Advance Your Knowledge. Refine Your Skills. Strengthen Your Professional Practice.

Go Beyond the Foundations of Dog Training and Develop Greater Precision, Understanding & Professional Judgment.

Professional development doesn't stop once we understand the foundations of learning and training.

As our skills develop, we need to look more closely at why behavior occurs, how environmental variables influence it, how learning histories affect responding, how our training procedures function, and how to make increasingly thoughtful decisions for the individual learner in front of us.

The DogNostics Journeyman Dog Training Course is an extensive professional education program designed to take existing dog-training knowledge and practical skills to a substantially deeper level.

Designed for professional dog trainers and pet professionals seeking continuing professional development, as well as students progressing through the DogNostics Dog Trainer Certificate Program, Journeyman combines learning and behavior science, practical training, critical thinking, welfare, professional application, and individualized instructor feedback.

Experienced trainers can use the course to deepen and update existing knowledge, refine practical training mechanics, strengthen their application of behavioral science, examine familiar concepts from a more advanced perspective, and identify opportunities for continued professional development.

The Journeyman Course can be completed as a standalone professional development program or as the second level of the DogNostics Dog Trainer Certificate (DN-DTC) Program.

While completion of the Apprentice Course is not mandatory, Journeyman assumes a solid understanding of foundational force-free training principles and practical training skills. We therefore strongly recommend completing the DogNostics Apprentice Dog Training Course first or ensuring you possess equivalent knowledge and practical competency.

Go Deeper Into the Science. Apply It to Training.

At Journeyman level, the question is increasingly not simply:

“How do I train this behavior?”

It is also:

“Why is this happening?”
“What variables may be influencing the behavior?”
“What is the learner actually responding to?”
“What effect is my training procedure having?”
“What does the data tell me to do next?”

Throughout the course, you'll deepen your understanding of areas including:

• Canine communication, distance and consent
• Self-protective responses, aggression, predation and reactivity
• Respondent and operant conditioning
• Antecedents, setting events and motivating operations
• Stimulus control, discrimination and cue histories
• Reinforcers and reinforcement processes
• Continuous and intermittent schedules of reinforcement
• Differential reinforcement
• Reinforcement delivery strategies
• Extinction and its welfare implications
• Habituation and sensitization
• Shaping, micro-shaping and errorless learning
• Constructional approaches to training
• Environmental molding and thoughtful use of prompts
• Behavior chains, compound behaviors and backward chaining
• Training fluency, generalization and maintenance
• Training plans and data-informed decision-making
• Positive reinforcement and negative punishment
• Positive punishment, negative reinforcement, escape and avoidance
• Behaviorism and the foundations of learning science
• Choice, agency, welfare and professional decision-making

You'll continually connect the terminology and principles of behavioral science with what you actually observe and do when training dogs.

More Than Recorded Lessons

Journeyman isn't a course where you simply watch presentations and collect a certificate.

The program combines multiple forms of professional learning so that important concepts are introduced, applied, revisited, assessed and progressively refined.

Throughout the five core modules, you'll encounter:

🎥 Recorded Lessons & Practical Demonstrations
Detailed presentations and training demonstrations exploring both the science and practical application of modern force-free dog training.

📘 Lesson Notes - How & Why
Comprehensive written resources consolidate essential learning while expanding on the reasoning behind training decisions.

🧠 Additional ABA Notes - The Science Behind It
Where appropriate, additional Applied Behavior Analysis material develops your understanding of behavioral processes, terminology, and the environmental variables relevant to training.

💼 Professional Practice - Working With Real Clients
Professional application sections help you consider how learning translates beyond your own training sessions into thoughtful, ethical work with dogs and their guardians.

📚 Research & Supplementary Learning
Research papers, professional resources, position statements, protocols, and further reading provide opportunities to explore subjects beyond the core curriculum.

This layered approach is designed to support genuine continuing professional development, rather than passive course completion.

Learn. Practice. Assess. Refine.

Knowledge alone doesn't create an exceptional trainer.

Professional skill requires the ability to observe carefully, plan thoughtfully, manipulate criteria precisely, deliver reinforcement effectively, recognize when something isn't working, assess the information the learner is providing, and adjust accordingly.

Throughout Journeyman, you'll continue developing practical training skills while applying increasingly sophisticated learning principles.

You'll work with skills and procedures involving intelligent luring, targeting, capturing, shaping and micro-shaping, stimulus control, discrimination training, reinforcement delivery, differential reinforcement, behavior chains, backward chaining, constructional learning, environmental arrangements, training plans, generalization, maintenance, and much more.

The emphasis increasingly moves from simply being able to produce a trained behavior toward understanding how you constructed it, why your procedure worked, what variables influenced performance, and what you would change if it didn't.

Make Training Decisions Using Observation & Data

As trainers develop, our decisions should become less dependent on guesswork and increasingly informed by what the learner's behavior tells us.

Journeyman develops your ability to plan training, establish measurable criteria, observe performance, collect useful information, and adjust your training accordingly.

You'll revisit the DogNostics Train-Test-Train Method, develop criteria systematically, and learn to make informed decisions about whether to push, stick or drop a training criterion.

You'll also explore situations such as shaping where progression must remain particularly responsive to the behavior emerging in front of you.

The aim is not simply to follow a training recipe.

It is to become increasingly skilled at designing, assessing and adapting training for the individual learner.

Learn With Personalized Instructor Feedback

Knowledge grows through study. Professional training skills develop through practice, assessment and informed feedback.

Throughout the Journeyman Course, you'll complete progressively challenging practical skill assessments designed to develop and demonstrate your training mechanics, observation, timing, planning, and decision-making.

Your submissions receive personalized instructor feedback, recognizing what you're doing well while identifying opportunities to further refine your training.

Feedback may consider areas such as criteria, timing, reinforcement delivery, antecedent arrangements, prompts, learner responses, training efficiency, and overall strategy.

The objective isn't simply to determine whether you completed an exercise.

It's to help you continue developing into a knowledgeable, analytical, thoughtful, and highly skilled force-free trainer.

Demonstrate What You Know - and What You Can Do

Your learning is assessed throughout the Journeyman program.

Each of the five core modules concludes with a knowledge quiz and practical skill assessment, giving you repeated opportunities to demonstrate both theoretical understanding and practical application.

To successfully complete the Journeyman Course, students are required to engage with the course curriculum and successfully complete the required knowledge and practical skill assessments.

Successful completion therefore represents much more than watching the course material. It demonstrates continued engagement with both the science and practical application of professional dog training.

Five Core Modules + An Extensive Supplementary Learning Module

Journeyman progresses systematically through five core learning modules, each building upon and revisiting knowledge and skills developed previously.

The curriculum then continues into Journeyman Module Six - Your Supplementary Module, where additional resources corresponding to each of the five core modules provide opportunities for further professional study.

These supplementary materials extend learning through additional research, professional resources, training protocols, and practical tools.

The purpose isn't simply to provide more content.

It is to encourage one of the most important habits of professional practice:

Continue reading. Continue questioning. Continue assessing. Continue learning.

Professional Development & the DN-DTC Pathway

The Journeyman Course is a substantial professional continuing education program in its own right.

It is also the second of three progressive levels within the DogNostics Dog Trainer Certificate Program:

Apprentice → Journeyman → Master

For established and credentialed dog trainers, Journeyman provides an opportunity to deepen existing knowledge, refine practical skills, strengthen the application of learning and behavior science, and undertake structured continuing professional development.

For students working toward the DogNostics Dog Trainer Certificate, Journeyman builds upon Apprentice and prepares them for the final Master level.

Successful completion of Journeyman earns its own Course Attendance Certificate.

Students who successfully complete all three levels and the requirements of the complete DN-DTC program are eligible to earn the DogNostics Dog Trainer Certificate (DN-DTC) and use the professional credential DN-DTC after their name.

Continuing Education Units (CEUs)

Professional Continuing Education for Dog Trainers & Behavior Professionals

The DogNostics Journeyman Dog Training Course is designed as professional continuing education for dog trainers and pet care professionals seeking to advance their knowledge and practical skills.

The course is currently approved for:

• IAABC: 25 CEUs
• CCPDT: 21 CEUs
• PPAB: 25 CEUs

Journeyman provides structured professional education across learning and behavior science, practical training mechanics, canine communication and behavior, reinforcement processes, stimulus control, training planning, behavior change, welfare, critical thinking and professional application.

Participants don't simply access educational content. Learning is reinforced through module knowledge assessments, practical skill assessments, applied exercises, supplementary professional study, and personalized instructor feedback.

Explore the Complete Journeyman Curriculum

Journeyman is extensive.

Across the program, you'll move from canine communication, consent and functional interpretation of behavior, through stimulus control, fluency, reinforcement and training mechanics, into behavior change, constructional learning, training plans, behavior chains, respondent and operant conditioning, and increasingly sophisticated professional decision-making.

Take a look through the curriculum and discover how far Journeyman can take your professional knowledge and training skills.