The first thing to know about how to become a dog trainer in Australia is that there's no gate to get through. There's no licence, and no qualification is compulsory. Anyone can put up a sign and charge for a session tomorrow, which is good news for you and also for every person down the road with a clicker and a website.
The qualification most people go looking for is the Certificate III in Dog Behaviour and Training. It stopped being current on 31 July 2025. The nationally recognised dog training certificate now is ACM40322 Certificate IV in Animal Behaviour and Training, and plenty of course pages haven't caught up.
Below is the route as it stands in October 2026, step by step.
Step 1: Decide what kind of dog training you want to do
"Dog trainer" covers several jobs that share a treat pouch and not much else.
Group classes are puppy school, obedience courses and sport classes like agility or scent work. You teach owners as much as dogs, you run to a timetable, and a full class is where the money is.
Private sessions happen in the client's home or at a park. You're working on one dog's problem, usually pulling, jumping, recall or reactivity, and the owner pays for your attention.
Behaviour work is the harder end of private sessions, usually aggression or fear. It carries more risk for the dog and for you, and it's where the qualification and your experience matter most.
Most trainers end up doing some of each. It still helps to know which one you're aiming at, because it decides which electives you pick in a course and what your first clients will ask you for.
Step 2: Get hours with dogs that aren't your own
Training your own dog well is a start. It isn't experience.
What you need is time with dogs whose history you don't know, owned by people who don't do their homework. That's the real job. A dog that's brilliant at home and falls apart at the park in front of five puppies is a normal Tuesday.
The usual ways in:
Assist an established trainer. Set up the equipment, hold the second lead, watch how they handle the owner who interrupts every exercise.
Volunteer at a dog club. Clubs run group classes with volunteer instructors, and you get supervised hours in front of a class.
Work in animal care. Daycare, boarding and shelter work put a lot of different dogs through your hands quickly.
The current qualification is written for people who already have this. Its own description says it is for individuals with experience working with and caring for animals. Doing the hours first means the theory lands on dogs you've actually met.
Step 3: Pick a dog trainer course that's still current
This is where most of the online advice is out of date, so check the code of anything you're about to pay for.
The Certificate III in Dog Behaviour and Training has lapsed
22542VIC Certificate III in Dog Behaviour and Training was an accredited course in Victoria. Its accreditation ran from 1 January 2020 to 31 July 2025, and the national register now lists it as non-current. It replaced 22214VIC, which ran from 2013 to 2019.
If a provider is still selling a "Certificate III in Dog Behaviour and Training", ask them for the code and look it up on training.gov.au. If the code isn't current there, the certificate you finish with isn't a nationally recognised qualification, whatever the course page says.
The current one: ACM40322 Certificate IV in Animal Behaviour and Training
ACM40322 is the dog training certificate in the national Animal Care and Management training package, current since 16 July 2022. What it involves:
16 units: 8 core and 8 electives.
No entry requirements, though it's pitched at people with animal experience.
Core units include identifying behaviours and interacting safely with animals, evaluating conditioning methods and program design, conditioning animal behaviour, assessing an animal's welfare, and workplace health and safety.
Electives worth choosing as a dog trainer include Conduct group training classes for animal owners or carers, Provide individual advice on animal behaviour management and training and Conduct animal behavioural assessments. There are also small business electives, which are worth more than they sound if you're going out on your own.
An Assistance Dog Training specialisation is available if you take all five assistance dog units.
The training package doesn't set a duration. Each training organisation decides how long its course runs and how the practical assessment happens, so ask.
Use the register to find who delivers it. Search ACM40322 on training.gov.au and it lists the registered training organisations with it on their scope, including at least one TAFE. We're not ranking them. What matters is the same set of questions for each: how many practical hours, with whose dogs, assessed by whom, and when that assessor last trained dogs for paying clients.
The Certificate III that does exist
ACM30122 Certificate III in Animal Care Services is current, and you'll see it sold as a stepping stone. Its specialisations are animal care, pet grooming and customer service. It has no dog training specialisation, though Condition animal behaviour is one of its electives. It's a sound qualification for animal care work. It isn't a dog trainer course.
The old Certificate III in Companion Animal Services, still named on some career sites, was superseded in April 2021 and its content rolled into the animal care qualification.
Unaccredited dog training courses
Plenty of dog training courses in Australia, short and online ones especially, aren't on the register at all. Some are excellent. They're still not a qualification, and that matters when an insurer or an employer asks what you hold. Buy them for the content, and know what you're buying.
Step 4: Check the rules where you train
We found no licence for dog trainers themselves in any state. Victoria does regulate the business.
Agriculture Victoria says a dog training establishment run for profit must be registered with the council of the municipal district where the business is conducted, under the Domestic Animals Act 1994. The Code of Practice for the Operation of Dog Training Establishments then applies, and it covers training at a client's home as well as on your premises. A few of its provisions you'll feel straight away:
Every dog must be identified, and a current vaccination certificate (distemper, hepatitis and parvovirus, within the last 12 months) must be produced before a dog is admitted for training.
Slip collars must not be used on puppies under 12 weeks, and undue force must not be used on any dog.
An aggressive dog that's a clear danger to other dogs or people must be muzzled.
Victoria also gives owners a reduced council registration fee for dogs that pass an obedience assessment run by an approved organisation. The approved list on Agriculture Victoria's page names the Australian Association of Professional Dog Trainers, the Kintala Dog Club Association and the Delta Institute, and the assessment must be run by a qualified trainer who is a member of one of them. If you train in Victoria, that's worth knowing before you choose which body to join.
Outside Victoria, ring your council before you run classes on a public reserve or from home. Rules for commercial use of parks differ from one council to the next, and we haven't confirmed a statewide trainer registration anywhere else.
Step 5: Insure before the first client
For a trainer, the advice is the product. That makes professional indemnity as important as public liability, and it's why behaviour cases get looked at closely by insurers.
We've written up what a trainer's cover looks like, and what catches trainers out, in the dog trainer section of our pet business insurance guide. Read it before you take a reactive dog, and before you run a class on council land.
Thinking of buying an existing training business rather than building one? Insurance is the check that can end that deal, and buying a dog training business explains why.
Step 6: Work out what dog trainers earn
There's no reliable published dog trainer salary in Australia, and it's worth knowing why.
Jobs and Skills Australia's profile for dog handlers and trainers counts about 1,800 people in the occupation, 49% of them part time, and publishes no median earnings figure for them because the estimate isn't reliable enough. The wider group it sits in, animal attendants and trainers, had median full-time earnings of $1,276 a week before tax in May 2025. That group also includes groomers, zookeepers and animal care workers, so treat it as context rather than a trainer's wage.
Most trainers aren't on a wage anyway. They charge per session or per course, so the useful number is what clients pay. These are published prices we read on Australian training businesses' websites in October 2026:
| Service | Businesses | Median published price |
|---|
| One private training session | 33 | $175 |
| Private session, excluding initial consults | 26 | $162.50 |
| Group obedience course | 16 | $185 |
| Group obedience course, excluding volunteer dog clubs | 12 | $232 |
| Puppy school course (median 4 weeks) | 42 | $200 |
| Puppy school run by trainers rather than vet clinics | 29 | $239 |
Seven of the 33 private-session prices were for an initial consult, which is why the figure drops when they come out. Volunteer clubs charge far less for group courses. And 13 of the 42 puppy school prices came from vet clinics, with a median of $150. Clubs and clinics are both part of the market you'll be priced against. The full breakdown, with weeks and per-class figures, is in what puppy school and dog training cost.
Turning a price into income depends on how many sessions and classes you actually fill, and on what comes off before you see it, travel and venue hire above all. A private session is an hour of your time plus the drive. A full class of eight is the same hour with eight families paying.
Employing someone later? The award position for pet business staff, and what it costs on top of wages, is in employment costs for an Australian pet business.
Step 7: Set up your classes and packages
The admin of training looks simple until you're running two puppy classes and a Saturday obedience course and someone asks to move to Wednesday.
Petboost is our software, so weigh this accordingly. We built it to treat a course as a course rather than eight separate bookings, and this is how that works for a trainer.
Courses and class capacity. You build a course template once: the name, one course price per pet, the session length, a maximum capacity, and how many lessons and how often. Then you run it against real dates as often as you like. Owners
enrol online for every lesson, and they can't take more places than are left.
Moving someone between classes. When a family needs a different night, you pick another run of the same course and Petboost pairs each lesson old to new in a before and after table, with any date that clashes marked in red before you commit. That's the screen at the top of this post.
Packages for private work. Sell a block of sessions upfront as a
prepaid package. The owner can see what's left, which keeps a dog in the programme past session one.
Consult first. Make an initial consult a prerequisite, and owners can't book the main service until they've had it.
Puppy age limits. Set a minimum and maximum age on a puppy course, so the class fills with puppies in the range you teach.
The trainer and puppy school pages show how those pieces fit together: Petboost for dog trainers and Petboost for puppy schools. Plans and fees are on the pricing page.
You can also start with a spreadsheet and payment links, and for a first class that works. It gets painful around the second class, when the enrolment list and the money live in different places.
For the gear itself, from treat pouches and long lines to agility equipment, see the dog training and puppy school kit list.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need a qualification to be a dog trainer in Australia?
No. No licence or qualification is legally required to train dogs for money. The nationally recognised dog training certificate is ACM40322 Certificate IV in Animal Behaviour and Training, and insurers and employers may ask whether you hold it or something similar.
Is the Certificate III in Dog Behaviour and Training still available?
Not as a current qualification. 22542VIC Certificate III in Dog Behaviour and Training was accredited until 31 July 2025 and is listed as non-current on training.gov.au. If a course is still sold under that name, check its code on the register before you enrol.
How long does it take to become a dog trainer?
The training package doesn't set a duration for ACM40322; each training organisation decides how long its course runs. The longer part is experience: supervised hours with other people's dogs, assisting a trainer or instructing at a club, before you run classes of your own.
How much do dog trainers earn in Australia?
There's no reliable published salary for dog trainers. Jobs and Skills Australia produces no median earnings figure for the occupation. Most trainers charge per session or course instead: in October 2026 the median published price was $175 for a private session and $185 for a group obedience course.
Do dog trainers need a licence or council registration?
There's no personal licence. In Victoria, a dog training establishment run for profit must be registered with its local council, and the Code of Practice for the Operation of Dog Training Establishments applies, including to training in a client's home. Elsewhere, check with your council before running classes in a park or from home.
Can you do a dog training course online?
The theory works online. Handling a dog, and reading one under pressure, needs practical assessment with real dogs. Before you enrol, ask how many practical hours are included, where they happen and who assesses them.
Sources
How the sample was drawn. We read the public price pages of Australian dog training businesses, puppy schools, vet clinics that run puppy classes and volunteer dog clubs, found through Google Maps searches across the states. Nothing was booked and no form was submitted. A business that publishes no price is left out rather than estimated. Every included price was re-read live on 9 October 2026. Each figure is a median, never a mean, with one price per business. Private sessions come from six states, group courses from all states and territories except Tasmania, and puppy school from every state and the ACT. A few prices are "from" prices: 5 of the 33 private sessions, 3 of the 16 group courses and 4 of the 42 puppy school courses.
Check current delivery, practical hours and fees with the training organisation, and council requirements with your local council, because those vary.
