Hello,
I am 16 and trying to figure out what to do with my life :?: Many people say they see me as a vet. But I don’t know if that’s what I want to do. I was reading a book about animal careers and there was a page about behaviorists. I have always loved animals; my mom always knew I would do something with animals.( I love to train people to train their dogs) Vet school is hard to get into now, and the prices have gone up. Plus the vets in my area don’t make more than a teacher which is pretty bad. Victoria is my IDOL; I love her approach on problems. She like the nanny 911 for dogs!!! What do you have to do to become an animal behaviorist? And how much do they make? What should I do now to prepare for this? Or should I just buck up and become a vet. I’m fine with both.
Lizzy
behaviorist, or vet HELP
Moderators: emmabeth, BoardHost
Honestly.....
Aim for vet, if you dont make it, there are other things you can do, but if you aim for lower, you forever close the door on 'higher' things, if that makes sense.
As for money, as a behaviourist...
Unless you get a TV show, forget loadsa money. Even a TV show won't bring you mega bucks anyway really, it all LOOKS uber glamourous and I'm sure theres more money in it than say being a teacher, but the sacrifices are pretty big too, the amount of time it takes, the unpredictable lifestyle, it would make it hard to have a life as well as a career.
How you become a behaviourist is not that clear cut either, so again, aiming for vet and then specialising in behaviour might be better.
I can't speak for the US but in the UK there are no clear routes towards well recognised qualifications in animal or specifically dog behaviour, theres a lot of options but they would all suit you more after you have done other qualifications.
The biggest qualification you need for animal behaviour is a lot of experience with animals, theres no amount of certificates and qualifications that can take the place of 10 years or more hands on experience with animals.
My advice is definately, work towards being a vet, if you get there, specialise in the area that interests you most (which might be dog behaviour, or it might not, you dont know until you get there).
If you dont get as far as being a vet, then you can still do other things towards being a dog or animal behaviourist.
Aim for vet, if you dont make it, there are other things you can do, but if you aim for lower, you forever close the door on 'higher' things, if that makes sense.
As for money, as a behaviourist...
Unless you get a TV show, forget loadsa money. Even a TV show won't bring you mega bucks anyway really, it all LOOKS uber glamourous and I'm sure theres more money in it than say being a teacher, but the sacrifices are pretty big too, the amount of time it takes, the unpredictable lifestyle, it would make it hard to have a life as well as a career.
How you become a behaviourist is not that clear cut either, so again, aiming for vet and then specialising in behaviour might be better.
I can't speak for the US but in the UK there are no clear routes towards well recognised qualifications in animal or specifically dog behaviour, theres a lot of options but they would all suit you more after you have done other qualifications.
The biggest qualification you need for animal behaviour is a lot of experience with animals, theres no amount of certificates and qualifications that can take the place of 10 years or more hands on experience with animals.
My advice is definately, work towards being a vet, if you get there, specialise in the area that interests you most (which might be dog behaviour, or it might not, you dont know until you get there).
If you dont get as far as being a vet, then you can still do other things towards being a dog or animal behaviourist.
but it's a better idea to get a job that earns you enough to have a decent standard of living, and do something with animals as a sideline. Most jobs with animals pay peanuts and mean long hours of menial slog.-
katowaggytail
- Posts: 394
- Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2007 11:37 am
FiI agree with Nettle...
Wanting to work with animals invariably leads to loooong hours, low pay, a lot of very very hard work.
One of the key things when someone wants to work with animals (and I know because this was me!).. is that the person tends to prefer animals to people... but working with animals generally requires a good ability and desire to work with people as well..
I had what I thought was my dream job once.. I was a groom on a stable yard, horses horses horses all day long..
Only it turned out.. i would get up at 5am, feed and muck out two, then walk 2 miles and feed and muck out three more. Then walk 2 miles back and cook my employers breakfast and wash up.
Then we would tack up a youngster and take him out with the exercise cart (driving horses), and i would RUN (oh yes Nettle, I did, I can see you laughing there at the back, i really did run!).. several miles behind teh exercise cart, as its generally not possible for a youngster to pull the driver AND someone on the back step of the carriage... on the flat its ok but down hill or uphill its not, and then round corners i would have to run beside, pushing on the shafts to help teach the horse to turn corners (they cant turn as tightly in shafts as they can naturally and if they try to they can hurt themselves or tip the carriage!)..
I am a small round person, and the horses in question were tall 16hh ish freisian crosses, so had a MUCH longer stride than me... so if they were trotting, i was running flat out!
Then we would get back home for lunch and i would untack and wash down and walk the horse round, and then put him or her back in the stable, and then id go and make lunch..
After lunch... woooo riding...
Except not 'woooo riding' more 'argh i dont want to die' riding because then I would ride the next youngster, (the one whod been out in the carriage the day before), down the canal and round the roads. We woudl ride them in blinkers as they were still getting used to these and so as not to confuse them we would also ride further out into the road than is usual for a ridden horse (or when in teh carriage they would try to get too close to the kerb which is dangerous).
This is particularly hairy because these are baby horses who are liable to spook and doing so on a road could take you into the path of a car... doing so by the canal could take you into the water... fortunately neither happened but it wasnt a pleasant and relaxing ride!
Then home again for more horsey chores, cooking and cleaning, followed by yet MORE horsey chores and then pass out in bed in my freezing, grotty little caravan.
This caravan was my own personal space - a tiny littel thing right on the top of a railway embankment so when the freight trains came past (ever half an hour through the night), the caravan would rattle and jolt around like it was going to roll down the embankment!!!!
Basically, i worked from 5am in the morning till 11pm at night, the pay was low, the hours horrible and the work... well not sufficiently interesting or fun to keep me there!
The best things to do are:
Find a job you like that earns enough so you can do animals as a hobby.
Train for something more highly paid (such as vetinary work) that you can later specialise and adapt (so you could be a vet, then study homeopathy and be a homeopathic vet, then study behaviour so you could be a homeopathic behavioural vet, specialising in dogs...now that could earn you a fair bit.).
Find a related area of work - I make dog collars/leads/repair saddlery, which allows me to work from home and have doggies of my own.
It doesnt, however, earn me megabucks... but im happy with that, you might not be.
Wanting to work with animals invariably leads to loooong hours, low pay, a lot of very very hard work.
One of the key things when someone wants to work with animals (and I know because this was me!).. is that the person tends to prefer animals to people... but working with animals generally requires a good ability and desire to work with people as well..
I had what I thought was my dream job once.. I was a groom on a stable yard, horses horses horses all day long..
Only it turned out.. i would get up at 5am, feed and muck out two, then walk 2 miles and feed and muck out three more. Then walk 2 miles back and cook my employers breakfast and wash up.
Then we would tack up a youngster and take him out with the exercise cart (driving horses), and i would RUN (oh yes Nettle, I did, I can see you laughing there at the back, i really did run!).. several miles behind teh exercise cart, as its generally not possible for a youngster to pull the driver AND someone on the back step of the carriage... on the flat its ok but down hill or uphill its not, and then round corners i would have to run beside, pushing on the shafts to help teach the horse to turn corners (they cant turn as tightly in shafts as they can naturally and if they try to they can hurt themselves or tip the carriage!)..
I am a small round person, and the horses in question were tall 16hh ish freisian crosses, so had a MUCH longer stride than me... so if they were trotting, i was running flat out!
Then we would get back home for lunch and i would untack and wash down and walk the horse round, and then put him or her back in the stable, and then id go and make lunch..
After lunch... woooo riding...
Except not 'woooo riding' more 'argh i dont want to die' riding because then I would ride the next youngster, (the one whod been out in the carriage the day before), down the canal and round the roads. We woudl ride them in blinkers as they were still getting used to these and so as not to confuse them we would also ride further out into the road than is usual for a ridden horse (or when in teh carriage they would try to get too close to the kerb which is dangerous).
This is particularly hairy because these are baby horses who are liable to spook and doing so on a road could take you into the path of a car... doing so by the canal could take you into the water... fortunately neither happened but it wasnt a pleasant and relaxing ride!
Then home again for more horsey chores, cooking and cleaning, followed by yet MORE horsey chores and then pass out in bed in my freezing, grotty little caravan.
This caravan was my own personal space - a tiny littel thing right on the top of a railway embankment so when the freight trains came past (ever half an hour through the night), the caravan would rattle and jolt around like it was going to roll down the embankment!!!!
Basically, i worked from 5am in the morning till 11pm at night, the pay was low, the hours horrible and the work... well not sufficiently interesting or fun to keep me there!
The best things to do are:
Find a job you like that earns enough so you can do animals as a hobby.
Train for something more highly paid (such as vetinary work) that you can later specialise and adapt (so you could be a vet, then study homeopathy and be a homeopathic vet, then study behaviour so you could be a homeopathic behavioural vet, specialising in dogs...now that could earn you a fair bit.).
Find a related area of work - I make dog collars/leads/repair saddlery, which allows me to work from home and have doggies of my own.
It doesnt, however, earn me megabucks... but im happy with that, you might not be.
Even though the best job I ever had was with horses, I agree with the others, get a well paid job first.
For many years I helped a horse dealer friend get horses ready for the sales in the south, these were taken from the northern sales, very rough and many had never been handled. If we were lucky we would only get 6 in on Sunday, they had to be clipped, trimmed and shod by Tuesday evening ready to go down south on Wednesday morning.
We were only supposed to take a bit of their coat off, under neck and belly but often the horse would jump, kick or something else and the clippers would slip so they had to be clipped out properly. It was hard work but these horses didn't go for meat which is why we did it.
When I was 46 years young I went to train to be a riding instructor then I went to work in a riding school. They were lovely people but they did expect their staff to work. I was once given 45 minutes to muck out a double stable that hadn't been done for 2 weeks. I did it but refused to do it again.
I changed to another riding school and what a difference, I still had to work hard, that is the nature of working with horses, but I wasn't asked to do anything that the owners wouldn't do themselves. They had a mucky horse block of 4 horses that were difficult to muck out, they are the ones I used to do, everyone else mucked out 8 stables. I was allowed to take the time I needed to muck them out. These owners looked after their staff.
Now I am supposed to be retired but there are so many owners that need help with their dogs that I have started going out to see if I can help. I am going to one this afternoon, a JRT who attacked another dog but that dog's owner refused to call his dog back.
Study hard, get the best paid job you can then you can start to learn how to be a trainer/behaviourist. You need to be able to train dogs to be a behaviourist, and you need to understand their behaviour to be a trainer. You also need people skills, there is one lady on a board I am on who has a lot of knowledge, is willing to give that knowledge but doesn't have the people skills so is putting owners off from taking in her knowledge.
For many years I helped a horse dealer friend get horses ready for the sales in the south, these were taken from the northern sales, very rough and many had never been handled. If we were lucky we would only get 6 in on Sunday, they had to be clipped, trimmed and shod by Tuesday evening ready to go down south on Wednesday morning.
We were only supposed to take a bit of their coat off, under neck and belly but often the horse would jump, kick or something else and the clippers would slip so they had to be clipped out properly. It was hard work but these horses didn't go for meat which is why we did it.
When I was 46 years young I went to train to be a riding instructor then I went to work in a riding school. They were lovely people but they did expect their staff to work. I was once given 45 minutes to muck out a double stable that hadn't been done for 2 weeks. I did it but refused to do it again.
I changed to another riding school and what a difference, I still had to work hard, that is the nature of working with horses, but I wasn't asked to do anything that the owners wouldn't do themselves. They had a mucky horse block of 4 horses that were difficult to muck out, they are the ones I used to do, everyone else mucked out 8 stables. I was allowed to take the time I needed to muck them out. These owners looked after their staff.
Now I am supposed to be retired but there are so many owners that need help with their dogs that I have started going out to see if I can help. I am going to one this afternoon, a JRT who attacked another dog but that dog's owner refused to call his dog back.
Study hard, get the best paid job you can then you can start to learn how to be a trainer/behaviourist. You need to be able to train dogs to be a behaviourist, and you need to understand their behaviour to be a trainer. You also need people skills, there is one lady on a board I am on who has a lot of knowledge, is willing to give that knowledge but doesn't have the people skills so is putting owners off from taking in her knowledge.
[url=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Nethertumbleweed/PIXIE.jpg][img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/Nethertumbleweed/th_PIXIE.jpg[/img][/url]
Thats what I thought.... but you will when you havent enough to actually live on..
Honestly, when we say that working with animals is 99% likely to be badly paid, we DO mean very badly paid.
On the sorts of wages we are talking about you would struggle to pay for a place to live as well as monthly bills and either a car or some other form of transport. Thats before we get to food and clothing.
The other downside is often the jobs available are not going to lead to anything bigger and better... and when you hit 45 or 50 or whatever and you DONT want to be out in the rain and cold and snow and burning sun day in day out breaking your back... you have nothing to fall back on.
Im guessing that sort of age may seem a million years away to you... but it really really isnt.
I worked with animals and I failed to get any further than high school education (yes folks, im uneducated in the official sense, i have got 7 GCSEs and they are 'ok' ones at that, not stunning)..
When I was 16 that didnt matter.
Now im nearly 30 and I have NEVER had a proper official job working for a normal company or business.
That means I have got nearly 16 years with NO work record, or a work record that doesnt apply to ANY other job.
Which effectively means I am unemployable!
That can be a very unhappy place to be!
Honestly, when we say that working with animals is 99% likely to be badly paid, we DO mean very badly paid.
On the sorts of wages we are talking about you would struggle to pay for a place to live as well as monthly bills and either a car or some other form of transport. Thats before we get to food and clothing.
The other downside is often the jobs available are not going to lead to anything bigger and better... and when you hit 45 or 50 or whatever and you DONT want to be out in the rain and cold and snow and burning sun day in day out breaking your back... you have nothing to fall back on.
Im guessing that sort of age may seem a million years away to you... but it really really isnt.
I worked with animals and I failed to get any further than high school education (yes folks, im uneducated in the official sense, i have got 7 GCSEs and they are 'ok' ones at that, not stunning)..
When I was 16 that didnt matter.
Now im nearly 30 and I have NEVER had a proper official job working for a normal company or business.
That means I have got nearly 16 years with NO work record, or a work record that doesnt apply to ANY other job.
Which effectively means I am unemployable!
That can be a very unhappy place to be!
Nugget, you are the same Nugget that hasn't got time to walk your pug. Make time to walk your pug, play with him/her, train some, then think again about working with animals. This isn't getting at you, but an observation based purely on your posts so far.
Working with animals will take you to a stage of exhaustion, hunger and filth that you have never even read about. So look after your own animal first and then talk to us some more about working with them, because all of us here have been there, and want to save you learning the hard way
We are here to help.
Working with animals will take you to a stage of exhaustion, hunger and filth that you have never even read about. So look after your own animal first and then talk to us some more about working with them, because all of us here have been there, and want to save you learning the hard way
We are here to help.Eco every thing already said. I worked as a stable hand when I was unger and then as a groom for a racing stable. The thrill of working with the amimals you love wheres off very quickly when you are so tired you cant actually enjoy it, and you actually never get to do any of the fun stuff because you only get to do what everyone else doesn't want to. And you are so badly paided that when you do have some free time you have no money to do anything.
Saying that if some one told me then what I now know I wouldn't have believed them, I think its probable something you have find out for your self.
I gave it all up went to uni and got a 'good' job, I can now enjoy all the good sides of aminal work now.
Saying that if some one told me then what I now know I wouldn't have believed them, I think its probable something you have find out for your self.
I gave it all up went to uni and got a 'good' job, I can now enjoy all the good sides of aminal work now.
You know, as interesting and appealing as it is, I hear it's not the best job in the world. I've looked up wages and average earnings for trainers/behavorists, and it doesn't look promising. A trainer claimed to have had to undertake many clients at once in large classrooms, or they end up providing other services with their business, such as, but not limited to dog walking, grooming, photography and the like. Some trainers get extremely lucky, while others don't get the jump start they need. My overall answer, don't get your hopes up if you pursue animal training. Look for something more stable. Regaurdless of whatever you choose, good luck.
