Qualifications To Teach At A Dog Obedience Club

[Silvawilow]

they are then put on as "assistant instructor" for the first 12 months. During this time they float around the classes assisting the main instructors, helping people out one on one with obedience problems only. They do not tackle behavioural problems at this stage.

That's basically what our club does but I was having trouble explaining it The "trainees" got a bit offended at first when I told them they were going to be "floaters" This program seems to be working well for our club and having enthuastic and willing members is always a help!

[Kelpie-i]

My guys don't mind being called Floaters...it flows easier off the tongue than Assistant Instructors, although we do refer to them as Assistant Instructors to clients.

[Kelpie-i]

BTW, all of my team are paid for their time!! The longer they serve, the more they are paid!

[MonElite]

My club has a constant problem with the number of instructors. There are simply not enough volounteers to do this.

There is about 10 of us all but obviously not every one is there each week.

We like to have small classes, defnitelly less than 10 in a class, pref 5 in the two begginers levels.

And we all are volounteers at my club.

[kateykateykatey]

That's funny, because my experience was that the floaters were essential (particularly initially, in the beginners class with our reactive dawg), silly that they would be offended by this position! Of course behavioural problems need to be referred to the instructor, but so much of the "am I luring too much" or "what if the dog sits after it stands" kind of questions don't *need* to be answered by the head instructor, and wouldn't get answered if it weren't for the floaters!