The Chairman of The Kennel Club Accredited Instruction Board Mr. Paul Rawlings published a recent article in the kennel Club Field Trials Newsletter with the aim of encouraging field trial trainers to join the KCAI.
The scheme provides membership of a training program, leading to a national qualification in dog training and canine behavior.
Although the scheme purports to have over 600 members and has been running for 10 years it only has 5 members who are accredited with the status of advance trainers for working gundogs, the chairman himself who is also an independent professional gundog trainer is one of these, so the current scheme has only generated 4 qualified instructors over this time ~ hardly a scheme of major success !
This will come as no surprise to those critical of the kennel club’s administration, some people believe the kennel club has always moved too slowly and any help offered always comes at a price and interference, which strengthens the kennel club’s power in the dog world.
If you exclude the Chairman the other four accredited working gundog trainers, Tania Stapley (Roytan), Eileen Ayling (meadowmill), Mary Ward (Parsifal), Anthea Lawrence (Courtridge) have all qualified as working gundog trainers but not one of them is listed as a kennel club field trial judge, which may be an interesting observation to some.
It is also worth mentioning that none of the kennel club accredited trainers appear to be running kennel club training days, this privilege is reserved to kennel Club field trial Judges ? May be the kennel club believe a field trial judge is a better gundog trainer?
Working Gundog trainer Stewart North joined the scheme 2 years ago and allowed the membership to lapse, as he did not consider it to be of a major benefit, when we first established workinggundogs in 2007, we looked at joining a number of national organisations thinking this would add some benefit to our business?, the only thing they added was an expense!
Our trainer remembers speaking one evening to a course administrator of yet another national organisation (not the KC) purporting to offer some recognised status for dog training, we enquired about the course syllabus and the cost was going to be £900 for the week, and before the conversation finished our trainer was being asked for advice on a particular gundog problem from the person who was about to run the course! (For those cynical readers, the question was not to test our trainers knowledge?), he genuinely did not have a clue, we decided the qualification was not worth the cost!
Looking back when we decided to join the KCAI scheme, after paying registration fees a package of paperwork arrived, well talk about being buried in paperwork, it’s no wonder they only have 4 accredited trainers!
Our trainer is usually pretty good with paperwork, but with 40 gundogs coming in for training each week, we seriously questioned if it was necessary.
We believed that such a scheme would open other opportunities and give us a broader knowledge of the training world, but we were put off by the process!
Fortunately our business has not suffered as a result, which goes to show if you put too much reliance on qualifications, you will have no time to run a business!
Our success as gundog trainers is built on results, by helping people not only to control their gundogs, but more importantly helping them to understand why their gundogs behave in a certain way.
Our clients are the best source of future business; we work on the basis of keeping 90% happy by attaining some structured development, which is independently verified.
We have found that trying to keep every client happy, appeases a pet mentality, who do not wish to maintain a hunting instinct, which they have unwhittingly purchased!
Our advice to the Kennel Club would be to put more resources into supporting those on the register and refrain from seeking further membership, or risk being seen as another revenue generating project!
The kennel club gave a prompt response after reading the above article:
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