The VSA Blog

As a professional dog trainer, your clients are your livelihood, filling your classes and private training calendar with needed income. Many clients can also become your biggest supporters, referral generators, and even close friends. By reaching out with a heartfelt thanks, you’ll strengthen those relationships, help build your business, and get a lot of personal satisfaction and joy from your work, as well.

The family dog is so closely involved in the everyday activities of a household that it’s easy for people to view them as a childlike family member. Unlike a child, however, dogs can’t say “no” when they are frightened or anxious, and their ways of expressing...

As an aspiring or professional dog trainer, you certainly want to be a leap and a bound ahead of the crowd to establish yourself as an expert in your profession. Of course you want to be sure you are offering your clients and their dogs the best possible guidance. But...

Every trainer quickly learns that dog training isn’t just about the dogs. It means teaching people, too. Your clients need to wrap up each dog training session with enough canine savvy to guide their dog toward success. When they get home, your client may have to...

Prospective dog training clients have no doubt heard a lot of conversation on television and online about different dog training techniques and tools. When they ask why you train the way you do, remember that you have a positive dog trainer superpower…

  Dog training is a hands-on profession, but not all teaching needs to take place in a class or a home training session. Print materials that clients can take home and social media resources you share online help strengthen your learning connection with your...

  You’ve heard people generalize dogs by size, right? "Get a little dog -- you can take them everywhere” or “Big dogs belong in the country where they’ll have room to run.” There are a lot of long-standing beliefs about both giant and pint-sized pups. Some are...

Working with dogs is our passion, and it stems from Victoria’s longstanding mission to do whatever she can to help dogs and the people who love them live their best lives together.

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  What does “dressing for success” mean for a professional dog trainer who runs their own business? As a hired employee, you may have been asked to wear a uniform or a type of attire that promotes job safety and the culture of the company you work for. Sometimes...