Do you train full-time?

[Mary.Simmering]

Hey guys!
Just curious how many train as their only/main job- full time. Also, if you feel comfortable doing so- post how many dogs are in your kennel and what your annual profit averages. If you don't want to post it feel free to put it in a PM. Vote away!
~ Mary

[kninebirddog]

In order to train full time where your gonna make a living you need to build a reputation with your own dogs and make a name for your self

I know many people who are Pro trainers who hvae spent years to get where they are at

takes apprenticing under someone who knows what they are doing and then proving yourself before you can even begin to have any type of clientele to pay for the kennel and the feed and the care etc etc etc

[highcotton]

I work full time and train/breed for fun. I enjoy the challenge associated with trying to improve my chosen strain of Setter. My goal has been to try and get my kennel to a break even point financially before retirement. So far I have not made it.

[Stoneface]

I have a dog training service, but on a minor level right now. Because I live in a rented house I cannot bring dogs in for training so I have a mobile dog training service. I also do not train birddogs for a living, just obedience and behavioral problems at this point.

I charge $25 for a consultation, $30 for an hour long private lesson, $15 per week for an 8 week group class and a .50 per one way mile fuel charge. We just moved here so I'm re-establishing my business. I don't do much advertising, just yellowbook.com and word of mouth plus refferals from vets. I usually do about 4 lessons per week so I make about $120 per week.

What really peaks my interests and gets me going is breeding. I want to develop the perfect strain of upland pointing dog, but you can't make much money unless you breed like heck so I'll have to rely on training/handling for enough income to support a breeding program. My problem is that I think field trialing is a necessary part of evaluating a dogs potential to be bred, but I wouldn't feel right running my personal dogs against a clients dog and I think it would be bad for business too.

I've got experience in Pointing Dogs, Conformation, Obedience (competition and basic), Protection (bite work), Search, Scent Descrimination, Agility and Behavior Modification. I feel that I'm ready to get involved in training full time and am partnering up with a friend of mine from Texas and starting a serious business in Spring 08 in East Texas (Quinlan) as a K9 brokerage. We'll deal with the importing, training and selling of working police service dogs. It's basically a wholesale-retail operation, we buy the best dogs available from a contact in Israel at rock bottom prices and sell them for a huge markup. I plan on buying a few more birddogs out there and putting up about 5 runs to do some pointing dog training to further my experience. I'll do this for a year or so until I can sell out to my partner then I'll come back here and buy some land and put a nice kennel setup on it and start my own operation.

Hope you all enjoyed reading my life plans.

Rowdy

[Blue Dawn Kennel]

We're professional trainers of mainly GSP's but also train, pointers, setters, GWP, vizlas, and some labs. We generally have between 20-35 dogs in our kennel. Some are clients and some are ours , but mostly cliental.

My husband and I just won/added our 47 & 48th National Championship title win to our resume a few months back. That is just wins. We feel very privilaged to get to work/train/breed such awesome dogs and have such truely dedicated and wonderful clients and friends. It is the most wonderful job to have and do. (except on bad weather and bad trialing days) but that goes along with just about everything in life you do. I just know if something were to happen it would just about kill me to have to go to work inside somewhere doing something other than this. It's a lot of hard work and dedication put into those dogs and doing it right and I feel that by our record Keith's got the training down right and we've got the team and partnership down right along with the compatability with our dogs to do wonderful things.

Robbi

[Wa Chukar Hunter]

I train all breeds - but the majority of the dogs I have in training are llewellin setters and small munsters - with a smattering of pointers, griffs, and others.

[cancrkkennels]

I work dogs on wild and pen raised birds to open instinctes don't break dogs for people