PET Track Course Catalog

The ACADA Track, Course and Lesson catalog.

Explore every track, module, and lesson in the ACADA curriculum. Each lesson is organized by Proficiency, Evaluation, and Testing so students and professional partners can see what the standard requires.

PET Tracks

367

Lessons

See the course sequence, lesson expectations, and credential path before enrolling.

Every student begins with the Generalist PET Track. It introduces the legal, operational, safety, documentation, and ethical foundation of professional grooming practice. Completion may assist discussions with certain insurers, employers, clients, or business partners, subject to their own requirements and policies.

The Canine Core PET Track is the primary certification pathway for professional dog Grooming Professionals. It covers canine anatomy, coat science, breed-specific grooming standards, handling, bathing, drying, cutting, and finishing. Prerequisite: Generalist PET Track.

Cats are not small dogs, and the Feline Core PET Track is built around that fact. It addresses the unique physiology, psychology, and grooming requirements of domestic cats, including the stress and handling risks that have no parallel in canine grooming. Prerequisite: Generalist PET Track.

The Mobile Operations PET Track is designed for grooming professionals who operate mobile grooming vehicles. It addresses vehicle safety, power generation, water systems, wastewater awareness, chemical transport, parking and neighborhood considerations, and client-site assessment.

The Hobby Division confers no professional endorsement. These safety briefings prepare professionals to handle secondary species encounters safely, recognize when referral is required, and communicate the limits of their training to clients. Students must acknowledge in writing before beginning any Track 5 module that they will not represent this training as professional specialty certification. Prerequisite: Generalist PET Track.

Technical skill alone does not build a grooming career. This track develops the professional communication, ethical conduct, business fundamentals, and human-interaction skills that distinguish a working Grooming Professional from a trusted one. Pet owners are protective, emotional, and sometimes unreasonable. Clients will be grieving, confrontational, and occasionally dishonest. professional professionals are trained to remain calm, documented, and professional in every encounter. This track is strongly recommended before a student begins actively taking clients. It is offered on a tool-agnostic and school-agnostic basis and is licensed for use by professional-affiliated grooming schools.

Proficiency: Apply the professional accidental causation protocol, which governs the specific situation where a Grooming Professional's action or inattention may have contributed to an animal's death or serious injury. The protocol has four sequential layers. First, immediate response: stop all grooming, render first aid within your scope, seek urgent veterinary guidance using the best available owner, veterinary, or emergency information, and contact the client with factual and compassionate language that acknowledges the situation without making admissions of fault. The pre-collected veterinary contact information from the intake form is the reason this first layer can move in seconds rather than minutes. Second, documentation: complete a timestamped written incident record of every action taken, every observation made, and every communication that occurred before speaking to anyone other than the veterinarian and the insurance carrier. Third, insurance notification: contact your carrier before any further client communication beyond initial notification. Fourth, client conversation: conducted only after insurance guidance and with full documentation in hand, using language that is honest, human, and legally careful. Students learn to distinguish between compassionate language that honors the loss and admissive language that creates legal exposure, and they understand that these are not the same thing

Evaluation: Four-layer protocol walkthrough exercise with supervised language review

Testing: Written submission: complete all four protocol layers from a mock scenario in which a dog dies during a drying session, including the incident documentation, the initial client call script, the insurance notification summary, and the follow-up client conversation draft, with each document reviewed against the professional language standards before submission