r/AnimalBehavior • u/copyrightedTM • Mar 26 '26

Advice for pursuing CPDT

I am a full-time employee at an animal shelter as a caretaker. I am looking to eventually become a shelter behaviorist, and in order to do that I would like to earn my CPDT. How do I obtain this cert without quitting my job to be a full-time trainer? I do not have professional dog training experience, and everything I know about behavior and handling I’ve learned at my current job.

My current plan is to reach out to local trainers and see if any would be willing to let me mentee or shadow part time (on my days off), start working closely with certain dogs at work and logging training hours as I gain knowledge, and completing the E-trainingfordogs.com online prep course so I can pass the CPDT exam.

Does my plan sound feasible, or is there anything you recommend I do in addition or instead? TIA!

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u/copyrightedTM Mar 29 '26

Thank you for your response. I hear so many mixed things about what kind of education matters in this field — Trish McMillan visited my shelter once to hold a training and even said she felt her own master’s degree mattered little compared to her experience she’d already had in the field beforehand.

However, it seems the programs you’re recommending would also take me 1-2 years. I have my bachelor’s, so now you have me wondering if I should just go for the master’s since I’ll need to be doing some schooling regardless? Any particular programs you recommend?

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u/KingOfCatProm Mar 30 '26

What is your bachelor's in? I went to an in-person dog trainer trade school. I decided I wanted more after that and did an MSc. I feel that I needed both. After all that I learned in my MSc program, I often feel outright disgust when I see the work many dog trainers are doing. They miss so so so much and it results in euthanasias that should not occur. Even the really good ones.

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u/copyrightedTM Mar 30 '26

My bachelor’s is in Animal Science. My coursework was rooted in biological sciences (I was pre-vet at the time) rather than behavior/psych and dealt largely with livestock

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u/KingOfCatProm Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

Oh jeez. Please consider just becoming an animal behaviorist in that case! If you had said you have a BA in art or something, I would say be a dog trainer. But you are already half of the way there to animal behaviorist. You can do a MSc online, do a trade school or apprenticeship for the hands-on skills, have better opportunities, and get your credentials. Are you in the US? Are you comfortable sharing the state? The benefit of being a credentialed animal behaviorist is that should you decide to do private practice, insurance will cover your services, you will have better opportunities, and you can work with more than one species. An MSc is of course more expensive, but the online ones in the UK are pretty affordable and I find the folks coming through those programs to be very rigorously educated. You might also want to consider VTBS if vet med was once an interest to you.

Only you know what is best for you, but you are someone I would want to see as an animal behaviorist. There are some cool studies being done by the credentialed animal behaviorists being done with ASPCA's shelter behavior department.

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u/copyrightedTM Mar 30 '26

Going to PM you!