This week’s show features an interview with a dog trainer who is planning to use his RV to travel throughout his market area to put on training seminars for pet owners.

Dan Ross is a professional dog trainer from southern California who has been in business for six years. He has developed a way to communicate with dogs that has become second nature to him, and he shares that knowledge with other pet owners in hopes they’ll bond more closely with their own dogs.

In fact, he specializes in working with very aggressive dogs and claims to be able to rehabilitate any dog within a few weeks to two months more than 95 percent of the time.

He is renting RVs when he needs them at the moment, but is planning to purchase one soon. In Dan’s part of California, storing an RV can be difficult and expensive, so renting is likely a more viable option.

He meets with clients for one-hour training sessions over the period of several weeks. Both the dog and the owner need training to learn how to communicate with each other. Dan explains that dogs respond to the energy presented by humans and, especially, their body language. So, he shows owners how to express their body language properly around dogs in order to show leadership over the pet.

Dan charges around $145 per session, depending upon the type of dog and level of aggressive behavior. He may charge up to $250 for a few sessions to help control really aggressive dogs.

He encourages pet owners to properly socialize their dogs around other animals and humans early in the dog’s life in ways that provide positive experiences for the pet during its vital imprint weeks that shape their view of the world, people and other animals.

Dan is looking to identify organizations he can partner with so that he can drive onto a location, such as a church, and conduct seminars in the parking lots. He’s hoping to do some seminars in campgrounds, too.

He offers some good advice for pet owners on things to do to make RV travel more enjoyable for dogs, especially for controlling barking in campground settings.

I think Dan Ross is really onto something in the way he trains animals to be less aggressive. Just like humans, dogs that are neglected or abused early in life can develop problems relating to people and other animals as they get older.

A lot of people rescue dogs without really knowing what their background was during the animal’s first 22 weeks of life – or the formative period during which the puppy develops a view of the world as either a friendly place or one where it must aggressively assert or protect itself.

Fortunately, people like Dan can bring their skills and temperament to the situation to help motivate dogs to change. I agree with him that dogs just want to make their owners happy. When dogs and owners can communicate effectively, wonderful things can happen.

Dog training is a great business to do from an RV. Like Dan noted, he can pull into an area and provide two- to three-hour seminar with animals and their pets to engage in some basic training skills that could make a real difference in how the dog behaves.

If more specialized training is needed, again, Dan can take the RV on location so that he has all the tools he needs with him and even travel with his own pets, which he uses as role models for other dogs to follow.

I also appreciated Dan’s story about using an RV to overcome a medical problem by giving him a contained space that is easier to keep clean than a larger sticks-and-bricks home.

Dan noted that people can watch a lot of videos on YouTube about improving dog behavior, but hiring a professional who is experienced in working with all types of dogs can go a long way toward zeroing in on effective strategies for that specific breed or animal.