just keep telling ourself that. Yep. And, and that’s what keeps us going tomorrow will be better than today.

We’ve gotta have folks who have the right expectation coming into it. It is not all, you know, rainbows and puppies. It’s not sitting around playing with puppies all day. That’s not what being a professional dog trainer’s all about. It’s a lot of hard work. Um, you’ve gotta. Step outside for many people, step outside that comfort zone.

And, and we get, get less of these types far less than we used to. But back in the day we were getting a lot of folks, you know, coming in with the whole, I love dogs, I hate people, and that’s why I wanna do this. Um, and, and you know, that’s not the right mindset. If you, if you love dogs and hate people, being a professional dog trainer may not be for you because, you know, most of our work is with people.

And that oftentimes is where you earn your money. 

Uh, yeah, I’m not, I’m not sure why so many people say that if they mean it or if they just say it, because it sounds like a good sales pitch for why you should bring them in. ’cause we hear that a lot on interviews, and for me, that’s a major red flag because half the job, if not more, is talking to people.

And that’s the really important part of the job. If you can’t explain things to a client, the training’s pretty much useless at that point. 

Yeah, that’s what I tell people. You can be the best dog trainer in the world if you can’t articulate the. Skills necessary and create a situation where the owner understands exactly what they need to do to maintain the training that you’ve done.

You’re not gonna look like a very good dog trainer. 

Absolutely. You know, I know you have a, all kinds of people coming through the program. If like, there’s people listening, obviously most of our listeners are dog trainers. What does it look like? Because I know you get a lot of active trainers that come through your program ’cause they wanna develop more skills or learn something new or just get better at the, what they’re currently doing.

What does that process look like? If someone is already a dog trainer and they say, Hey, I want to go, I want to go to school here. Are they picking and choosing what they are learning or is it kind of a set curriculum? What does that look like for them? 

Yeah, it’s a set curriculum for our program here. I say it’s set it in what we teach week to week.

That is set. Right. Um. How, and, and they’re gonna learn it. Pretty much everything that’s in that curriculum, in that 24 weeks, they’re gonna, they’re gonna be given the information, they’re gonna be tested on that information. So all that’s required, right? That, that’s something that has to be done. However, you know, if we get people who are.

Particularly interested in, for example, working with service dogs or particularly interested in working with police or detection dogs. They do still have a lot of, um, space to really focus on that while they’re here. You know, there are oppor, lots of opportunities just because of the way the program’s set up.

So if you wanna, you know, if you’re more interested in service dogs, there are gonna be opportunities for you to go. Out in public with the service dog trainers and the service dogs more and attend things like that. Um, you know, there’s a minimum you have to do, but you can go definitely above and beyond, right?

If you, if you’re super excited about working with police dogs and police dog handlers. We are a working business, so we’ve, we’ve got a working dog division. We got handler schools, we got one going on right now. We got a week left of it. So the students who. Are eager to learn that have had an opportunity to get involved with that handler school.

They’re role players in scenarios. They get an opportunity to watch those dogs work. They get an opportunity to see us import those dogs and train ’em basically from beginning to end. You know, again, those opportunities are there for the people who are more interested in those particular things. You know, we get folks who come here, they wanna be well-rounded.

They wanna learn the service dog stuff. They wanna learn the police dog stuff. So they have that information. But you know, their primary focus is pet dogs and behavior mod. So you know, there are opportunities for them to. Tag along with some of our experienced folks and go to people’s houses on private lessons and, you know, attend group classes and all of those things that they feel interested in.

They’re gonna get opportunities to do that. And I’ll be honest with you, it’s, it’s a good question ’cause a lot of people switch up. I say that because we get folks who will begin the program and they’re like, I wanna do police dogs, I wanna do police dogs, I wanna do police dogs. And six weeks into the program, they’re like, man, I hate police dogs.

That’s stupid. I don’t wanna do that. I’m super interested in service dogs now. And they just completely changed gears. So that’s one of the benefits of the program we run here in North Carolina. Not only does it give people the opportunity to really focus on the things that they want to do, it also gives ’em the opportunity to figure out what they don’t like too.

There’s something to be said for that. 

Yeah. 

So if someone comes into the school, let’s talk behavior mod for a second, just ’cause I’m more familiar with that, so probably easier for me to ask the questions. Someone comes in, they’re intrigued by behavior mod, so they’re going through your, your whole program and then they’re shadowing your other trainers it sounds like.

So then your, your Hyland canine trainers that are in that area, they’re going out on behavior mod sessions with them and seeing what they’re doing. 

They are. Yeah. In addition to that, every Wednesday morning we’re taking a group of folks to the shelter. Um, again, everybody has to go once after that. It’s a volunteer basis.

So those people who are really, you know, leaning toward that and wanna work more with them, get more opportunities. Um, but we’re going to the local shelter every Wednesday and we’re spending half a day there with a group of folks and they’re getting dogs out, working with ’em. But yeah, they do get the shadow.

Our more experienced trainers to either. Attend behavior mod lessons here at the facility in the evenings or on the weekends, or attend group classes or even, like I said, tag along with ’em to go to people’s homes, um, and do those in-home consults and in-home sessions. 

And then are you guys taking in behavior mod boredom trains as well through the normal, your normal training program?

And are they, 

yeah, so, so here at our facility we’ve got kennels as well. Trainers are there training dogs pretty much every day. So we’re bringing in behavior cases there. And in addition to that, we have what we, and we’ve had this, the entirety of our business, it was what we call a second chance program.

Where we take in dogs from shelters and rescues and we’re kind of the last stop for ’em, if you know what I mean. And we, we work to rehabilitate those dogs and the students get an opportunity to work with those dogs as well. We have a bit of a rule that we only do one at a time, but we break our rule a lot.

We oftentimes end up more than one of those dogs that we’re working with. And again, the students get an opportunity to, to get directly involved or just, you know, kind of watch how the other trainers are working with those dogs as well. 

So those rescue dogs, how does that work after you train it? Are you guys actually placing it, or is it going back to the shelter, or is it going to a foster?

What does that look like? 

They don’t go back to the shelter typically because it’s just, you see, it’s such, such a big setback, right? So oftentimes what we’re trying to do, the end goal there is to either find ’em a home directly, but we try to market ’em on our social media channels and newsletter and that sort of stuff to try to find ’em a home.

But we also have, as you can imagine, after 20 years, we’ve got. Pretty big network of folks around the area where they may have a foster placement where we could put the dog until we can find it a permanent home. So yeah, the ideal goal is to make sure the dog doesn’t go back to the shelter. We see oftentimes regressions when we put ’em back in that environment.

So I’ll be honest, we a lot of times students fall in love with ’em. They end up adopting them, so. 

I have seen that a lot and for sure the, the regression when they go back to the shelter, if that’s what you’ve done. But I’ve also seen a, just boarding facilities in general. Someone ends up adopting dogs like that pretty often.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Spend enough time with it. 

Yep. They get attached to ’em, they end up taking ’em home, so. 

Mm-hmm. 

It’s pretty 

cool. You spend enough time with the dog, then you think, man, do I wanna leave this dog in a kennel environment or could I bear seeing him go back to a shelter or whatever and all of a sudden he is yours.

Yep, it happens. 

Well, that’s awesome. So what is something you think trainers should know if they’re evaluating going to dog training school? So, you know, obviously there’s a lot of schools out there, there’s a lot of, I think I’ve heard people say, should I get experience first or should I go in just fresh?

You know, right away as soon as I think about it. Anything you can think of that you think people should be considering before they go to dog training school? 

Um, great question. I’ll be honest with you. There are, um. There, there are advantages and disadvantages of doing it both ways. You know, getting experience first and then coming versus, um, the other way around.

And I, and I’ll, I’ll explain why. You know, coming in with no experience, again, our school set up in a way that we start you off right day one, laying the foundation as if you, you’ve never worked with dogs before, um, you don’t. Oftentimes end up developing maybe bad habits or some of those things because you’re starting fresh and you’re doing it under the supervision of somebody with significant experience.

So that’s the upside there. Um. The downside to that though is when we start talking about industry trends and some of those things, those people don’t oftentimes have the background to really kind of understand what we’re talking about, whereas those with experience would, so, so again, I’ve seen it be successful both ways.

It’s just, you know, one of those things where, um, people, people just have to kind of figure out where they are and where they wanna be. But, um, it can definitely work both ways. 

Okay. And you know, I ask that, ’cause I’ve had people, I, you know, people ask me all the time how to become a dog trainer and my stock answer is volunteer in a humane society to see if you even like dogs first.

Yeah, right. You say you like dogs, but do you actually like, you know what working with dogs is like, so I always tell ’em to do that. And then from, and I’ve had people ask me that question, like, if I’m going to dog training school, should I get a lot of experience first? And my answer always is like, I don’t know.

I would talk to the school about that because I’m just. I don’t have that experience. 

Yeah, starting at a shelter is not a bad idea. Like I said, you’re gonna figure out real quick if you are okay with being jumped on, being pulled around, you know, all those, all those things that you’re gonna be exposed to working with dogs.

Uh, you know, if, if that irritates you after three days, then this may not be a good fit. Right? 

Yeah. And cleaning up dog poop and hearing them bark and getting all the 

things, 

saliva and urine, all over your pants, like that stuff’s gonna happen. So.

A fight.

I’m sure there are a lot of, a lot of things you’ve seen over the years just with all the people you’ve had come through your school. What are some things you’ve seen that make someone more likely to be a successful dog trainer? And let’s, let’s remove technical skill. Like obviously if someone’s amazing at handling dogs, that’s gonna make ’em more likely to be a good dog trainer.

But what else? Like the soft skills or the non dog training skills, what have you seen that seems the most relevant? 

Again, another good question. I think there’s a couple core skills that really are assets for people who become successful. One is their ability to articulate and communicate strategies, techniques, methodologies to other people.

So being able to talk to people, being able to gain the trust of your clients in a way that they’ll follow through with the training and be committed to it. So I think, you know, that’s one of the social aspect of it. Two is understanding the business side of it. I think that’s really important. Do you need an MBA to be a successful dog trainer?

No, I don’t think so. Uh, I don’t have one. Uh, but, uh, I do think you need to invest, uh, on some level in learning about at least some basic business fundamentals. I’ve seen, and I tell people this all the time, I’ve seen some remarkable dog trainers re I mean, incredibly talented people who. Thought that that was enough, and because they didn’t understand the business side, they either A, couldn’t stay in business, or B, never could get their business off the ground.

The flip side of that is I’ve seen some people who are average at best at training dogs, but really good at understanding the fundamentals of business, be incredibly successful. We focus a lot on teaching people those basic business fundamentals as part of any of our programs, because again, I think it’s super important for them to understand at least some basic level, you know.

From, you know, understanding business structures to, you know, understanding risk and marketing. And, you know, even if they’re not going to go build their own website, understanding some basic principles of SEO and those sorts of things are gonna go a long way in helping them be successful. 

I think that’s really good advice and that that’s something I talk to a a lot of young trainers about that you need to understand running a dog training business is a business and to think through is that some people don’t want to run a business and there’s no shame in that whatsoever.

And I think it makes a lot of sense to think about that ahead of time because there’s a lot of amazing dog training jobs out there where you’re working for a company and you don’t need to run a business. You can focus on training dogs, because if you’re an independent operator on your own, you’re gonna spend a huge chunk of your time doing stuff that is, has literally nothing to do with dogs.

Yeah, absolutely. 

Like you just said, SEO and 

taxes, media liability insurance, surety bonds, all the great things that come along with owning your own business. Yeah, yeah. You know, if, if, if you don’t wanna be hassled with that stuff, there’s, again, as you put it, there’s no shame in working for somebody else.

Mm-hmm. If you don’t wanna be doing workers’ compensation audits and all that fun stuff. 

Yeah. That part seems never ending, I’ll be honest with you. 

Well, yeah. ’cause as soon as you’re done, it’s just time for next year’s, right? 

Yep. Yep. Start over. And I think all those people, I was just telling, uh, some of my office staff this week, I think all of those people have an annual conference where they get together and try to figure out the most inopportune time to force you to do those audits and those sorts of things.

It’s like, all right, let’s, let’s go after Matt. We’re, we’re all gonna hit him in March. 

Mm-hmm. They like to get me over the holidays. 

Yeah. Yeah. It’s like the most inopportune time. Yeah. That’s when they’re coming. 

Mm-hmm. And it’s like you have 10 days to get this done. Yep. And if not, we’re just gonna send you massive bills.

We’re just gonna make up numbers and pretend that’s what it is and we’ll expect that payment immediately and we’re gonna cancel your policy. A really nicely written threatening letter that do this immediately or else. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, well, 

we’re really selling people right now. We’re running a dog training business.

Yeah, I, I jokingly tell people who come to the school sometimes I’m like, look, you know, how many of you, you know, maybe week two, I’m like, raise your hand if you think you wanna own your own business or start your own business. And, you know, I’ll get 60 to 80% of the hands up in the room. I’m like, well, by the time we’re done here, I’ll probably change your mind about that.

So. 

Yeah. And it’s just, it’s key to know going into it, what it’s like. So I think it’s, it’s amazing you’re teaching people that, because otherwise you get out in the field, start your business, and then you’re likely to fail or have huge headaches because you had no idea what to plan for. 

Yeah, yeah. And having that, having that early plan, I think’s incredibly important.

Right. And that’s one of the, one of the things we try to help students do while they’re here is to kind of figure out what that plan is. What, what is it they’re offering, you know, what is their. Client persona, what’s your target market? What makes you unique or better? Right? And how do you position yourself in that market to make sure you have an opportunity for success?

You know, the days of mm-hmm. You know, just creating a Instagram account and trying to run an entire dog training business from social media. You know, most of the time that’s just not gonna cut it. 

Absolutely. Having a business plan is so key. ’cause I’ve seen this a lot with independent trainers, is they get excited by the number, whatever it is, right?

Like I’m charging someone $150, so I’m making that much per hour. But then you realize, well, you’ve got all those other hours that you’re not getting compensated for. So whatever it is you’re doing, whatever you’re charging. Has to account for all those other hours and you don’t have paid time off. So you’ve gotta make sure you’re charging enough for that.

You clearly don’t have insur, you know, health insurance. You’ve gotta, you know, budget enough for that. You don’t have a retirement and you’ve gotta budget enough for that. And you need to make sure whatever you’re charging clients is enough to cover all of that stuff because it sounds really exciting.

Like you get your first client and they’re paying you a hundred bucks and you’re like, it was an hour of easy work. That’s amazing. How much, how many hours go into finding that client and servicing them and finding your next one. 

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, that’s something we kinda give people some insight too.

Good. What you’re charging an hour and what you’re making an hour, not the same thing. 

They are not even close. So I guess lemme ask you the flip side of that last question. What are some things that you see cause trainers to fail? And besides I, I guess let’s remove business, just business in general from it.

Let’s be more specific than that, or something different. But someone who goes to the program, your program, anyone else’s, they learn how to handle dogs. What do you think is the most likely thing to cause them to fail?

Perceived monotony, I’ll say, is one. 

It’s a good one. 

Yeah. Perceived monotony, getting bit. I’ve seen a lot of people walk, get bit for the first time and walk away from it. It, I hate to say it, it’s a price of doing business. We can do everything we can to mitigate it. I tell people it’s not if you get bit, it’s when you get bit because it’s gonna happen.

Uh, no matter how cautious, no matter how careful, no matter what precautions or safeguards you have in place, sooner or later you’re gonna get dog bed. Plain and simple. And um, I think some people have that experience and they’re like, you know what, I didn’t die. Let’s, let’s, let’s get back in the saddle.

And other people are like, you know what? This I, I, I think this is not for me. 

I can understand that completely. Let’s go back to that first reason. So you said basically monotonous. Can you expand on that a little bit? 

Or the perception that it’s monotonous? Yeah. You know, for me, training dogs is never monotonous, right?

For me, it’s every situation so unique and different. So com there’s so many complexities and variables. Mm-hmm. And dealing with people and dogs. And I always find it interesting to have a new, you know, I don’t care if I’ve trained, you know, gone and done in-home on 12 golden retrievers in the last six months.

The next golden retriever is gonna give me a different. Different set of problems with most particularly a, a whole different set of variables with the dynamic between them and their owner. 

Mm-hmm. 

And, and, and being a, having the opportunity to kinda look at that, really dive into it, understand what the root causes the behavior are, and how we create a plan to fix it is, is super intriguing for me, and I’ve been doing this for 30 plus years.

I still find that to be incredibly fulfilling to be able to go and do that. Um, a lot of people are like, you know what? I trained, I trained this dog to sit down and stay. Yesterday. I trained this dog to sit down and stay tomorrow. Uh, this is kind of boring, and they walk away from it. 

I think those people are not putting enough thought into what they’re actually doing.

Which K kind of sounds like what you were saying, where every client’s different. You can train a dog, but we all, any experienced trainer knows when you’re trying to train that dog’s owner. They’re gonna throw so many wild cards at you and all these things that you’re gonna have to think on the fly or maybe even modify your training or make up some brand new advice you’ve never said before, and make it up on the spot because it seems like it’s gonna fit with their lifestyle.

That’s stuff is truly never ending. 

Yeah. Yeah. And, and again, I still, like I said, I’ve done it for a long time and I still find it incredibly interesting to be able to have to go in and, and oftentimes, as you mentioned, in a, in a 40 minute, hour long session, figure out the problem. Assess all of the variables and come up with a solution to me.

I mean, it’s still incredibly challenging sometimes to do that. Mm-hmm. And, and that’s what, you know, keeps me, keeps me interested. Right. We’re, we’re presented with all sorts of different stuff all the time. A lot of it is just that it’s a problem. How do we solve this problem? 

I think that is the biggest key.

So I’ve been training, so I started in 2006, the same time you started your, your dog training school. And I’m never, I, I’ve never once hit a point where I feel like everything’s the same. ’cause it’s not, it’s, you see new things all the time, but you have to want to solve problems for people if you don’t want to, you’re, you’re like, you’re not gonna enjoy the job.

Because people are gonna throw problems at you all the time, and most clients are amazing, but some are gonna be a pain in the ass, and you still have to want to solve, help them solve their problems, otherwise you’re gonna get burned out and frustrated. 

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think too, I think part of that is for people who, who might have quite a bit of experience or, or have done it for a while, the problems to them may seem simple, right?

Oh, this is simple. We can fix this. This is easy. But to that client. That problem for them oftentimes was so overwhelming that, you know, they’re willing, willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for you to come and fix it. So even though it may initially seem simple to you, you gotta understand it’s, it’s not for that client.

Yeah. And for them, it’s very often life changing. 

Yeah. 

Without a doubt. So why don’t we switch gears a little bit. I’m curious to your take on this, so this is not, I would assume everyone listening knows that you’re the president of the IACP, uh, but if they, if you guys don’t, Jason’s the president of the IACP.

This is not an IACP related question. This is your particular, like your personal opinion. What do you think about regulation in the dog training industry? Because obviously that’s a hot button topic, and I’m curious about your opinion, because you see a lot of new trainers, right? It’s most trainers are out there on their own training dogs here, training dogs there, right?

They’re dealing with just themself and their clients. You see the industry a little bit different. So what are your thoughts? 

Well, and, and, and to your point, we, we also deal with a lot of folks from all over the world. We’ve had people here from 40, I think 47 or 48 different countries so far. 

Wow. It’s a lot of countries.

Yeah. 47, 48 I think is where we’re at. I think our next school in July, I think we have seven international students in that. So we get people from all over the world who, who, you know, some have been impacted, right? We, we, we’ve had three, three or four students from ice. Um, and we have to modify, right? We kinda have to modify what we’re teaching, right?

Because they come here and they’re like, you know, we’re like, this is how, this is how you use a prong collar. This is what a prong collar is. And they’re like, yep, well this, this information does me no good because I can’t use one of these in Iceland, right? These are illegal in Iceland. So how do I deal with this problem without a pro caller?

So we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta have a plan for them as well. Right? So, so you’re talking training tool bans or we talking just regulation in general or just kinda lumping ’em together? 

You know, we can talk whatever. I was thinking more specifically about regulating trainers themselves as opposed to tools and licensing trainers and that it, it becomes a big can of worms, but we can talk about whatever you want to.

Yeah, I know, I know a lot of people, I know for a fact, uh, based on a recent survey that a lot of people have varying opinions about regulation in the industry. Um. My, I’m full of unpopular opinions. I tell people that all the time. You ask for my opinion, so I’ll give it to you. I absolutely would oppose any regulation, licensure of dog trainers and, and I wanna explain why.

Because of our school, right? Our school has to be licensed and regulated, all of them. We’ve got three campuses. Three different states. North Carolina, Alabama, Texas. We hold DHHS permits. We hold DEA license. We hold PPS board license here in North Carolina. All sorts of regulations, all sorts of stuff, just to be a dog trainer, right?

All of those are to operate a dog training, our dog training business in North Carolina. So because of that, I’ve dealt with a lot of regulation, and I’ve dealt with it for many years by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. We’ve dealt with them for years and years and years.

I’ll be honest with you, when it comes to dogs dog training, the dog profession, based on my experience in, again, a number of states, the, the government does a terrible job, an absolutely terrible job at making common sense decisions about how to regulate those businesses. I think because of a variety of reasons.

One, I think they’re getting. I think they don’t have enough information to start with to make good decisions. Number two, I think the information they’re getting is, is coming to them from individuals who have a very clear agenda. Um, and I think, you know, those people get in their ear first, and as such, they start making really poor decisions they make, again, just based on my experience.

Bureaucracy in, again, a couple different states here, they can make the most simple thing incredibly difficult, convoluted, and, and it gets, it gets so expensive and it gets so expensive. Really quick, here’s what I’ll tell you, uh, that I believe to be true. I think our industry has a lot of people who have significant.

Businesses, training dogs, dealing with people offering services. I think there are a lot of other people in the industry who I would consider to be sort of hobby dog trainers, meaning that they have a part or full-time job and then they kind of do this on the side. I think if you had regulation, all your hobby trainers would be out of business tomorrow, so all of them are gone.

Those type of people probably should be the biggest. Proponents, I mean opponents, sorry, opponents of dog trainer regulation in the United States because they simply would not be able to afford it, I don’t think to stay in business. I think a lot of your medium sized dog training businesses would not be able to afford to stay in business.

The the licensed fees. And all of the things that go along with a lot of the licensure that we are required to have, you know, here just to run an, operate a dog training school and business. It’s enormous. I mean, it is Abso, we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars just in license fees and just in, you know, the, the things that go along with applying for and obtaining that license.

Most people can’t afford that. So that’s, that’s one big one. And again, I think the second one is just the lack, lack of common sense decisions. Pause. 

Can we pause there for a second? Because I think that’s something that’s a really big point that I don’t hear others talking about. That this is going to affect the smaller the dog trainer, the more they’re gonna be affected by this.

And I think people really don’t get that. The ones that are gonna be the least affected are people like you and I that have large teams and have people in-house that can handle a lot of the paperwork. The ones that are gonna be affected in a really big way are the hobby trainers, or even someone who’s doing it full time, but it’s just them, and now all of a sudden they’ve got extra fees, extra hassles.

Extra hoops to jump through and then all of a sudden one day everything changes. Now they have to do something completely different and they’ve got, and they’ve gotta cross those T’s and dot those i’s. And I think a lot of times those are the people, the trainers that seem the most supportive of the regulation and I don’t think they understand, like regulation would benefit someone in my position ’cause they would drive a lot of the small operators out of the markets we do business in.

And I still oppose it completely. The last thing I wanna do is drive those people out of business. 

Where I’m sitting right now, based on what I know about the state, I would say within an hour’s drive of us, there are probably somewhere between, I don’t know, 40 and 60 dog trainers, dog training businesses.

If the state enacted legislation regulation within a year, we would be down to probably less than a dozen. 

And things 

like that would do. So yeah, it would, it would benefit me immensely. 

Yep. 

Yeah. Yeah. If, if I said, yeah, I should be chanting, bring on the regulations. Mm-hmm. Because it would, it would kill 80% of my competition.

They couldn’t afford 

One that what they say most industries regulation is created by the industry itself. Right to, yeah. To keep out competition without a doubt. Yeah. But look at what this would do to pricing with your example right there, if you had whatever percentage, right? If it was a quarter or a half, 50 per 60% if they were gone overnight.

They’re presumably pretty low cost training options. Those are gone now. There’s more people calling you or others like you, and now your costs have to go up. ’cause if you have a wait list, you raise your price. Right. Kind of one of the number one rules of business. Yeah. So that this is not gonna, this is not gonna help the average dog owner.

No. Not at all. No, absolutely not. Not only the not gonna help the average dog owner. It’s, it’s not gonna help. It’s not gonna help shelters. It’s not gonna help rescues. It’s not gonna help the other people who are now being served. Right. Oftentimes by a lot of those other smaller trainers. And then, you know, the other people who might be a little bigger like us who are spending our time at the shelters and stuff.

Are we gonna, are we gonna stay the course of that when we’re now seeing an influx of paying customers? I think a lot of people wouldn’t. 

Mm-hmm. 

I think, I think it’s a slippery slope. I really do. I think regulation, um, has a lot of downsides on a lot of fronts. You know, I think, and this is just my belief, I think a lot of people say, yeah, I think regulation could be a good thing because it would, um, it would get rid of all the people in the industry who are doing a poor job.

I think it will get rid of all the people in the industry who are doing evil things. And I think it would raise the overall level of professionalism for the industry as a whole. My first point to that is this. We as an industry have the ability to take care of all three of those things in-house on our own, and I think we can do it way better than the government can.

Plain and simple, you know, a free market, not to get too political here, but a free market is gonna take care of a lot of it. If you’re doing poor work, the reality is you’re not gonna be able to do it very long, and word of mouth and customers is gonna catch up with you. So I’ve seen a lot of trying training businesses over the years come and go and, and go just about as quickly as they came because they’re, they didn’t do a good job.

They didn’t serve customers well. They didn’t serve dogs well. The evil doers, right? The people who wanna abuse dogs and do really horrible things, there’s no regulation on the planet that’s gonna get rid of that entirely, period. We’ve got laws against murder, but people in the United States continue to get murdered on a daily basis.

So you, you’re just not gonna get rid of that. Plaintiffs simple’s not gonna happen. Raising the level of professionalism in the industry, supporting an organization like the IECP, who works to do that every day is something people can do to benefit that part and, and help satisfy that element of what they’re trying to get outta regulation without getting the government involved.

To to do it for you, make their own set of rules and charge you tens of thousands of dollars to do it. 

Yeah. And let’s circle back to the evil for a moment, because I hope all everyone listening knows this, but we probably have some listeners that aren’t dog trainers or are newer to the industry. There are animal cruelty laws in every state that apply to dog trainers.

I mean, to anyone that that’s being cruel to an animal and those that already exist. No one, at least I don’t know of anyone who’s advocating for those to go away or be loosened. They sh they should be there. They’re there for a reason. Regulating and licensing dog trainers is not going to change that.

You still have to prove a criminal case. So most of the time those cases are very hard to prove, and when they’re provable, then the person goes to jail and their business goes downhill or closes right away. So you know that’s already there. That framework is already there and you getting a license number as a dog trainer is not gonna change that whatsoever.

Because to charge you with animal cruelty, you still need that proof. And that would be there without a license number. The, the license is completely irrelevant to animal cruelty. I don’t see, don’t see any tie in whatsoever. 

I agree a hundred percent. I agree a hundred 

percent. And I think that’s what’s missing in a lot of these conversations.

’cause people talk about, don’t you wanna get rid of the bad people? Sure. This just isn’t gonna do it.

Yeah. And again, regulation oftentimes just misses a mark entirely. 

Mm-hmm. 

You know, it just, it just does. I, I’ll give you an example. Uh, here in North Carolina Department of Ag, they’re, they have a license for commercial board and kennels. They have a license for PET stores. They have a license for shelters, private shelters, what they call private shelters.

Very distinct and different licensure. Right. So the commercial board and Kennel licensure was designed to regulate and create standards for people who operate commercial board and kennels. Because the state said, Hey, uh, you know, if we’re gonna have people, consumers paying money for people to keep their personal pets, there needs to be this minimum level of standard, uh, which, which grown, which grew over the years from five and a half pages of regulations to the last time I looked at it was, uh, over 25, maybe 27, 29 pages of regulations.

Everything from how thick your gravel has to be to, you know, how you can’t have wood inside your kennel building. People look at that and they’re like, yep, that makes perfect sense. Right. That’s great. That makes perfect sense. You know, you can’t have wood in your kennel buildings. Right? That’s part of North Carolina’s regulations.

If you wanna go look it up. And, and when I heard that, I, I sort of dug into that for years and I’m like, what is this about? And I say that because we, at the time we had to, we built a new set of kennels and we literally had to rip out all the wooden door casings around our doors and windows and replace ’em all with plastic and metal.

Um, and, and I asked about that and it took me almost two years to get an answer from a state representative. And they said that particular part of the regulation came about because there were legislators who didn’t want. Private individuals to be able to keep dogs in their home and board them for other people for money, and they, instead of saying very clearly, you can’t do this outta your private residence, what they said was, whatever you building, you’re keeping the dog in.

Can’t have wood because everybody’s private residence has wood in it. So what does that do? Big picture? Well, number one, all the commercial boarding kennels, you know, you have to run around and make sure you have fiberglass mop handles and broom handles, because if you have a wooden handle on your broom and it’s hanging on the wall in your kennel, they’re gonna write you up for it.

The flip side of that is. The number of businesses and individuals who have gotten into boarding dogs outta their homes, through companies, online companies who are basically matchmakers for people who wanna board dogs in their home, and people who need their dogs cared for, has grown by hundreds and hundreds of percentage points over the last decade.

None of those people are regulated by the state. So the state spending all their time trying to enforce a single rule with actual licensed commercial kennels, but ignoring the whole spirit of why that regulation was put in place, and that was to keep private individuals from board in their home. 

Sounds about right, 

but again, my, my point is this, if they can get that.

Far from what was intended if they start regulating and licensing dog trainers, where, where does this end up? Right? Where does, how far does this get away from those initial, logical, good intentions in the course of a couple years? And I’ve just always seen it get further away from what it’s intended to do.

And additionally, it gets more expensive. 

This happens in other industries. I’ve seen it happen in, I dunno what you’d call it, hair cutting. Um, I’m sure there’s a, the beauty industry, I don’t know where they’re in. A lot of states, they’re very highly regulated, which to me seems pretty silly. And you’ll see people when cities or towns or states want to crack down on it, they’ll crack down on people that are cutting hair out of houses.

And those people then have to go rent space. And I think that’s what’s caused a lot of those little. I don’t know what you’d call it, but have you seen the places where you’ll see people rent like a, not a booth, but like a, like a, a haircut cutting station in a sink and like 10 of them people will rent in one kind of little facility and they’re renting from someone who owns that and they all just have their own little business there.

And they’re doing that because it’s been made illegal to or impossible to cut hair out of their house. And I, unless there’s something I’m missing, tell me what’s bad about someone getting a haircut in a private residence. 

I would, I would say a hundred years ago, they were probably almost all done in a private residence.

Yeah. And if you don’t wanna go to a private residence, don’t more power to you. But if your neighbor wants to, 

that’s a free, that’s a free market. 

Yeah. Right. And all it does is drive prices up. ’cause now those people have to charge. And I know a few people that that happened to where they got in trouble for it and had to start working out one of those facilities.

And they have to charge a lot more for the same haircut because now they’re paying that place and they had a safe place. They could do it at their house and now they’re no longer allowed to. You look at that and like, I don’t see any health or safety going on here. I just see government. Yep, 

yep, yep.

There there’s very little, in my opinion, the government can do better than private market. 

Absolutely. Now, there was another reason, something you were gonna say earlier, and I interrupted to go back to the evil operators. Do you remember what it was you were, you were moving onto a whole new, another reason, and I’m not sure we ever got there, but I’d cut you off to talk, to circle back to evil people.

Um, I don’t know, maybe we loop back around to it. I, I think we covered most of, most of, not all. Uh, it’s a pretty long list of reasons why I, I really feel like government involvement, not only in dog training, but in a lot of different industries, it’s just really gonna, like I said, it’s gonna, it’s gonna drive up prices for pet owners, number one.

Mm-hmm. It’s not gonna do, in my opinion, it’s not gonna do much in regards to quality. Right of, of offering. It’s gonna shut down a ton of small businesses and, you know, one or two people, dog training businesses. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s gonna create, it could potentially create a ton of issues for, for dogs.

Mm-hmm. 

Those are the ones who are, who are gonna see the biggest impact. The dogs are gonna see the biggest impact over that regulation, 

but without a doubt. I think one last thing I wanna leave all listeners with on, on this note is the government. And if you’ve never heard the term one way ratchet, I would Google it.

And when government gets its claws into something, it’s a one-way ratchet, meaning it can only tighten and it’s not going to loosen. So what will happen is they’ll create regulation and you might look at it and say, that’s cool. That doesn’t do anything that I don’t like. I’m fine with it. So they pass it.

That’s your baseline. Now, anytime someone wants to make a change, they’re gonna tighten that ratchet. They are not going to loosen it. So now someone new is in power, regardless of what you know, politics, whether they’re liberal, conservative, whatever. Someone new is in power and they add some rule. Okay.

Maybe you like that one, maybe you don’t. Then a few years later, they add another one, and it’s only goes that direction. It’s gonna get tighter and tighter and tighter. But the key is once it started, it’s very easy to add to, and it’s next to impossible to get rid of. So just be aware of that, that if you’re a dog trainer who’s in favor of a certain type of regulation or you know, licensure bill and you say, this is okay with me, just know that Bill is not gonna be looking like that in 10 years.

And I would encourage you to look at any industry and try to look at the history of how the, what’s happened to them over a 10 year time period. So really, really worrisome. And I think that’s something that very few people understand and they just look at what is it on day one and is day one acceptable to me?

I, I would argue that it doesn’t take 10 years for ’em to 

Sure. Yeah. 

To down and fundamentally change what those initial regulations were. Yeah. 

Yep. And I, I think all balanced trainers already know this worry, but it’s passed with whatever, you know, whatever rules. And they say, you know what? Now we need to get some things in there to get rid of the bad methods.

So we need to get rid of being abusive. And you’re like, great. Get rid of abuse. Let’s do that and let’s get rid of cruel treatment. Got it. Let’s get rid of that. Now they’re not gonna define those things, so then everyone’s gonna fight about what that actually means. But then you get a, you know, a couple years later and all of a sudden it’s like, Hey, we need a board to kind of oversee this.

That’ll help figure out what’s a cruel method. We need dog trainers on that board. And are those dog trainers aligned with your beliefs? Maybe, maybe not. And even if they are, at first, a year later when there’s new people in there, they might not be. And all of a sudden you’ve got this independent board of dog trainers telling every other dog trainer what they can do.

And I can’t say with certainty that’ll happen, but in the nineties, percentage wise, like that’s what would happen in a pretty short order. 

Yep, absolutely. 

So why don’t we shift gear to something fun as we kinda get towards the, the end of this episode. So you’ve got a lot of dog training experience. You do working dogs, you obviously do dog school, you, I mean, service dogs, all kinds of things.

So why don’t we just cover the gambit. Can you give me just a working dog story, something wild, something crazy? I think a lot of our listeners are not in the working dog world, so anything you can share that. It might be interesting to people, 

wild or crazy working dog story. 

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Give you a funny one. Give. Sort of funny. Let’s do, uh, sort of funny. I’ll get, I’ll get some of the facts wrong, but That’s okay. People can fact check me on Facebook ’cause the, the actual is on Facebook. So, um, here’s a, here’s a killer police dog story for you. We had a gentleman show up local to us. It’s been pouring rain for two days.

He rolls up in a truck and he’s like, Hey, I need some help. Uh, we go over, we we’re like, what’s going on? He’s like, I got, I found this dog running up the road. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t wanna take it to the shelter. ’cause I’m afraid he’ll get put to sleep, whatever the case. So we’re like, look, we’ll take it we’ll.

We’ll, we’ll reach out to the animal control, make sure the owners are found. If not, we’ll do something. Long story short, no owners came forward. He was a doodle. I know one of your favorite breeds. Um, I don’t even know what kind of doodle, but clearly a doodle. Um, we got him groomed. He was all matted and just terrible looking.

We called him the dumpster doodle, uh, ’cause he looked like he just climbed out of a dumpster. And um, so we take this dog, we get him groomed, we get him fed, get him healthy, start working training with him, and we, we start. You know, just trying to figure out what are we gonna do or what kind of home would be a good home for him?

Well, this dog we found was incredibly active, number one. Number two, incredibly driven, somehow environmentally stable, just bulletproof environmental. Um, long story short, we tested him, evaluated him, and ended up training him to be a drug dog. So now, now what do you do with a well-trained drug dog? That’s a doodle.

Long story short, found a department that would take him and the dumpster doodle is credited with finding, I don’t remember. There was one traffic stop they had where it was just piles and piles and piles of kilos of cocaine that was traveling up interstate in 95. So, I mean, that’s just kind of a, we deal with a lot of ’em, Malise and shepherds and Duchess and HighSpeed, low drag dogs.

But how humiliating is it to go to federal prison because of a dumpster doodle that was found running down the side of the road? I mean, 

that is wild. Do you know where the dog’s working at? What state 

he, no, he’s in North Carolina. Yeah. Yeah, he’s here in North Carolina. Yeah. Little dumpster doodle. Yeah, we’ve done a few weird, weird ones like that before on the working dog side.

That’s awesome. And you don’t get fur in the, the person’s car while you’re searching it. He is hypoallergenic. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of pluses there. 

Hey. And he is cute. He’s, he’s super cute. Yeah. He’s on our, you can, you can look at our social media. You’ll find him working on there. But, uh, yeah, we’ve, we’ve done a few.

It’s, uh, uh, few. We’ve done some Jack Russells for bomb dogs and drug dogs before 

one. I was just gonna ask about. Little dogs. Okay, let’s hear that. 

Yep. We’ve done some little ones before, way back in the day when law enforcement budgets were getting cut and they’re like, yeah, we can’t afford all these imports.

So yeah, we’ve, we’ve done some, we’ve done some. 

So what would the downside for a bomb dog, like, what’s the downside to using something like a Jack Russell? 

They’re, they’re not cool. They don’t look cool at all. The big tactical vest with all the Velcro, they won’t fit on a Jack Russell. So.

Unfortunately they don’t cut the mustard from a cool factor. From a workability standpoint, there’s no downside. 

I mean, that’s what I was wondering. I just, you know, I’m not in that, that area, but I couldn’t see what the downside from a working standpoint would be 

working. Life’s longer, longevity’s, longer food bills less expensive.

Everything else is practically less expensive. You don’t need a $3,000 insert in the back of your police car, they can just ride in your lap. 

That’s wild. How many of those did you train over the years, do you think? 

I think it was four or five. 

Okay. 

And we gave ’em all really cool names. 

Like nitro? 

No, like Diablo and tantrum and havoc and, yeah.

’cause they, they would wreak havoc. They, these were working line jacks and if we had not trained them to hunt for odor, they would definitely be killing stuff. 

I’m sure. 

Yeah. They were natural born killers, all of them. 

What’s the smallest protection dog you you’ve ever seen? I don’t mean actually working in a police department, but just What’s the smallest dog you’ve ever seen?

Trained to bite. 

Smallest dog I’ve ever seen. Trained a to bite for fun or for real? 

Let’s start with for fun. 

Uh, probably a Jack Russell. 

Okay. 

Yeah. That one’s made its way around the internet. Uh, there was a guy who did like a, I think a full schutz routine with a Jack Russell Terrier. Yeah. Yeah. They’re tenacious.

They really are. 

Yeah, they’re not, I mean, no joke. Anyone who’s trained in Jack Russell knows that. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. Okay. How about for real 

dog? That would bite for real. Um, it was probably a smaller pit bull, to be honest with you. Yeah. 

And was this for, uh, police department or private individual? 

Uh, it was for a police department.

Okay. 

Not in the United States, but for a police department. Yeah. 

See, I’ve never seen a police department use a pit for protection work. 

Yeah. Yeah, it was outside the us. 

Okay. And maybe it happens. I’m not an expert 

South America to be exact. 

You say South America? 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. South America they’ll freestyle a bit.

Argentina, bra, Brazil, some of those places. Yeah, they, they’ll, they’ll, uh, they’ll use about anything. That’ll work. 

How about the, what’s the biggest you’ve seen? 

Biggest dog trained for like police work? 

Yeah. 

Probably.

Probably a Rottweiler. Yeah, probably a Rottweiler, uh, right off the top of my head. Yeah. Pretty big ones. 

They can get huge. Just interesting. You see some sports and you go, and basically everything’s a Malis, right? Yeah. And there’s a few others mixed in here or there, but you’re like 90 something percent malis.

Yeah. 

But there’s all, of course, there’s so many other breeds that are amazing at protection that you don’t see represented. 

Yep. Yeah, everybody. Everybody loves the Malis for that. 

You haven’t seen like a Dogo or anything like that for police work 

in the us? No, no. Worked with some amazing do GOs in Brazil, but here in the us no.

It’s a lot of dog. 

Yes. But tho the ones in I dealt with in South America, were very different than the ones here in the United States. 

Really? Yeah. The ones I see here are always super sketchy. 

The ones down there are super solid. Every, everyone I dealt with and I dealt with probably a handful of ’em, super, super solid dogs, incredibly social with people, believe it or not.

Definitely had an aptitude for work, but yeah, yeah, they were, they were great. I mean, great dogs. The, I’ve had the same experience with the American version of the Dogo. Argentina here in the us but it really is amazing how some of these breeds vary so much between the US version and the version you find in other parts of the world.

That’s interesting. Yeah. I’ve never seen a dogo in another country in, in real life. I just know all the ones I’ve met. You don’t move quick when you’re by one of those. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Unless, unless you want someone prying a dogo off your bicep. 

Yeah. They’re a lot of dog. They really are. A lot of dog. 

Mm-hmm.

Sure That’s wild. So I had no idea that they were a lot different in Brazil. I mean that stands to reasoning because I even see that in the states where, you know, we have trainers in different parts of the country and then of course I talk to trainers and other companies and in different parts of the the country, you’ll have certain breeds that have gone downhill from being poorly bred.

And you don’t see that in other sections of the country, which I find really interesting. 

Yeah. Yeah, it does seem quite regional to say the least. 

Mm-hmm. So it stands to raise, you need to see huge changes from continent to continent. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Alright, well I think we covered covered a lot today. I’m hoping people enjoy this episode.

They learn a little bit about dog training school, hopefully learn a lot bit about dog training, licensure and regulation, and maybe learned a little bit about Filas and Gogos. 

Yeah. And we didn’t get booted off the internet. 

We did not. Alright, well thanks for taking the time. 

Yep. Till next time.