Following the Paperwork: David Montgomery's Regulation Blog Doesn't Add Up

Disclosure up front. I run the School of Canine Science. We looked at the ABTC route and made a deliberate decision not to play in that sandpit. After what you're about to read, I think that call has aged extremely well. So no, I'm not a neutral observer. But every record I'm about to walk you through is on the public register. None of it is mine. None of it is opinion. It is what it is.

A blog has been doing the rounds in the dog training and behaviour world this past week. It's by David Montgomery, and it tells the sector how the Defra consultation on the Veterinary Surgeons Act is going to reshape everything. Trainers and behaviourists regulated. One register. One regulator. One set of approved courses. Anything outside that ecosystem, including (he names it specifically) Ofqual regulated provision, demoted to CPD. And the only body actually in the room with Defra about behaviour and training, apparently, is the ABTC.

Read cold, it sounds like a helpful heads up from a sector elder.

So I pulled the records. Companies House. Charity Commission. The live Defra consultation. The December 2025 Animal Welfare Strategy. The BVA's own write up of the Defra sprints. The membership lists of the bodies actually advising government on cat and dog welfare. A few hours of public documents. Here's what came back.

The author is selling something

David John Montgomery, date of birth December 1954, has been a director of Compass Education Limited (company number SC271852) since 24 August 2004. Compass is a private commercial education company that sells courses to people who want to become dog trainers and behaviourists. It is a business. It takes money. The fees are on the website.

The other director, and the company secretary, is Maria Dolores, Lady Montgomery, his wife. Same registered address. Mossend, Corsock, Castle Douglas. Both have been on the Compass board for twenty one years. Both still are.

He is also a current trustee of the Animal Behaviour and Training Council (charity number 1164009), appointed 11 July 2024. On his own Compass bio he describes himself as ABTC's first chairman and now its president. He was also a director of the earlier ABTC Limited (09461544) from 2015 until it was dissolved into the CIO, and of A B T C Limited (07927383) before that.

Now look at ABTC's official Recognised Courses list. Compass Education Ltd appears on it. Both the Level 5 and the Level 6 Advanced Diploma in Applied Animal Behaviour. Compass courses are routes onto the ABTC register.

So the blog telling you the ABTC register is becoming the only thing that matters is written by a man who is a trustee of that register, who is a director of a course provider feeding into it, and whose wife is the other director and company secretary of that same business. None of this is mentioned in the blog. Not once.

The Charity Commission entry lists "trustee conflicts of interest policy and procedures" among ABTC's filed policies. I would pay money to see how this particular blog was assessed under it.

The "only organisation talking to Defra" claim is false

It's the last line of the blog, and it's the line everything else hangs on. The only organisation in discussions with Defra about the way ahead for behaviour and training is, in his words, ABTC.

Anyone with internet access can disprove this in ten minutes.

The actual standing advisory body to Defra on companion animals is the Canine and Feline Sector Group (CFSG), which meets monthly and reports directly to Defra ministers and the Animal Health and Welfare Board for England. Its members include RSPCA, Dogs Trust, Battersea, Blue Cross, BSAVA, Pet Industry Federation, Kennel Club, PDSA, PetBC, Wood Green, Guide Dogs, Cats Protection, and yes, ABTC. As one organisation among many.

On the VSA reform specifically, the BVA's own published account of the work describes Defra running stakeholder "sprints" through the first half of 2025. Those sprints brought in the RCVS, BVA, BVNA, the Vet Schools Council, Government Veterinary Services, and (their phrasing, not mine) "representative bodies for allied veterinary professionals." Plural.

CCAB Certification has published a position statement confirming its committee members have attended multiple RCVS and Defra meetings.

And back in 2020 a separate consortium of dog training and behaviour bodies (CAPBT, IMDT, ICB, INTODogs, PPG, UK College of Scent Dogs, and Victoria Stilwell Positively Dog Training) formed precisely to provide an alternative voice, because they did not want a future imposed on them by a single body.

The "only organisation" claim isn't a slip of the keyboard. It's the load bearing assertion of the entire blog. It's also, on the public record, untrue.

The rest of the post, briefly

The Defra consultation is real. The VSA is being reformed. The concept of regulated Allied Veterinary Professionals is in the consultation. Those bits are accurate.

But the AVP examples Defra, the RCVS, the BVA, and the BVNA actually name in their own materials are musculoskeletal therapists, equine dental technicians, cattle hoof trimmers, and farriers. Dog trainers don't appear by name in any of it. Clinical animal behaviourists making something close to a diagnosis might come into scope. CCAB's own statement acknowledges that possibility. But a single sentence jump from "VSA reform" to "every training instructor must be on the ABTC register" is a leap, not a logical step.

The promise that aversive methods will be banned through professional standards is speculation. The Animal Welfare Strategy published December 2025 commits to consulting on a shock collar ban, which Defra has been "consulting on" since 2018 without ever finishing.

The claim that Ofqual regulated courses will be reduced to CPD is also speculation, and conveniently writes off the main competing format to Compass style private provision. Compass's own marketing emphasises that its courses use Ofqual regulated Awarding Bodies. So the only Ofqual route courses that don't survive in this imagined future are the ones not already plugged into the ABTC network. Convenient.

A bit of personal context

I've been close to this conversation longer than most. The School of Canine Science, were involved in parliamentary discussions about regulating the sector. That was years ago. It fizzled out, not because nobody wanted it, but because doing it properly turned out to be genuinely difficult. Different bodies, different standards, different competence frameworks, no obvious enforcement mechanism, no funding settlement, no clear scope. Every serious attempt has run into the same wall.

This is the part the urgency framing in the blog leaves out. The "regulation is coming" conversation has been live, in some form, for the entire twenty plus years I've been training dogs. Defra has looked at it before. Their focus then was welfare, not professional licensing for trainers, and there's nothing in the December 2025 Animal Welfare Strategy that fundamentally changes that emphasis.

I also don't see the RCVS suddenly volunteering to take on the regulation of dog trainers right now. The RCVS is in the middle of a Competition and Markets Authority investigation into vet pricing, a full reform of its own founding legislation, and the operational pressures that come with both. The idea that on top of all that it's quietly preparing to take on a register of behaviourists and training instructors as a side project is not a serious reading of the situation. They have enough to do.

For the record: I'm not against regulation in principle. Done properly, with real consultation, a sensible scope, and a register that actually means something for the public, it could be good for the sector. What I'm against is the regulation conversation being weaponised by people with a direct commercial stake in a specific outcome, sold as inevitable when it isn't, and pitched as if there is only one door into the future and it just happens to open onto their own course catalogue.

What this actually is

Strip the framing back and the blog is a sales document.

It tells professionals their entire career path runs through a register the author is a trustee of, qualified for by courses the author and his wife own. It tells them their alternatives, including the regulated Ofqual route, are about to be made worthless. It tells them the body in question is the only one Defra is even listening to. The last of those is demonstrably untrue. The first two are speculation framed as inevitability.

None of the commercial relationships are disclosed. None of the competing bodies are named. The CFSG isn't mentioned. The 2020 consortium isn't mentioned. The fact that primary legislation only addresses principles, and that the actual scope is explicitly an undecided secondary process (as the BVNA has confirmed in writing) isn't mentioned.

That isn't a heads up to the sector. That's a pitch with the price tag filed off.

If you're trying to make sensible decisions about your time and money over the next few years, do this. Read the actual Defra consultation. Look at the published CFSG membership. Read the BVNA Q&A. Talk to people inside more than one membership body. And when someone tells you the door is closing on a register that just happens to be the one they sit on, check what they aren't telling you.