Professional Courses & Upskilling
Building handler and professional skills & understanding
Dogs are a huge part of our lives and it is important that we know how best to engage with them and each other. We have created a number of progression paths for handlers, future practitioners and professionals to learn new skills, and increase their current skills.
Understanding our Canine Companions
This 10 week long course explores what makes a dog a dog, how they learn and communicate, and how best to interact with a given dog on an individual, breed and species level. This course is designed for those looking to improve their bond with and understanding of their own dogs as well as providing a solid foundation for those considering moving into training and behaviour in a professional manner.
This is a humans only course and runs for 2 hours on Thursday evenings in Prosperous Parish Hall starting on October 2nd 2025.
Practical Handling Skills
Our Practical Handling Skills course is a complementary course to the Understand our Canine Companions course. In this course of 1.5 hours each week we introduce the foundations of professional canine handling skills. Whether you are looking to improve your training with your own dog or are considering a move to a dog training career we work on your engagement, timing, clarity and fluency of training. This is a dog & handler course. However if you do not have a dog or your dog is dog- or people-reactive we will work within the group of dogs for everyone to learn to handle as many different dogs as possible. We are specifically learning positive training methods with all dogs and learn to tweak exercises to best suit the dog in front of you.
This is a 10 week long course that runs on Sundays in our training field just outside of Prosperous in Co. Kildare.
Introduction to Professional Dog Training & Behaviour
This is an introductory course to starting work in the field of dog training and behaviour. This builds on the foundations that we introduced in "Understanding our Canine Companions" course. We delve deeper into how dogs learn, how to set up the world around them to succeed, how to change the work to best suit the dog-handler team, recognise and manage risks to you, the dog, the family and the training, and canine social skills.
This is a combination classroom and practical course. We work with only the most up to date, scientific understanding of training and behaviour modification techniques and focus on teaching positively, fear free and ethically.
This course is 10 weeks long of 2 sessions per week. Final dates and times TBC. Starting Jan 2026.