Can anyone help me.
I would love to train as a animal behavourist but i am not to sure where to start.
Can anyone help me to find out what training courses i need to do in order to get qualified?
This career is not a quick decesion as i have wanted to do this for many years and now i have the chance to back to college.

Please help if you can.

HI Deary

Well, to be honest there are very few people who are able to pay the mortgage out of this sort of work, and the few who do have been doing it for years and have a partner to help with the brunt of the bills <g>.

I would suggest you get in touch with the Animal Care College, which has some great tutors such as Stephen King of Crosskeys, and Barry Eaton who is well known for his work with deaf dogs, or else COAPE, who have Val Strong, Sarah Whitehead and Peter Neville.

YOu will need to do lots of courses, attend seminars, (some of which will hopefully give practical hands-on experience too) and get as much hands-on training experince as possible. This last is really important as you need to be able to "read" dogs, learn their body language etc and why they are behaving in a certain way, before you can help owners with problems. At the end of the day, nothing beats experience, but the good thing with the courses is that they guide you towards much morehands on stuff, so they are not just theory. I have just completed the old Canine HUman Interface and started Think Dog Advanced, and they both get you doing incredibly useful practical things. I have learnt a huge amount which I can put into practice. They can also really change your preconceived ideas which is not a bad thing!

There is no one course which qualifies you as a behaviourist, as far as i am aware, and both the COAPE and ACC courses are distance learning. You used to be able to get a grant to help, but i think that's been stopped now.

When you enrol, you will also get details of seminars, workshops and so on, and i would recommend attending as many as you possibly can. Just recently i have attended a workshop with NCDL dogs, about aggression, and last weekend took my pup to an obedience day and did a small demo, very varied!!! And hopefully great fun too.

I do wish you lots of luck, i will post later with the address of the COAPE and ACC unless someone beats me to it!

Lindsay

Contact the Animal Care College on www.animalcarecollege.co.uk, and COAPE at: courses@coape.f9.co.uk

HTH
Lindsay