Tighter Regulation on Dog Trainers

In the UK, anybody can set themselves up as a 'professional' dog trainer.

Many people are unaware of the fact that it is possible to have never owned, trained or even seen a dog for a person to set themselves up and call themselves a dog trainer, let alone have any professional credentials or business competency.

Given the elevated position of trust that dog trainers are in, it is absolutely wrong that the public is offered no protection from the con-artists and downright incompetent trainers, many of whom have only ever read the odd book or watched TV dog trainers before embarking on their careers.

As competition amongst more and more 'dodgy dog trainers' heats up, there is an increasing and worrying trend for certain individuals to rely on gimmicks and downright lies in order to win business from unsuspecting members of the public. Unscrupulous marketing methods and downright lies are often used by these dogdy trainers in order to con members of the public in to using their services.

For instance, some trainers have been publicly exposed as blatantly misrepresenting their professional credentials and lying about their associations in order to trick trusting dog owners in to believing they are more competent than they are. This has to stop.

This petition is to call for tighter regulation and insistence on a set professional code of conduct as well as competency testing for anyone who sets themselves up as a professional dog trainer.

This will help to prevent the public being duped by so-called professional dog trainers who, in any other profession, would simply be referred to as con-artists.