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The Puppy Development Advisor helps people with sight loss to live the life they choose by providing training and ongoing support to volunteers responsible for the caring and raising of Guide Dogs puppies in line with positive reinforcement techniques, and delivering the Guide Dogs Puppy Raising for Excellent Partnerships (PREP) programme.

For this role you’ll be working 35 hours per week, worked 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday. This role requires travel across South London and Surrey, the nominated office for this role is Reading.

We offer a generous pension scheme, annual leave, life assurance and enhanced pay for parenting and sickness leave. In addition, we provide an Employee Assistance Programme, flexible benefits package and discounts and cashback scheme to care for our people.

More details can be found in the attached candidate pack and job description.

We reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date.

Diversity

Guide Dogs welcomes applications from all sections of the community and actively encourages diversity to maximise achievements, creativity and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment, regardless of age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability or nationality.

We encourage applications from people with disabilities as they are currently under-represented in the organisation and guarantee an invitation to interview for all applicants with disabilities who demonstrate, within their application form, sufficient evidence to meet the essential criteria for the job.

Safeguarding

Guide Dogs is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children, young people and adults at risk of harm with whom we work. We expect all our employees and volunteers to fully share this commitment.

To be able to fulfil this role, the skills and experience we are looking for in a potential candidate include;

Essential

• 
  Practical, hands-on experience within the field of canine behaviour modification, positive reinforcement or dog training as a practitioner
• Able to demonstrate knowledge of the application of animal behaviour and positive reinforcement training
• Competent in using Microsoft Office tools
• Experienced in providing coaching, training and mentoring through various platforms
• Able to practically apply theoretical knowledge of positive and ethical dog and/or puppy handling skills
• Confident and competent to deliver group training sessions with multiple participants
• Able to undertake physical demands of the role including walking in all weathers for several miles per day, managing and walking with a range of large dog breeds of up to 35kgs, ages and temperaments

Desirable

• Degree in an animal related subject, ideally animal behaviour, training and/or welfare/wellbeing (QCF level 6 / SQCF levels 9-10)
• Experience of managing a team of staff or volunteers
• Experience of delivering puppy classes/or working with puppies under a year old

For the complete list of essential and desirable criteria necessary to be successful in this role please see the Person Specification within the Job Description below. The candidate pack contains more information about this role & the recruitment process at Guide Dogs.

If you are successful you will need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK. We cannot provide sponsorship for this role.

How to apply
If you have any accessibility needs, contact our Recruitment Team on 0118 3540345 or [email protected].

Applications need to be made using the online application form, accessed using the ‘apply’ button above.

As part of your application ensure you provide evidence and examples of how your skills & experience meet the criteria as set out in the attached job description.

The system has a one-hour time limit. We would advise you to prepare your answers separately and then copy and paste into the online form once finalised.
If any mandatory fields are missed, a pop-up box will appear at the top of the page advising which sections require completion.

Please note that you’ll have to upload a CV as this is a mandatory requirement as part of our Safer Recruitment Policy.

Guide Dogs follow Safer Recruitment practices to ensure we are safeguarding the vulnerable people we work with. As part of this, we require a full work history with any gaps accounted for & a minimum of 2 professional referee details fully covering the past 5 years. If there is not enough space in your application form to provide this information, please ensure you upload additional documentation containing the additional detail.

Please contact our Recruitment Team on 0118 3540345 or [email protected] if you require any support with your application.