How I Came to This Pass
So, I decided I wanted to be a dog trainer. I am simply not cut out for office work - each day in an office brings me down (see: Peter Gibbons). Anyway, I love dogs. I loooooove dogs. And I thought to myself, after watching innumerable dogs shows and agility competitions on Animal Planet: "why can't I do that?".
I had no idea how to go about pursuing this dream. I did a little Googling, and found a few of (very) basic pieces of info:
I had tons of questions, mainly: How does one become an apprentice? How do you know when and where seminars & conferences are occurring?
I couldn't find much on become an apprentice....I needed to know how to approach a trainer, how much of a time commitment there was, did I have to pay anything, etc.
I figured that I would just go for it and jump in blind. I decided to take advantage of my professional skills and offer an exchange: I'll create a web site, they'll take me on as an apprentice. This worked out well, since almost none of the trainers I found had web sites. I found emails for every dog trainer within a 25 mile radius of my house (mainly using the online Yellow Pages and Metropets), composed a form email and sent it out.
According to Lloyd, it is pretty standard to make first contact with a trainer via snail or e-mail.
I got a few responses, and my story of how I hooked up with Lloyd is in the April Archives of this blog.
After Lloyd and I started working together, the seminar thing fell into place - Lloyd lets me know about any useful seminars or conferences he hears about. His network is obviously quite extensive, so he gets wind of everything!
Some trainers will ask for money to do an apprenticeship (Lloyd tells me the standard is $1000/year), but if you have some useful skill, such as web design, administrative experience, accounting skills, handyman abilities, you could definitely work out a barter arrangement. A good dog trainer willing to be a mentor will work this type of thing out with you.
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