About Pet Career Weekly
Pet Career Weekly is a free weekly newsletter for people who want to work with animals. If you’re thinking about becoming a dog trainer, a dog groomer or a veterinary assistant, it’s written for you. It’s published by The Academy of Pet Careers, a pet career school in St. Charles, Missouri, that has trained pet professionals since 1993.
Who it’s for
Most of our readers love animals and are wondering whether that love could become a job. Some are finishing high school. Some are changing careers. Some are already working in a kennel, a salon or a clinic and want to go further. You don’t need any experience to read along. Every issue explains its ideas in plain language, and nobody is expected to know the jargon yet.
What’s in each issue
The lead story: one idea about animals or pet careers worth knowing, told so it’s fun to read.
A rotating feature: a skill you can practice, the real numbers behind the work, or a pet myth that doesn’t hold up.
Your path: a short piece written for the career you’re most interested in, whether that’s dog training, dog grooming or veterinary assisting. Subscribers get the one that matches the path they choose when they sign up.
Grad Spotlight: stories from people who trained with us and now do this work.
School news: upcoming start dates and events at The Academy of Pet Careers.
The website archive shares the lead stories and the career-path pieces. The full issue, matched to your path, arrives in your inbox.
How we write it
Everything we teach is built on force-free, reward-based care: the idea that animals learn best, and handle care best, when they feel safe. At The Academy of Pet Careers we call this approach Pet Empowerment, and it runs through every story we publish.
We check our facts before they reach you. When a piece makes a claim about animal behavior, health or the industry, we link to the source so you can read it yourself. That includes claims from our own curriculum.
Who publishes it
Pet Career Weekly is published by The Academy of Pet Careers. We’re a career trade school that trains people to become professional dog trainers, dog groomers and veterinary assistants. Our students learn in person at our 35,000-square-foot campus in St. Charles, Missouri, near St. Louis, and our dog training program is also available online nationwide. Our graduates come from 38 states and several countries.
The school opened in 1993 as Petropolis Academy and became The Academy of Pet Careers in 2017. We’re independently owned and not part of any pet store chain. Our programs lead to industry certifications rather than degrees, and most can be finished in a year or less.
We’re a school, so yes, this newsletter will sometimes tell you about our programs. We’ll always be upfront when we do. Most of what you’ll read here is simply useful, whether or not you ever enroll with us.