Atherton, Forfar, Redbridge, and Leamington, United Kingdom
Education requirements
Essential • Qualified in the role of Guide Dog Trainer. Desirable• Current valid UK/EU Driving licence, or able to demonstrate how to complete the role without.• Accredited learning in the areas of animal welfare or behaviour. • Accredited learning in the area of teaching or mentoring.• 3 GCSE/O’ levels or the equivalent – including Math’s /English (QCF level 1-2 / SQCF levels 4-5)
Region
--England--
Experience requirements
Specialist Professional
Place of work
On-site
Description
The Guide Dog Trainer helps people with sight loss to live the life they choose by providing technical support and expertise in order to maximise the organisation’s productive capacity by providing a wide range of technical and practical support to ensure a full and efficient service to clients. This includes the training of guide dogs in community and regional teams to class standard and elements of volunteer and customer training and support.
Key Responsibilities
Dog training
• Prepare training dogs to the required quality and standard, within the agreed time frames, ahead of delivery to customer and the creating new partnerships process. Contribute regular reviews on the dogs progress and suitability for canine assisted services.
• Assess and continually review the dogs’ temperament and behaviour to determine their suitability for canine service roles. Develop detailed knowledge of each dogs’ abilities in order to deliver a training programme, either pre-determined or appropriately adapted, where training will include specific development required to meet customer needs as directed.
• Provide support to other technical staff in the team regarding guide dog skills acquisition and experience. This may include blindfold walks, obstacle work, and distraction work.
• Maintain accurate and timely records on any dog inputs using the appropriate business system and completing reports as required.
• Practice and remain current in applying our Standardised Training for Excellent Partnerships training methodologies, ensuring all dogs are supported to the achieved level required for their service direction.
Partnership Training and/or Support
• Provide timely and relevant inputs for weekly Case Review meetings on progress of training dogs and partnership reviews as necessary, at the direction of team leaders or colleagues.
• Contribute to partnership matching processes identifying indicators for success or risk for failure in the match.
• Under the direction and supervision of a Guide Dog Mobility Specialist, support with the training of partnerships, this may include: delivering theoretical and practical training inputs during creating new partnership process (class), and/or supporting qualified partnerships with inputs and training to maintain success.
• Maintain accurate and timely records on any client inputs using the appropriate business system and completing reports as required.
Dog Wellbeing
• Manage the training dogs’ free-running needs, ensuring these are met throughout training period.
• Work together with the Dog Wellbeing team locally and regionally to monitor and maintain the psychological, physical and emotional wellbeing of training dogs within the team, escalating any issues to the Dog Wellbeing team.
• This may include but is not limited to: dog spending; routine physical checks; ad-hoc grooming needs; environmental enrichment activities; and supporting the correct issue of dietary/water needs.
Collaborative working in Operations Team
• Work collaboratively with volunteering support colleagues to ensure the successful management of training dog volunteers through regular, often daily engagement with Boarder volunteers and Dog Wellbeing volunteers.
• Work with colleagues to support successful boarding schemes. Duties may include: carrying out home checks, providing training & problem-solving inputs to volunteers, and maintaining communication channels between volunteers and colleagues for effective coordination.
• Monitor and support volunteers in their dog handling skills to ensure standards of dog behaviour are maintained on and off sites, and identify any skills gaps or performance concerns, communicating these onwards to relevant colleagues and supporting further training as required.
• Deliver technical dog training inputs to volunteers and staff as requested by colleagues if their role requires interaction with our dog stock.
• Work collaboratively with colleagues and volunteers in puppy development, sharing information and knowledge to support the dogs’ progression through to training.
• Work collaboratively with fellow CAS colleagues including: Training & Behaviour Consultants, Training & Behaviour Advisors, Canine Assisted Partnership Specialists, Rehoming Officers and Dog Wellbeing staff to bring about successful outcomes for our dog stock in the relative service areas.
Mentoring, tutoring, supervision & CPD
• As requested, provide technical tutoring and teaching, which may include supervision functions to Trainees in canine services, and/or provide mentoring and coaching to newly qualified staff on dog training inputs.
• Commitment to complete and achieve all relevant areas of continuous personal development made available to ensure technical training knowledge remains current and applicable to Guide Dog operating standards.
Compliance, Health and Safety
• Report and document all accidents and incidents relating to dogs in your charge, volunteers, third parties and vehicles in line with current Health and Safety policies.
• Maintain all training needs to ensure compliance with standard and processes
• Maintain and keep appropriate records in line with GDPR compliance.
Education requirements
Essential • Qualified in the role of Guide Dog Trainer. Desirable• Current valid UK/EU Driving licence, or able to demonstrate how to complete the role without.• Accredited learning in the areas of animal welfare or behaviour. • Accredited learning in the area of teaching or mentoring.• 3 GCSE/O’ levels or the equivalent – including Math’s /English (QCF level 1-2 / SQCF levels 4-5)
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