Two states have proposed licensing standards for dog training instructors.

The NADOI Board of Directors stands firm with our original mission from our founding in 1965 which is to certify dog obedience instructors of the highest caliber, to provide continuing education and learning resources to those instructors, and to promote humane, effective training methods and competent instruction.

NADOI believes that rather than costly or unfair legislation, the public would be better served by aggressively enacting or enforcing existing animal abuse/neglect legislation.

If such legislation does become law, then the NADOI Board will continue involvement with the process to ensure to the best of our ability that any licensing and educational standards will enable our members to continue the use of a broad choice of methods and tools.

We will impress on bill sponsors that in our many years of experience, it has been shown that dog obedience instructing is an art as much as science. The skilled instructor must be able to make judgments and adjustments based on the needs of each individual student/dog team. NADOI fully understands that the humaneness of equipment and training methods is dependent upon the skill and knowledge of individual trainers. Therefore, NADOI is strongly opposed to cruel or unnecessarily harsh training methods and persons using such methods should be addressed with existing animal abuse legislation.

Our comprehensive exam process to gain membership holds applicants to high standards and continues to hold members to high standards in business and training practices. We will share our process with the sponsors so they will have a clearer picture of the complexity in what is required for our field.

In our 50 years of certifying instructors, we have seen strong biases towards and against training methods and philosophies. We will work to make sure these biases are evident to legislators.

NADOI has worked with other groups to produce objective guidelines in the dog training and instructing field. We will continue to collaborate with others as this moves forward.

Approved by the Board of Directors
December 2016
Reaffirmed April 2017