Why Dog Training TikTok is TOXIC and How it Ruined My Mental Health as Certified Dog Trainer

dog advice

Aug 9

TikTok... the app that blew up at the beginning of the pandemic. This app kept us entertained with the most random, viral content. Along with that, dog training TikTok was born. When it really shouldn’t have been.

As a certified dog trainer who runs their own business and uses social media as a marketing tool, I jumped on the dog training TikTok train to help grow my business. Let me just say that I didn’t even last a full month there before I deleted my account and the app all together.

Dog training TikTok RUINED my mental health. The large accounts that seem to gain the most followers are toxic and full of outdated, dangerous and just downright horrible dog training information.

Unfortunately, the dog training industry is unregulated. This means that anyone can call themselves a dog trainer at anytime. With absolutely no formal education. And that is the majority of the dog training content that goes viral on TikTok.

Aside from that, the interactions with viewers, followers and other dog trainers were almost always unpleasant. TikTok is run by an algorithm. Your for you page is filled with random videos that the app suggests for you. Most of the time you don’t follow the accounts that pop up on your for you page.

This means that the dog training videos I would post would end up all over the place. Pulling in views and interactions from, to state it nicely, trolls. No matter what kind of dog training video I had posted, the comment section would be full of hate. Random people (not certified dog trainers) would come there to bash my training methods and corner me with questions about different dog training methods that I don’t agree with just to start arguments.

Every single time I opened the TikTok app, my heart rate would spike. My stomach would sink and I would start to doubt my worthiness as a dog trainer and as a person in this world. It was after a particularly horrible day of being attacked in my comments that I spent the entire day crying and feeling ready to leave the dog training profession all together.

I took time away from all social media platforms to do some reflecting.

I reminded myself why I took the time to go through the Victoria Stillwell Academy for Dog Training and Behavior. Why I continue to take courses, read literature from veterinary behaviorists, specialists with PHD’s and other certified dog trainers. And I can tell you it is not to please random people on TikTok who gather their dog training information from uneducated individuals posting outdated information for vulnerable dog guardians to absorb.

I do it because the dog training industry is unregulated and uneducated trainers are still out there posting horrible dog training advice that is harmful to the well being of dogs.

I do it because I want to give a voice to these dogs and show the world how incredibly brilliant they are.

I do it because we are living through a mental health crisis due the generations before us not taking the time to acknowledge their feelings and trauma and just continued to pass it down to us.

And it has to stop.

It has to stop for our dogs. For us and for the future generations of dog guardians.

Before you take the information from a video on TikTok about dog training... take some time to research the information you have been given and see how it affects the well being of your dog before utilizing it.

Now, I don’t want to leave you with all of this information and not give you any valuable resources to learn from!

Check out all of these awesome learning opportunities!