I will be very upfront and honest, unless you have a well trained groomer to teach you hands on it will be an uphill battle to learn pet grooming from an online course.
Grooming is 95% hands on. When I was in school we were there for 4 months, 5 days a week, 40+hours a week constantly grooming, plus we had homework everynight (our book work), tests on Sat, and we were tested on our hands on abilities.
Once you graduate they tell you do not work on your own till you have worked under another groomer a few more months.
I have had 13 people with online courses apply for jobs at our shop, each one was given 'test dogs'. They were asked to groom a drop coated breed (shih tzu, yorkie, etc) and one patterned dog like a schanuzer or poodle in a trim.
Of the 13 not one had the skills even passable for an apprentice.
These people were smart, had 99% averages in the online course studies, felt confident that they were GOOD groomers but by not having someone show them what type of neatness and skill is required and expected by the paying clients they did not understand the level of skill needed.
In my area there is not a huge number of groom shops, I am good friends with a few of the groomers. Competition was never an issue with them, as one groomer told me people were just lucky to get their dog shaved down. Now we are here and we have high standards, neat and tidy grooms. One groomer told me she has to work twice as hard to produce good grooms that were once good enough but now don't compete with us.
So you have to realize that once you are ready to go out on your own you will be competing for business with other shops. (we know how passionate people on here are about bad groomer jobs!! Best advertising is word of mouth and that can go both ways!!)
most groomers burn out in 6 months, many only wanted to do it as a 'hobby' but why spend thousands on your education and then thousands on your tools only to have fun?? Very expensive hobby! personally I would rather pay for good training, even if it means being away from home and boarding, buying the best equipment so you don't have to worry about your body breaking down in 5 years, and making a decent if not good wage from grooming and STILL having fun as if it were a hobby!!
nearest school to us is 3 hrs away, so I drove for 4 months, many miles on my car
But worth every early morning!!