I was wondering if there are any laws, weather state or not, that involve training a personal protection dog, or even for sporting? I ask this because several of my clients want to do more with their dogs, and I am not sure if I should help them get started, or send them elsewhere. I am wondering about the liability issues and if there is any way I could get in trouble for a dog that bites some one. Thanks

I don't understand....are you a protection dog trainer?

Texas lawyer on dog laws Here's a lawyer in Houston that might be of help. Since you allready work with dangerous and aggressive dogs it would seem like that has a bit of liability involved too. Where does your husband train Mondioring? They probably have some type of insurance.

Melissa,
I carried liability insurance when I trained personal protection dogs, it's worth the money.

You'll also need a separate health insurance plan and Worker's Comp if you have an employee ( think your decoy here ) because you are going to get nailed periodically by a dog during training, it just goes with the territory ( which I'm sure that you already know ).

Figure on spending about a grand with a good attorney to write out your liability release forms and make sure you get them signed by your clients ( and witnessed ).

If you're not incorporated, do so immediately ( I had a LLC, another way of doing it ).

There's more to starting protection dog training as a business, and it varies state by state, I'm sorry that I don't know the way that Texas does things in this regard.

Hope this helps a little. Good luck!

Leerburg also carries books about forming LLC's:
http://www.leerburg.com/961.htm
http://www.leerburg.com/962.htm

thanks everyone, I was a military dog trainer, and now I just train pet dogs. Every now and then, I get the questions of how to help train a protection dog from a pet dog start. My husbands Mondioring club (as far as he knows) doesnt have them sign anything, and he hasnt yet. So as far as liability there, I am not sure if they cover everyone if anyone.

Would you all reccomend just sticking to the basics with pets, or is it worth the money to pursue the above mentioned (llc,attorney) and do what I can with the protection training?
My husband is all about crushing my dreams to start this up, and have a great training facility down the line. So I need all the facts I can get, and not his negative energy telling me I can't because its too hard. (venting a bit)

Thanks again, cant wait to see what else posts.

Melissa,
The training of protection dogs will require a skilled team, so you'll need to set up your expenses that way if you want to persue that type of training.

I made a fair living while training protection dogs but I had 35 years + of experience to fall back on and a strong reputation with good name recognition ( plus I knew where protection dogs actually sold for a fair price, so many of the dogs that I trained and sold went to other countries )- it'd be a hard living for someone in the early entry phase of their dog training career.

And I can't stress enough the need for good contacts in this kind of business, they're critical to you doing well.

I'd say that training protection dogs is not a forgiving career, the chance of injury or litigation is fairly high. You'd be best served by finding one of the few big name protection trainers and training under them for several years to learn and develop your own style of training in this sub-set of dog training.

Just learning how to accurately determine if one of those pet dogs can even take protection-type training will be a skill that will take some time to really learn.

I wish you well, it's a tough way to make a living!