Dog Trainer Intake Form: Behaviour History Questions With AI

Ask about the dog's bite history first (when, who, what happened, and how serious on a bite scale), then triggers, medical flags, training history and household. Add escalation rules that decide, before the first session, whether you proceed, refer to a vet or behaviourist, or decline. AI can build the form and flag answers, but you decide.

The answers that matter most are the least comfortable to give, so the form has to make them easy to write: specific questions with examples, not 'any aggression issues? Yes or no'. It also has to be read by a person before anyone books. A trainer is not a vet or a veterinary behaviourist, and the form is where you find out which of the three the dog needs first.

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Bite history: the questions, and the six-level scale in plain words

Start with bites, because the answers decide everything after. The form should branch. One opening question asks whether the dog has ever bitten or snapped at a person or another dog, and each 'yes' opens a short block about that incident. Ask what happened, not what it meant. For each incident:

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• When did it happen? A date, or the dog's age at the time.
• Who or what was the target: an adult in the family, a child (and their age), a visitor, a stranger, another dog or another animal?
• What was happening just before? Ask for the owner's own words.
• Did the dog give a warning, such as freezing, stiffening, a hard stare, a growl or a curled lip, or did it bite without one?
• What happened to the person or animal? Ask the owner to pick the closest description from the scale below.
• Was medical or veterinary treatment needed, and was the incident reported to anyone?
• What has changed since: management, training, a vet visit?

For the severity question, use Dr Ian Dunbar's bite scale in plain words, following the official authorised version published by the Association of Professional Dog Trainers:

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1. The dog growled, snarled or lunged, but its teeth did not touch skin.
2. Teeth touched skin but did not puncture it. There may be small nicks or slight bleeding.
3. One to four punctures from a single bite, none deeper than half the length of the dog's canine teeth.
4. One to four punctures from a single bite, at least one deeper than half the length of the canine teeth. There may be deep bruising or tearing.
5. Several bites, at least two of the deeper kind, or several attacks each including a deep bite.
6. The victim died.

The scale rates severity from the wound, not the dog's intent, and it depends on what an owner remembers, so ask for a medical record or photographs when an incident was serious. Its own notes put the outlook for Level 3 at fair to good with a committed owner, but 'time-consuming and not without danger', and for Level 4 as poor, with work advised only in exceptional circumstances. Those notes are one expert's opinion, not a rule, but they show why a referral line at Level 4 is easy to defend.

Owners hesitate over this section, so say why you ask. Illustrative wording for the top of the bite block:

We ask every owner about bites, snaps and growls so we can keep you, your dog and our team safe. A bite in the past does not mean we will turn you away. It helps us decide which help should come first, which is sometimes a vet or a veterinary behaviourist before any training. Please describe what happened rather than what you think it means.

Triggers: a grid owners can fill in without guessing

'Does your dog react to anything?' gets a shrug. A list of specific situations gets answers. Show the list, let the owner tick what applies, and ask the same four follow-up questions for each tick so the answers can be compared.

For each ticked trigger ask four things: what the dog does (bark, lunge, freeze, growl, snap, bite, hide, other), how far away the trigger is when it starts, how long the dog takes to settle, and since when. A filled-in line, illustrative: 'Other dogs on lead: barks and lunges from about 10 metres, settles in around five minutes, since about eight months old.' Distance and recovery time tell you more about severity than the word 'reactive' ever will, and they give you a baseline to measure progress against. The vocabulary of freezing, stiffening and fixed stares is the same one daycare staff score in a dog daycare temperament test, and a daycare's 'not yet' can be how a dog ends up on your books, so expect owners to arrive with some of these answers already half-written.

Medical flags: the questions a vet would ask first

Pain and illness can sit behind a behaviour problem, and veterinary behaviourists treat them as possible contributors, particularly when behaviour changes suddenly. One veterinary behaviourist, interviewed by the trade publication dvm360, adds two cautions. Not every case of aggression has an underlying medical cause, and a normal examination does not fully rule one out. So the form's medical questions are there to decide who should see the dog first, not to diagnose. You gather information and you do not diagnose or prescribe.

• Last vet examination. The date and the clinic.
• Has the behaviour started, changed or got worse in the last three months? If yes, what changed and when. This is the most useful question in the whole form.
• Has a vet examined the dog because of this behaviour? What did they say?
• Signs of pain or stiffness. Limping, slow to get up, reluctance to jump or use stairs, yelping when touched, licking one spot, restless sleep.
• Changes in appetite, thirst, toileting or energy.
• Hearing or sight problems, and the dog's age. Senior dogs need a different conversation.
• Medication and supplements. Has anything been started or stopped recently? Is the dog on behaviour medication, and who prescribes it?
• Known conditions. Skin or ear problems, allergies, seizures, thyroid or heart conditions.
• The vet's name and phone, with a tick for consent: 'I agree that [trainer name] may speak to my vet about my dog's health and behaviour.'

The rule that follows is simple. A sudden change, any aggression or any sign of pain means a vet visit before behaviour work. Notice that the form asks what the owner has seen, not for a diagnosis they do not have.

Training history, tools and the household

The rest of the form fills in the picture around the bites, triggers and medical answers.

• Previous training. Classes or trainers, when, for how long, what worked and what did not. Ask what the dog disliked, which is often more revealing than what it learned.
• Tools used now or before. Tick boxes for flat collar, harness, head collar, prong or pinch collar, electronic collar, spray collar and other. Ask neutrally, in the same tone for every tool, or owners will leave some out. The answer tells you what the dog has learned about equipment and handling.
• Your methods. State plainly in the form's introduction what you do and do not use, and add a tick for the owner to agree. The form is the right place to settle that before the first session.
• Goals. 'What would success look like in three months?' and a pick-three list of priorities, so you can see whether the owner wants a calmer walk or a dog that tolerates visitors.
• Household. Adults, children and their ages, other dogs and pets, how they get on, and who feeds and walks the dog. Include who the dog is best and worst with.
• Daily routine. Exercise, alone time, where the dog sleeps, feeding times.
• Management in place. Gates, crates, a muzzle (and whether the dog is trained to wear it), leads indoors, separate rooms for visitors. This answers the question 'what is keeping everyone safe right now?'
• Origin. Where the dog came from, its age on arrival and how long it has lived with the owner. A rescue with an unknown early history is a different case from a puppy bred at home.

A filled-in line for management, illustrative: 'Baby gate on the kitchen door; dog stays in the kitchen when visitors come; no muzzle training yet; child never alone with the dog.' That one sentence tells you the household already takes risk seriously, and what you can build on.

Escalation rules: decide before the first form arrives

A rule written after an alarming form is a rule shaped by the pressure to say yes. Write yours now, with a veterinary behaviourist and your insurer if you can, and put it in front of whoever reads the forms. The illustrative set below uses three outcomes. Red means do not book: refer the dog to a veterinary behaviourist, or to its vet first, and offer a short call to explain. Amber means book an assessment only, one to one, with no group classes, a vet check first where flagged, and a written management plan agreed before the first session. Green means proceed as normal.

The form does not apply these rules by itself. The person who reads the answers does, and the rules keep their decisions consistent from one enquiry to the next. If a form reveals a recent serious bite, ask your insurer and a legal adviser what you must record or report, because rules differ and I cannot tell you yours.

One design detail matters more than it looks. Do not put a booking calendar on the form's thank-you page. Say you will read the answers and reply within [number] working days, and send the booking link afterwards, once someone has applied the rules.

A referral message you can adapt, for a red outcome:

Hi [first name], thank you for being so open on the form, which helps me keep everyone safe. From what you have described, I am not the right first step for [dog name]. A veterinary behaviourist can examine [dog name], look at possible medical causes and plan treatment, and I would suggest starting with your vet to arrange that. Until then, the safest approach is [management steps you can stand behind, taken from the form]. If a vet or behaviourist later asks me to work alongside them, I would be glad to. I am sorry I cannot offer a session now, and I am happy to answer questions by email.

An AI-built form that never asks 'Is your dog aggressive?'

An assistant is a fast way to turn these lists into a form you can paste into a form tool, with the branching and help text written for you. Give it your questions and your rules, and forbid it from deciding anything.

Act as a form designer for a dog training business. I will give you the
questions and my safety rules. Return one table row per question with:
section, question wording, answer type (text, date, dropdown, tick,
multi-select, file upload), whether it is compulsory, when it should
appear, a one-line help note for the owner, and the escalation flag it
feeds, if any.
Sections: Bite history; Triggers; Medical; Training and tools; Household;
Management; Consent.
Use exactly these questions: [paste the question lists above].
Rules:
- Bite history is a branching block: an opener, then one block per incident.
- Use the six bite-scale descriptions as a single-choice question, in
  plain words.
- Never ask "Is your dog aggressive?" and never offer "aggressive",
  "dominant" or "dangerous" as answers. Ask what the dog does.
- Do not add questions I have not listed. Do not decide whether to accept
  a dog. Flags only.
- Flags: RED if bite level 4 or more; or a bite to a child at level 2 or
  more; or two or more bites at level 2 or more with no warning. AMBER if
  [paste the amber rules].
Show the flags as a hidden field the trainer sees and the owner does not.

The first attempt (illustrative) had five faults worth catching.

• 'Is your dog aggressive? Yes / No' is a label, not a fact. Swap it for the branching bite block and the trigger grid.
• 'Rate your dog's aggression from 1 to 10' means something different to every owner. Use the six-level scale with its descriptions.
• A 'Decision: accept / decline' field filled in automatically makes the assistant the decision-maker. Delete it and keep a flags field that a person reads.
• No consent to contact the vet means the medical flag cannot be followed up. Add the tick with the exact wording.
• 'Is your dog a dangerous breed?' says little about this dog. Delete it and ask about the dog in front of you.

The first fault deserves a closer look, because it shows why labels fail. An owner whose dog snapped at a courier last month will often answer 'Is your dog aggressive?' with No, and mean it, because to her he is a frightened family pet. Asked 'Has your dog ever bitten or snapped at anyone?', she answers Yes, and the incident block opens. The second question asks for a fact; the first asks her to agree with a label she hopes is untrue.

The assistant also tends to word help lines as reassurance ('don't worry, this won't affect your booking'). That is a promise you may not keep. Replace it with the honest version from the bite block: a disclosure decides which help comes first.

A second AI step: the one-page brief for the trainer

Once forms are arriving, an assistant can read each one and write a brief, so you spend your attention on the answers that matter. The risk is quiet softening. A summary that turns 'his teeth touched her arm' into 'a minor incident' has changed the evidence. So the prompt makes it quote.

Below are the behaviour answers from a dog trainer's intake form, with
names removed. Our escalation rules are: [paste the rules].
Write a one-page brief for the trainer with these headings:
1. Rules triggered: each rule that applies and the answer that triggered
   it, quoting the owner's words. If none, write "None".
2. Bite incidents: for each, quote the owner's description exactly, then
   give the scale level they chose.
3. Missing or unclear: questions left blank or answered vaguely.
4. Questions to ask on the first call.
Do not recommend whether to accept the dog. Do not soften, shorten or
reword any description of an incident. Do not guess.
[paste the behaviour answers]

An illustrative brief for an imaginary three-year-old dog:

Rules triggered. Amber, Level 2 bite in the last 12 months: 'He growled, I said leave it and my friend carried on, then he snapped and his teeth touched her arm, no marks. About five months ago.' Amber, change in the last three months: 'He stopped jumping on the sofa about two months ago.' Amber, child in the household: 'My son is seven. The dog goes under the table when he runs.'

Bite incidents. One. Owner chose Level 2. Dog growled first (owner's words above).

Missing or unclear. Exact date of the bite. Vet's name and the consent tick are blank. No answer to 'What keeps everyone safe right now?'

Questions for the call. What did 'stopped jumping on the sofa' look like, and has a vet seen him since? Where is the dog when the son runs through the kitchen? Has the child been near the dog while he is on the sofa?

Even this brief has a fault to catch. The third flag matches no rule in your table: the amber rule is growling or snapping at children, and the owner describes a dog that hides under the table when the boy runs. The assistant stretched a rule to fit an answer that sounded worrying. Strike the flag, keep the quote as a question for the call, and add a line to the prompt: 'Flag a rule only when an answer meets its exact wording; list anything else under Missing or unclear.'

Is the second step worth the effort? A quick sum with illustrative figures: at 20 forms a month, reading each raw form closely takes about 15 minutes, five hours in all. Reading a brief with the original open beside it takes about six minutes, two hours in all. Spend the three hours saved on the amber and red forms, where every word the owner wrote still needs reading.

Read the brief with the original answers beside it, check that nothing has been softened, apply your rules yourself, and save both with the record. Keep the owner's contact details out of the chat: send only the behaviour fields, and let your form tool keep the rest. The session notes and homework plans tutorial picks up from here once a dog is booked, and the dog training business software comparison covers where all of this can live.

Calibrate the rules: two readers, three made-up enquiries

Before the form goes live, fill it in three times as made-up dogs, and have two people triage each one independently. If they reach different outcomes, a rule needs rewording.

• A mouthy puppy. Eight months old, mouths hands, has never bitten, had a recent vet check and lives with two adults. Expect Green, and expect the form to take about fifteen minutes on a phone. If it takes much longer, cut a question.
• The three-year-old from the brief. Expect two Amber flags (the recent Level 2 bite and the change in the last three months), the question about the son kept for the first call, a vet check before the first session, and an assessment-only booking with a written management plan.
• An adult dog with a recent bite to a child. The bite was three weeks ago, broke the skin and came with no warning. Expect Red under the rule for bites to children, the referral message, and no booking link anywhere in the confirmation.

Then check the experience from the owner's side. Does the intro make sense to someone nervous about disclosing a bite? Does the incident block let them describe what happened in their own words? Can they save and return, because a thoughtful answer about a bite is not written at the kitchen counter in one go? And does the confirmation page say what happens next, and when?

Finally, review the rules after your first twenty real forms. Look for outcomes you disagreed with and ask whether the rule or the question was at fault. A rule that fires on every form is too broad, and one that never fires may be asking the wrong question. Keep the original form, your triage notes and any brief together in the dog's record, and delete forms from owners who never booked on a schedule you can explain. If you also board or run daycare, the dog boarding intake form tutorial covers the vaccine, feeding and medication fields that this form deliberately leaves to those services.

Questions trainers ask about intake forms

Should the form ask about bites before I book a session?

Yes. A bite history changes whether a first session is safe, where it should happen and who should see the dog first. Explain why you ask, ask what happened rather than for labels, and make clear that a disclosure leads to the right help first, not automatically to a refusal.

What is the Dunbar bite scale?

A six-level scale by Dr Ian Dunbar that rates bite severity from wound evidence. Level 1 is no tooth contact, level 2 is contact without a puncture, levels 3 and 4 are punctures shallower or deeper than half the canine tooth's length, level 5 is multiple severe bites and level 6 is a fatality. It records severity, not intent.

Must a vet check always come before training?

For sudden changes, aggression or signs of pain, make it your rule. Veterinary behaviourists treat pain and illness as possible contributors, but they also note that not every case of aggression has a medical cause and that a normal exam does not fully rule one out. Ask for a check, then keep asking about changes.

Can AI decide whether I should take a dog on?

It should not. Let AI flag answers that match your written rules and list missing information, and keep the decision yourself. Read the owner's own words about any bite, because a summary can quietly make an incident sound milder than it was.

How do I protect owners' details when I use AI?

Remove names, addresses, phone numbers and children's names before pasting anything into a chat, and write [owner] and [dog] instead. The form holds the real record, and the assistant only needs the behaviour answers. On business plans the vendors say they do not train on your content by default, but removing identifiers is still the safest habit.

Further reads

• How Dog Groomers Can Use AI to Collect Pet Details Before Booking — Collecting pet details before a booking, from a neighbouring trade.
• Personal Trainer Intake Forms: Build One With AI, Protect Health Data — Handling sensitive health answers in another trainer's intake form.
• Should a Dog Daycare Use AI to Write Incident Reports? — Keeping AI accurate when the subject is a bite or a fight.
• Gingr or MoeGo for a Pet Business? Plans, Costs and AI Compared — Pet business software compared, if forms need to live in it.
• AI Receptionist for a Dog Groomer: Monthly Cost and Booking Rules — Per-minute and flat plans costed for 120 calls a month, with breed, coat and add-on questions scripted and a hand-off for aggressive-dog notes.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: Dr. Ian Dunbar's Dog Bite Scale (the official authorised version published by the Association of Professional Dog Trainers); dvm360, 'Snap judgments: Aggression problem or medical condition?' (a veterinary behaviourist on medical contributors to aggression). The escalation rules, thresholds and wording in this tutorial are an illustrative design: agree yours with a veterinary behaviourist, your insurer and a legal adviser.