Certified Dog Trainers — Two Ways to Work With SDB
Sit Down & Beyond | Portland, OR Independent Contractor | Flexible Schedule
You’re already a dog trainer. We’d like to give you more dogs to train.
Sit Down & Beyond is looking for experienced, positive-reinforcement dog trainers to join us in one or both of two roles:
1. Board & Train — board and train SDB dogs in your home 2. Private Training — take additional SDB private clients alongside your existing business
You don’t have to do both.
Already seeing private clients but have absolutely no desire to bring someone else’s adolescent German Shepherd into your house? Great. Let’s talk private training.
Love Board & Trains but don’t want another Tuesday evening appointment in someone’s living room? Also great.
Want to do both? Even better.
The point is to find excellent trainers and build the work around what you’re good at, what you enjoy, and what you actually have room for.
Role 1: Certified Dog Trainer — Board & TrainYou board the dog. You train the dog.
Our Board & Train dogs live in the trainer’s home rather than a kennel environment.
This isn’t boarding with a couple of sits thrown in.
Training happens in dedicated sessions, but it also happens while getting out the front door, walking through the neighborhood, settling in the house, loading into the car, exploring a trail, passing another dog, and generally learning how to function in the real world.
Dogs may be working on puppy foundations, household manners, leash skills, recall, confidence, neutrality, social skills, public outings, or more complicated behavioral goals depending on your experience.
What you’ll do
You’ll:
- Board Board & Train dogs in your home
- Follow individualized training goals and plans
- Conduct dedicated training sessions
- Incorporate training into everyday life
- Take dogs on appropriate real-world training outings
- Maintain appropriate household routines
- Provide exercise, enrichment, and downtime
- Take training videos and photos
- Provide detailed progress updates and documentation
- Communicate with the SDB team about progress, concerns, and adjustments
- Help make sure what the dog learns with you actually transfers back to their human
You will only be assigned dogs appropriate for your demonstrated experience, skills, and home environment.
Your home matters.
We’ll talk through your household, resident animals, physical setup, schedule, property restrictions, and what kinds of dogs you’re equipped to board.
Matching matters.
We’re not dropping a complicated 90-pound adolescent dog on your doorstep because your calendar said you were free.
Board & Train Compensation
$100–$130/night, per dog — based on experience.
Starting compensation is $100/night, with higher rates based on professional experience, credentials, talent, skill level, and the types of cases you’re qualified to take, up to $130/night.
You tell us when you’re available to board. We coordinate placements around your availability, home environment, experience, and the individual dog.
Role 2: Certified Dog Trainer — Private Training ContractorKeep your clients. We’ll give you more.
Already running your own training business?
Perfect.
We’re not asking you to give it up, hand over your existing clients, or abandon the professional identity you’ve already built.
You keep doing you.
We bring you more dogs to train.
SDB handles the marketing, inquiries, and client acquisition. You take cases that fit your experience, service area, interests, and availability.
Your existing clients remain yours. SDB-referred clients remain SDB clients.
Simple.
What you’ll do
Depending on the case, you’ll:
- Conduct private training sessions in clients’ homes and real-world environments
- Develop and/or execute individualized training plans
- Teach clients how to continue the work between sessions
- Provide clear, realistic homework and next steps
- Document sessions and client progress
- Communicate recommendations clearly
- Collaborate with other SDB trainers when appropriate
Because SDB offers more than private lessons, your clients may also participate in Board & Train, Day Training, Reactivity Walks, Off-Leash Academy, boarding, or other SDB programs.
You don’t necessarily have to solve every piece of a case alone. There’s a larger training team and service ecosystem behind you.
The dogs
Our private-training cases cover a pretty wide range:
- Puppies and adolescents
- Household manners
- Loose-leash walking
- Recall
- Confidence building
- Fear and anxiety
- Reactivity
- Aggression
- Shy and undersocialized dogs
- Dog-dog social skills
- Multi-pet households
- Real-world training
You don’t need to specialize in everything.
Tell us what you’re really good at, what you enjoy working on, and where the limits of your experience are. We’ll work to send you cases that make sense.
Private Training Compensation
Our standard compensation is a 65/35 split — 65% to the trainer. We’re open to negotiation.
Experience counts. Talent counts too. They’re not the same thing.
If you’re particularly experienced, particularly talented, or bring something valuable to the table, we’re happy to talk about a higher split.
But you’re going to have to tell us.
Know your worth and make your case. We’re not going to negotiate against ourselves.
Who we’re looking for
Whether you’re interested in Board & Train, private training, or both, you should already be professionally training dogs and have substantial professional education and/or recognized credentials such as:
- CPDT-KA or CPDT-KSA
- KPA-CTP
- VSA-CDT
- IAABC-ADT
- CDBC or another applicable IAABC behavior credential
- Comparable professional education and experience may be considered
Credentials matter, but so does what happens when there’s an actual dog standing in front of you.
We’re looking for trainers with:
- Strong positive-reinforcement mechanics
- Excellent canine body-language skills
- A solid understanding of learning theory
- Good judgment and the ability to adjust a plan to the individual dog
- Clear written communication
- Excellent people skills
- Reliability and professionalism
- A willingness to collaborate and continue learning
You also have to like humans.
Or at least be good at pretending to.
Dog training is ultimately a teaching job.
You need to be able to take what you know about behavior and turn it into something a tired person standing in their kitchen with an adolescent Labrador can actually understand and implement.
We want trainers who can educate without condescension, give clients achievable goals, and recognize that the human on the other end of the leash is part of the training plan too.
Training philosophy
Sit Down & Beyond is a science-based, positive-reinforcement training company.
We don’t use e-collars, prong collars, intimidation, dominance-based techniques, or intentionally use pain or fear to change behavior.
We care about observable behavior and the emotional state underneath it.
Our goal isn’t simply to make dogs compliant. It’s to give dogs and their people practical skills that make their lives together bigger, easier, and more enjoyable.
Why work with SDB?
Running your own training business means being a trainer, marketer, scheduler, salesperson, customer-service department, and occasionally unpaid IT support.
We’d like to let you do more of the part you’re actually good at:
Training dogs and teaching people.
You can maintain your own business while adding SDB work to your schedule. You choose your availability, and you don’t have to sign up for both roles.
You’ll also have other trainers to collaborate with and additional SDB services available when a client needs support beyond what you’re providing.
We’re serious about good training, continuing education, and doing right by the dogs and people who trust us.
If you’re an excellent trainer who’d like more dogs to train without having to go find them all yourself, we’d like to meet you.
Who the hell is Sit Down & Beyond?
We’re a Portland dog-training company built around the idea that good training and good care should give dogs more life, not simply make them easier to manage.
We work with puppies, pet dogs, fearful dogs, reactive dogs, weird dogs, brilliant dogs, and dogs whose primary hobby appears to be making terrible decisions.
We’re the kids who smoke cigarettes under the bleachers and go to rave parties on the weekend while maintaining a 4.0 GPA.
We’re serious about safety.
We’re serious about animal welfare.
We’re serious about doing excellent work.
We’re considerably less serious about ourselves.
Whether you’d rather have a dog sleeping on your couch while its humans are in Cabo or spend Tuesday afternoon ankle-deep in a creek with four of them, we’d like to hear from you.
Pay: $100.00 - $5,000.00 per month
Work Location: On the road
