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Review: Make Dogs Your Life Course

By: Author Paris Permenter


We’re so excited to be announcing a new feature here on DogTipper! For the next three months, we’ll be reviewing the new “Make Dogs Your Life” course for dog trainers. Every Monday, we’ll bring you a review of our progress in the course, an online course designed for people who would like to become a dog trainer.

Last year, one of my new year’s resolutions was to get some formal instruction on becoming a dog trainer. I have looked and looked at courses, both in-person classroom instruction and online instruction. Not only were most of them way out of our budget but also they were more expensive than we would feel comfortable recommending to our readers as an option.

Just a few weeks ago, we learned about Make Dogs Your Life after founder Fernando Camacho left a comment in one of the threads on our Facebook wall. We followed the link and learned more about the course and about Fernando himself. The owner of FernDog Training, Fernando is also an AKC Certified Canine Good Citizen (CGC) Evaluator, member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT), a Training Partner with Best Friends Animal Society and he has founded the non-profit FernDog Rescue Foundation to assist shelters and rescues.

That all sounded great so we decided to learn more. We signed up for a free webinar he was offering about the new class, and we liked what we heard. We liked that Fernando melds the teachings of many behaviorists and trainers into his own style, not bashing any method or trainer but taking the best of different methodologies and training methods to create his own style of learning, making training a pleasant and rewarding experience for the trainer and the dog alike.

We learned more about his course, designed to be completed in one-week increments over about a three-month period. Comprised of online videos and accompanying text materials, each week’s lesson is designed for students to work through at their own pace, definitely a plus for those, like us, who are working full-time. Whether you’re working at home, like us, or at an office, it seems like it will be easy to work into your schedule. Priced at under $1000, we also liked that it is far more affordable than many courses for dog trainers. Also, the course includes both personal and group calls with Fernando Camacho to help students on the path to becoming a dog trainer.

John and I will be taking the class together, and every Monday we’ll be bringing you an update on our progress. Stay tuned for more as we make our way through each lesson, starting with next Monday’s review of Lesson One. In the meantime, be sure to check out Make Dogs Your Life, follow @FernDogTraining on Twitter, and connect with the Make Dogs Your Life page on Facebook.

The FernDog Trainer Academy Review Series:

Disclosure: We are receiving the Make Dogs Your Life course for review; we are not paid for our review and all statements and opinions are entirely our own.

Paris Permenter
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