This document outlines the Joint Standards of Practice and Professional Code of Ethics developed by the Joint Standards of Practice Coalition, a collaborative effort by leading animal training and behavior organizations. Its mission is to foster excellence in the animal training and behavior profession through science-based, humane practices, prioritizing animal well-being and industry collaboration. The standards are intended for all signatories of the Joint Standards of Practice (JSOP) and professionals seeking membership or credentialing within these organizations.
Core Principles for Professionals
Professionals adhering to these Joint Standards are expected to maintain a high level of ethical practice and professional conduct. This includes a commitment to ongoing professional development through study and participation in educational opportunities. It is crucial to present training and behavioral information as scientific only when it is derived from peer-reviewed research. Furthermore, professionals must refrain from offering guarantees regarding training outcomes and always uphold professionalism by providing honest services, treating all individuals with respect, and preserving client privacy.
Principle I: Responsibility to Clients
Professionals must provide services without discrimination based on race, age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability, gender, health status, religion, political beliefs, national origin, immigration status, or sexual orientation. Clients’ rights to make decisions regarding their pet’s management, training, and care should be respected, with professionals guiding them to understand the potential consequences of these decisions. Informed consent is required before any recording or third-party observation, and signed waivers or contracts must be in place before services commence. Ensuring the safety of clients, animals, and the public during training and behavior program implementation is paramount.
Principle II: Confidentiality
Confidentiality is a cornerstone of professional practice. Professionals shall not share identifying information about clients, prospective clients, research participants, or others with whom they have a confidential relationship without prior written consent. Accurate and complete records of all clients, their animals, services provided, and their conclusion must be maintained. Consent from the client is necessary before sharing information with outside parties, except in situations involving physical safety or financial liability concerns.
Principle III: Professional Competence and Practice
Well-Being and the Five Domains
Behavior plans must support both immediate behavioral goals and the animal’s overall well-being and long-term success. Professionals must adhere to the Five Domains Model, which assesses animal welfare across five components: nutrition, health, physical environment, behavioral interactions, and mental state.
- Nutrition: Professionals should recommend veterinary evaluation if an animal appears to be an unhealthy weight or if there’s a suspicion of nutritional concern, collaborating with veterinary professionals as appropriate and staying within their scope of practice.
- Health: Professionals must consider underlying health issues influencing behavior. For new cases, a veterinary examination within the past 12 months should be verified. Referrals to veterinary professionals are necessary for severe, sudden, or complex behavior concerns, or when progress is limited. Training plans must be adjusted to accommodate the animal’s health status and life stage.
- Physical Environment: The animal’s environment must meet their behavioral, emotional, and biological needs, including adequate space, appropriate bedding, clean air, suitable temperature, conditions for sleep, and absence of aversive stimuli. Recommendations should be made to improve the environment based on the client’s abilities and resources. Behavior plans must be adjusted to minimize exposure to environmental factors causing toxic stress, fear, or discomfort.
- Behavioral Interactions: Evaluating and implementing comprehensive behavior plans for interactions with the environment, humans, and other animals is critical. This may involve avoiding distressing situations, educating caregivers on body language, increasing enrichment, and utilizing desensitization and counter-conditioning. Professionals must use thoughtful antecedent arrangements to prevent undesired behaviors and support behavior change. Providing animals with control, choice, and agency, whenever safe and reasonable, is essential. Plans should be adjusted based on the animal’s feedback, prioritizing their comfort and well-being.
- Mental State: Behavior plans must prioritize the animal’s emotional well-being alongside behavioral goals, considering their subjective experiences and objective behaviors to ensure ethical and sustainable outcomes.
Procedure Selection
Professionals shall utilize non-aversive and/or positive reinforcement-based training methods that support the animal’s emotional well-being and comfort, focusing on learner engagement and favorable outcomes. Training, management, or behavior modification techniques relying on fear, pain, distress, or harm are prohibited. This includes positive-punishment-based strategies, management practices that significantly restrict movement or choice, intentional deprivation of basic needs, and tools designed to cause fear or pain.
Professionals must recognize their own biases and aim to consider the learner’s experience. Internal states like pain, fear, or fatigue should take priority over interventions. Professionals understand that only the learner can determine what is appetitive or aversive and must apply this principle for the learner’s benefit. Behavior plans should be developed based on the animal’s breed, age, health, environment, past experiences, and the owner’s capabilities, continuously assessing all aspects from the animal’s perspective. Teaching and reinforcing desired behaviors to replace undesired ones is a key strategy. New safety and management tools require a comprehensive conditioning process to ensure they are not aversive. Behavior plans must minimize risks to the animal, caretaker, and community. Professionals may work with clients using aversive techniques, provided they do not implement or recommend them themselves, focusing instead on educating and supporting the client in transitioning to humane, science-based alternatives.
Professionals must maintain competence through qualified continuing education, adhere to applicable laws and standards, provide truthful advertising, and refrain from guaranteeing outcomes. Full disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is required. Professionals should work within their scope of practice, seeking guidance for complex cases and avoiding advice outside their expertise, particularly in veterinary medicine or family counseling unless licensed. Employees and supervisees must also adhere to these standards. Recommendations and opinions must be accurate, evidence-based, and clearly presented to the public.
Principle IV: Professional Conduct and Regulatory Compliance
Professionals shall treat colleagues with respect, avoiding disrespectful public commentary. Adequate professional liability insurance coverage is required, along with compliance with laws regarding animal bites and suspected abuse or neglect.
Principle V: Financial Arrangements & Truthful Representation of Services
All financial arrangements and fees must be clearly disclosed and explained to clients before a professional relationship begins. The nature, scope, limitations, and potential outcomes of services must be accurately and truthfully represented to clients, payors, and students.
Principle VI: Advertising
Advertising must accurately reflect competencies, education, skills, and experience. Professionals should only use earned titles, degrees, certifications, and designations. False, misleading, or inaccurate information should be corrected, and professionals should not represent themselves as providing specialized services without appropriate qualifications. Marketing materials and logos must be current and used appropriately. Business fraud, plagiarism, copyright infringement, and other unethical activities are prohibited.
Principle VII: Illegal Behavior
Professionals shall not engage in conduct that could lead to felony or misdemeanor convictions related to their qualifications or functions, nor shall they engage in cruelty, abuse, neglect, or violence against animals or humans.
Principle VIII: Cooperation in Matters Related to Ethical Complaints
Professionals must cooperate fully with ethics procedures from the inception of a complaint through completion. Non-cooperation may lead to disciplinary actions. Retaliatory actions against parties or witnesses involved in an ethics complaint are strictly prohibited.
Principle IX: Appeals
Respondents to complaints have the right to appeal sanctions in accordance with the established complaint process.
Appendix A: Glossary of Terms
- Antecedent Arrangements: Modifying the environment to influence an animal’s behavior.
- Appetitive: A stimulus that an animal seeks out or finds pleasant.
- Aversive: Any stimulus, technique, tool, or method that an animal seeks to avoid or that causes fear, pain, or distress.
- Desensitization: A gradual process to reduce emotional reactions to previously distressing situations.
- Behavioral Interactions: Interactions with the environment, humans, conspecifics, and/or other species.
- Behavior Plan: Includes behavior plans, training plans, and curriculum for group classes, encompassing safety and risk mitigation.
- Counter Conditioning: A technique to change an animal’s emotional response to a stimulus by associating it with positive experiences.
- Humane: Showing concern for the well-being of living beings.
- Improving Welfare: Minimizing pain and suffering.
- Improving Well-being: Promoting positive emotional states.
- Reinforcement: Adding or removing stimuli to increase the likelihood of a behavior being repeated.
- Subjective Experiences: An individual’s unique, personal perceptions and feelings.
- Choice, Control, and Agency: The ability to select alternatives, predictably produce desired results, and exert control to enhance skills, respectively.
- Toxic Stress: Distressing experiences that exceed an animal’s coping ability, leading to long-term negative health impacts.
Works Cited
- Englund, M. D., & Cronin, K. A. (2023). Choice, control, and animal welfare: Definitions and essential inquiries to advance animal welfare science. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 10, 1250251.
- Littlewood, K. E., Heslop, M. V., & Cobb, M. L. (2023). The agency domain and behavioral interactions: Assessing positive animal welfare using the Five Domains Model. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 10, 1284869.
- McEwen, B. S. (2017). Neurobiological and systemic effects of chronic stress. Chronic stress, 1, 2470547017692328.
- Mellor, D. J., Beausoleil, N. J., Littlewood, K. E., McLean, A. N., McGreevy, P. D., Jones, B., & Wilkins, C. (2020). The 2020 Five Domains Model: Including Human–Animal Interactions in Assessments of Animal Welfare. Animals, 10(10), 1870.
- Špinka, M., & Wemelsfelder, F. (2011). Environmental Challenge and Animal Agency. Sentience Collection.
