21 training systems that are taught online, and the people behind them. Every link below points at material the trainer published themselves — 32 of them are free to read or watch. Nothing here is ranked; the point is to make it obvious who teaches what, and where to go and read the primary source.
Last updated 2026-08-29 · 41 trainers and researchers
Reward-based and balanced are a split about means — whether corrective equipment sits inside the system. Concept is a split about the learning target: a rule, a judgement or a piece of communication rather than one behaviour. The two axes are not exclusive, so concept systems still teach with reward-based procedures.
| Framework | Trainer | Base | Approach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fenzi Dog Sports Academy (FDSA) | Denise Fenzi | United States | Reward-based |
| DogsThat | Susan Garrett | Canada | Reward-based |
| Progressive Reinforcement Training | Emily Larlham (Kikopup) | United States | Reward-based |
| Karen Pryor Clicker Training / KPA | Karen Pryor, Ken Ramirez, Bob Bailey | United States | Reward-based |
| Do As I Do | Claudia Fugazza, ELTE Family Dog Project | Hungary | Concept |
| D.I.N.G.O. | Japanese instructor certification body | Japan | Reward-based |
| absoluteDogs | Tom Mitchell & Lauren Langman | United Kingdom | Concept |
| Concept training (Ramirez) | Ken Ramirez | United States | Concept |
| Learning About Dogs | Kay Laurence | United Kingdom | Concept |
| SATS — Syn Alia Training Systems | Kayce Cover | United States | Concept |
| Model/Rival | Irene Pepperberg | United States | Concept |
| Lexigram language learning | Rumbaugh / Savage-Rumbaugh lineage | United States | Concept |
| AAC button language | Christina Hunger, FluentPet, They Can Talk | United States | Concept |
| Concept training (cross-framework map) | Multiple lineages | Cross-framework | Concept |
| My Aussie Gal | A single owner-trainer | United States | Reward-based |
| Mia Skogster | Mia Skogster | Finland | Reward-based |
| Michael Ellis School / Leerburg | Michael Ellis | United States | Balanced |
| Training Without Conflict | Ivan Balabanov | Belgium → United States | Balanced |
| NePoPo | Bart Bellon | Belgium | Balanced |
| STSK9 | Nino Drowaert | Belgium | Balanced |
| Hamilton Dog Training | Ben Hamilton | Video archive | Balanced |
No corrective equipment inside the system. Behaviour is built with markers, food, toys and access to what the dog already wants.
Denise Fenzi
An online-only school for sport dogs. Its signatures are engagement (the dog opts in before work starts), acclimation to the environment, start-button behaviours that let the dog say when to begin, and a temperament spectrum used to rewrite the protocol per dog.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Susan Garrett
A game-based system out of agility. Each game states its pass criteria and the step to fall back to on failure — ItsYerChoice for impulse control, Crate Games for a default station, Spotlight markers for position.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Emily Larlham (Kikopup)
A manifesto that names six things the trainer will do and three they will not, and applies those rules to daily management as much as to training sessions. The YouTube channel is one of the largest free how-to archives in the field.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Karen Pryor, Ken Ramirez, Bob Bailey
The lineage that runs back to Skinner's 1943 pigeon work. The three jobs of a marker, the ten laws of shaping and the four conditions of stimulus control all come from here; the academy adds a teacher certification track.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Japanese instructor certification body
Japan's instructor qualification system. Its 'fair training' defines forced training by whether the dog had a choice at all, and it publishes the deduction criteria for a four-level handling test.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
A single owner-trainer
A social archive from one handler who taught an Australian Shepherd to do laundry and dishes. The material is worth reading for how finely behaviours are split and how long routines are back-chained from the end.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Mia Skogster
From the Finnish IGP scene. Works on the emotion the handler is sending while teaching, and treats six distinct praise voices as separate tools with separate jobs.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
The learning target is a rule, a judgement or a piece of communication rather than a single behaviour. In practice these systems still teach with reward-based procedures.
Claudia Fugazza, ELTE Family Dog Project
A social-learning protocol built in a research lab: the human demonstrates, the dog copies, in three trained stages. Controlled trials found it faster than shaping for complex actions such as opening a drawer, and no better for simple ones.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Tom Mitchell & Lauren Langman
Renames a problem behaviour as a missing concept — 16 of them, including optimism, calmness and proximity — and picks games to build it. Pass criteria sit at the level of the individual game, not the whole program.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Ken Ramirez
Teaches match-to-sample, modifier cues, adduction, imitation and counting as separate skills. The success criterion is not accuracy on the trained set but transfer to a stimulus the animal has never seen.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Kay Laurence
Judges a session by what the learner actually read from it and what capacity is left, not by the finished behaviour. Builds an environment for success, uses luring, targeting and micro-shaping, then fades the help toward autonomous performance.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Kayce Cover
Adds naming, perception modification and conditioned relaxation on top of bridge and target. People, body parts, sensations and upcoming events are named in advance so the animal has information to predict and prepare with.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Irene Pepperberg
A teacher and a rival model demonstrate question, answer, error and role reversal in front of the learner, who is then pulled into the exchange. Used to teach labels, attributes and same/different.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Rumbaugh / Savage-Rumbaugh lineage
Abstract graphic symbols used alongside speech inside shared daily activities. Comprehension is tested with combinations the learner has never heard and with reversible sentences, not with symbol presses alone.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Multiple lineages
Our own map placing match-to-sample, modifier cues, imitation, self-directed problem solving and naming side by side, with transfer to an unseen case as the shared test.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Corrective equipment — prong collar, e-collar, leash pressure — is part of the system, placed after the behaviour has been taught.
Michael Ellis
Behaviour is taught first with markers and engagement; pressure and the e-collar come in a later phase. The ordering principle is teach before you hold accountable.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Ivan Balabanov
Four signals — release, encouragement, no-reward and out — carry all the information the dog gets. Play is the engine of the work, built in the order chase → possession → out.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Bart Bellon
Negative–Positive–Positive: pressure on, pressure released, then reward, so a single behaviour is reinforced twice. Negative reinforcement is the centre of the system rather than an exception in it.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Nino Drowaert
From the Belgian police K9 world. Starts from source focus — the dog's eyes on the object, ears on the handler — instead of demanding eye contact, and builds drive in four stages from there.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
Ben Hamilton
Not a curriculum but a case archive: 75 videos of a prong- and e-collar trainer working through ordinary pet-dog problems, useful for seeing how the balanced sequence is applied outside sport.
Our breakdown of this system — written in Korean, from the trainer's own public material.
These people do not run a framework of their own on this list, but their published work is quoted throughout it — usually for one specific procedure.
| Name | Base | Known for | Where we cover them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hannah Branigan | United States | Obedience through shaping; Drinking from the Toilet podcast | /topics/fenzi |
| Shade Whitesel | United States | Location-specific marker cues, toy skills | /topics/fenzi |
| Deb Jones | United States | Two sides of arousal, focus hierarchy | /topics/fenzi |
| Amy Cook | United States | The Play Way for fearful and reactive dogs | /topics/fenzi |
| Petra Ford | United States | Competition heelwork — attitude, body, position games | /topics/competition-heeling |
| Julie Flanery | United States | Building heelwork criteria with props, then removing them | /topics/competition-heeling |
| Nancy Gagliardi Little | United States | The handler's rhythm in heelwork | /topics/competition-heeling |
| Dante Camacho | Brazil | Defining the start and end of a heeling picture | /topics/competition-heeling |
| Sarah Stremming | United States | The Cognitive Canine, four steps to behavioural wellness | /topics/drive |
| Chirag Patel | United Kingdom | The Bucket Game, consent-based husbandry | /topics/cooperative-care |
| Leslie McDevitt | United States | Control Unleashed pattern games | /topics/drive |
| Craig Ogilvie | United Kingdom | Interactive play as the primary reinforcer | /topics/drive |
| Simone Mueller | Germany | Predation Substitute Training | /topics/drive |
| Grisha Stewart | United States | BAT — Behaviour Adjustment Training | /topics/resilience |
| Turid Rugaas | Norway | Calming signals | /topics/concept-training |
| Suzanne Clothier | United States | Auto check-in, relationship-centred training | /topics/concept-training |
| Kim Brophey | United States | Family Dog Mediation, the L.E.G.S. model | /topics/concept-training |
| Tellington TTouch | United States | Bodywork and the Tellington method | /topics/concept-training |
| Brian Hare | United States | Dognition — five cognitive dimensions, nine profiles | /topics/dognition |
| Federico Rossano | United States | They Can Talk, UCSD — soundboard study | /topics/they-can-talk |
The linked breakdowns are written in Korean at /training, where the same systems sit next to the research on training methods. Reactivity, aggression and separation anxiety belong with a veterinary behaviourist or a qualified professional, whichever framework you pick.