By Amanda Eick-Miller, RVT, CPDT
Starting up a business providing training or behavior services can be scary. Besides putting together your training plans, purchasing equipment, rental agreements, and purchasing insurance policies you’re dealing with creation of forms and waivers for the business. With so many things to do it’s easy to become overwhelmed. With so much to do we tend to put the formation of waivers and contracts on the back burner because: 1) they seem like busy work, 2) we didn’t get “legalese” in tech school and 3) it’s just paperwork—my clients aren’t going to sue me!

In today’s society you can’t pick up a veterinary journal or listen to the news without hearing the words “liability” or “lawsuit.” As business owners and veterinary technicians working in behavior we need to make certain we protect ourselves and our businesses. As a start-up it’s hard to afford hiring an attorney to work out the details to create well written and protective documents. This is where dogTEC has stepped in to help keep us from re-creating the wheel!

dogTEC created the dogPRO package for those of us who provide training and behavior services. The CD contains all those pesky waivers and liability forms that we put off creating in a very readable format for clients. Options for inserting your business name, logo and information as well as altering the text to suite your needs are also included. Changing this information is easy to do (it took me about 15 minutes to update all the forms I wanted to use) and requires much less time than creating the forms from scratch. The program is simple to use and will work on a Mac or PC.

Contracts and Waivers.
Contains different contracts for day training, public classes, private training and board & train situations. All are ready to update with your information and use immediately. My favorite feature in the contracts section is a bite history waiver which is clear cut and states directly that the client acknowledges the only way to guarantee a dog will not bite again is to euthanize the dog.

A great feature for those of us working outside the veterinary hospital is the veterinary communication form. This is designed to improve communication between the trainer and the veterinarian about the progress of the training case. Its design currently reflects a trainer making a diagnosis of the behavior problem but this form is alterable and this can be removed.

A Return On Investment (ROI) sheet is also included in this section which reminds us all that we should be tracking every phone call. You can use this sheet to monitor who called, if they scheduled for class or an appointment or make notes to follow up on the call. Again, no need to spend hours fixing the size of the cells on an Excel spreadsheet—it’s already done!

If you need an invoice or a template for creating a list of professional references those are also available in this section.

Diagnostic Flow Charts.
The flow charts and accompanying history collection questions are a great tool for training veterinary team members in how to handle questions about animal behavior on the phone or in the exam room. These are simple to use and may be members decide whether to refer care to a trainer, recommend a medical work up or a referral appointment for behavioral analysis. They are clearly marked with sections that recommend seeking medical care to rule out disease problems and also include things like lack of environmental stimulation as a reason for a behavior problem. Flow charts and questions are available for barking, destruction, dog-dog issues, fear, house soiling, growling and separation anxiety.

Consult Aids.
This section is filled with the other forms we like to have but don’t take time to create. Phone screening, initial consult and follow up consult forms are included in this section. Again, they are all easy to use, easy to adapt and much less time consuming than creating them yourself. The phone screening sheet helps keep you on task when talking with a potential client and aids in the collection of client information. You get the information you need to decide if you want to take the case while not giving away free advice!

The consult forms are available in a “create your own” format as well as developed forms for different types of problems (basic behavior intake, aggression intake, separation anxiety intake etc.). The previous phone screening sheet can function in providing a direction on which consult format to use or if none suit—create what you want.

The last component in this section is the initial client instructions form. This has been created to act as a guide to provide the client excellent service and easy access to find information. The format walks you through what information is helpful to include and sets you up for success. When using this format you are much less likely to forget to include information for the pet and client. Sections are included for descriptions of the behavior, goals for changing it, management changes to make and training techniques.

Overall, I found this product to be very helpful for my business. It saved me time and money by providing the legal-speak I needed for my waivers and contracts while offering extras to help me get organized! The ability to provide well prepared, professional looking documents to my clients is an added benefit. What ultimately aided my decision to purchase this CD was that I was able to edit materials, brand it with my logo and create materials consistent with my business image. The price for all this was much less than hiring an attorney, a mere $300.

Rating: 5 out of 5 paws