Online Dog Grooming Courses

We’ve received several requests relating to what Online Dog Grooming Courses are available, so we decided to write this post.

Please understand that any website that we list in this post is NOT a recommendation by us.

We know that it’s sometimes difficult to find sites when doing a search in your internet browser, so we did our own search to try and provide this type of information for you. We tried to limit our listing to what appears to be reputable sites, but if you decide to sign-up with any of these, you need to check them out.

There were several other sites that had dog grooming courses but we weren’t comfortable listing them here. Some of these sites looked a little suspicious to us.

Be Very Careful When Selecting an Online Dog Grooming Course

Before we list some of the websites that offer online dog grooming courses, it is very IMPORTANT that you read “Selecting a Pet Grooming School“. We could try to summarize the information in that article on this post, but we don’t think we could provide you with the necessary information as well as they did.  This article contains a lot of excellent information that you should consider and we consider it a “must read”.

The pet industry is huge and there are a lot of websites trying to profit from this. There’s not a problem with this if the sites are promoting quality information and reputable products, but some of them aren’t doing this.

You work hard for your money and these online dog grooming courses are not cheap.

Always make sure you do your own research before signing up to any of these programs. If you’re having problems finding information, an excellent source is the Pet Groomer Forum. Personally, we’ve had a hard time finding particular information on various forums when doing a search. If you have problems finding the information that you need, just register with the site and ask your question. There’s a lot of people out there that are willing to help.

Online Dog Grooming Courses

The following websites offer online dog grooming courses that we feel are reputable. We’ve done our best to check these sites out, but you still need to do your own research about them.

If you should find that any of these are not reputable, please let us know. We understand that there may be some complaints about any website or company, so we try to consider both the good and bad.

Animal Behavior College Dog Grooming School

According to the Animal Behavior College website, they offer an online “Pet Grooming Course” that is extensive and includes 100 hours of hands on training with one of their approved professional groomers. The course includes a 40 piece grooming toolkit and 6 DVDs that have over 100 instructional videos. After completing the course you will receive a Certified Pet Groomer certificate from Animal Behavior College.

The cost of the dog grooming course by Animal Behavior College is around $4,000 to $6,000, but if you are a military spouse, you might be able to get up to $4,000 toward this cost from the Military Spouse Career Advancement Accounts. Please keep in mind that these prices may change in the future.

This course includes the following stages (modules):

• Stage 1 – Introduction to Grooming
• Stage 2 – A Groomer’s Toolkit
• Stage 3 – Health and Safety
• Stage 4 – Cat Grooming
• Stage 5 – Dog Grooming Details
• Stage 6 – Bathing, Brushing and Drying
• Stage 7 – Clipper Use and Scissor Control Techniques
• Stage 8 – Breed Profiles and Mixed Breed Styling
• Stage 9 – Career Building Skills for the Professional Pet Groomer
• Stage 10 – Hands-on Externship
• Stage 11 – Final Exam and Graduation

You can find out more about Animal Behavior College Dog Grooming School here.

GroomaDog Academy Home Study Online for Pet Grooming

Groom a Dog Academy offers an “Extensive All Breed Dog Grooming Correspondence Course” which appears to be an online course.  The course is 12 weeks long and will involve about 340 hours of training. It appears that there will be exams throughout the course that you will have to pass. Upon completion of the course, you will receive a certification from Groomadog Academy.

At the time of this post, the cost of this course appears to be around $1,450.

We weren’t able to find a listing of the course modules but we did find that the course will include the following and more:

• Anatomy
• How and What to Study for this Profession
• Ears, Toe Nails, Mats
• Grooming with Snap-on combs
• Line Brushing
• Hand Scissoring techniques
• All about Blades
• Clipper Maintenance
• What Makes a Groomer so Slow
• Instructor Supervision
• Proper Blow Drying
• How to get a Position with any Grooming Salon

You can find out more about GroomaDog Academy Home Study Online for Pet Grooming here.

NOTE – It appears that this site (Groomadog.com) is no longer available since the home page is redirecting to a 404 error.

JKL Training Academy

According to the JKL Training Academy website, they are internationally accredited and you can have a dog grooming career in 26 weeks or less. It appears that they have two online dog grooming courses available. One is for people who want to enter the dog grooming industry and the other is for people that are already employed as pet groomers.

Assuming that most of our readers are wanting to become pet groomers, we’re only going to write about the “Dog Grooming Diploma Course” since this would be the course that you would start with.

For this online course it appears that the cost ranges from around $700 to $1,500. The difference in cost is that the higher amount includes DVD’s and the lower cost doesn’t. Please keep in mind that these prices may change in the future.

Dog Grooming Diploma

The Dog Grooming Diploma Course is a six week course that is fully accredited. This course consists of 10 Modules which are:

• Module 1 – Canine Coat Care
• Module 2 – Tools of the Trade
• Module 3 – Professional Procedures and Safety
• Module 4 – Curly Coats
• Module 5 – Harsh Coats
• Module 6 – Spaniels, Setters and Other Dropcoats
• Module 7 – Feline Coat Care
• Module 8 – Cat Tools of the Trade
• Module 9 – Cat Procedures, First Aid, Tips and Tidbits
• Module 10 – The Business of Professional Grooming

You can find out more about JKL Training Academy here.

For full disclosure, we want you to know that if you sign up to JKL Training Academy after clicking this link, we may receive a commission. We will not receive any commissions for any of the other links in this post.

Penn Foster Pet and Dog Grooming Online Course

Penn Foster offers and online “Pet Grooming Certificate Program” that takes about two months to complete. According to their website, the Penn Foster Career School is accredited both regionally and nationally.

The cost of this course appears to be between $519 and $590 at the time this post was written. The difference in cost depends on the payment plan you select such as monthly or full payment.

The course includes the following sections:

• Program Goal and Outcomes
• Introduction to Pet Grooming
• Introduction to Dogs and Cats
• Pre-Grooming Procedures
• Dog Grooming – Part 1
• Dog Grooming – Part 2
• Dog Grooming – Part 3
• Dog Personalities and Behavior
• Cat Grooming
• Business Practices

You can find out more about Penn Foster Pet and Dog Grooming Online Course here.

QC Pet Studies Dog Grooming Course

According to their website, QC Pet Studies is part of QC Career School which is an online international school. This online dog grooming course includes books, DVDs, assignments and personal feedback. Upon completing the course, you will receive a professional dog groomer certification from QC Pet Studies.

This online dog grooming course costs approximately $1,600 and payment plans are available.

This online training includes the following topics:

• Dog Grooming Intro
• Esthetics
• Safety
• Dog Anatomy
• Dog temperaments and Behavior
• Tools that You Need (note – actual tools are not included)
• Preparing to Groom – Nails, Ears, Hair, Bathing and Drying
• Coat types and Care
• Working with Special Needs Dogs – Seniors, Puppies, Difficult Dogs
• Breed Standards
• First Aid for Groomers
• Business Essentials

You can find out more about QC Pet Studies Dog Grooming Course here.

Final Thoughts on Online Dog Grooming Programs

We believe that you can get satisfactory training for dog grooming by taking online courses, but it would seem that you would also need a lot of hands-on training. Of course if you have a lot of friends with dogs, perhaps they would be kind enough to let you practice your newly developed grooming skills on them.

You can also volunteer at pet shelters and provide free dog grooming while you learn. You might even consider offering dog owners in your neighborhood free grooming services for their dogs.  Just make sure everyone understands that you are in the learning process.

One final thing we would like to emphasize. All of the online dog grooming programs listed on this post are quite expensive. Be sure and do your research. You work hard for your money and it’s important that whatever you decide to do, you get what you paid for.