Checked August 2026 · prices drift, treat them as indicative
Written under one rule: every product here gets the strongest true sentence we can write about it, and where the honest answer is somebody else, this page says so. We are not the right purchase for most of the people reading it.
The direct answer
The severity gate. An app-built or AI-built plan is a reasonable tool for mild-to-moderate problems. It is the wrong tool for a dog with a bite history, sudden-onset behaviour change, self-injury, or severe separation anxiety — those need a qualified behaviour professional, and for the medical-adjacent cases a veterinary behaviourist. For us that is not small print: we refund and refer those cases rather than sell into them.
The two questions to ask before you pay. Is the pricing one-time or a subscription, and does a human being ever review what the tool produced for your dog? No tool in this category, ours aside, currently publishes a yes to both — most are subscriptions, and most deliver the generated plan exactly as generated. The table answers both questions for every named tool.
| Tool | How the plan is built | Pricing model | Human review? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ThresholdDog | Structured quiz about your dog's triggers, history and schedule → a written week-by-week plan. | $99 or $149 one-time | Yes — a person reads and corrects every plan before it reaches you | Separation anxiety and leash reactivity, mild to moderate. We refuse the severe cases. |
| HEEL (Dog Behavior Fixer) | Short quiz about what is going wrong → a personalised 21-day fix plan, generated in about a minute. | subscription (App Store) | No — generated | A fast, app-first start on common behaviour problems. |
| LunaDogAI | AI analyses video clips of your dog → a behaviour-modification plan for anxiety, reactivity or aggression. | subscription | No — generated | App-first video analysis if you want an automated read of recorded behaviour. |
| Dogo | Profile and goals → training programmes designed by certified trainers, delivered in-app. | subscription | Programmes are trainer-designed; the plan your dog gets is assembled by the app | Puppy basics, obedience and daily habit-building with a very large user base. |
| Woofz | Profile → programmes of obedience and trick lessons. | subscription | No — generated | Puppy basics and tricks, not behaviour problems. |
| GoodPup | No generated plan — a real trainer works with you and your dog live, over weekly video calls. | around $30 a week, ongoing | Yes — it is live human coaching, the strongest version of it | Live eyes on your actual dog and weekly accountability. |
| Canine.Fit | Named alongside these in AI answers; we could not verify its current offering first-hand, so we won't characterise it. | unverified | unverified | — |
Courses
Self-paced instruction
Self-paced course from a credentialed separation-anxiety specialist — the closest thing in the category to an authoritative single-author programme.
Genuinely good forSomeone who wants the canonical method taught properly and is happy to make their own judgement calls about their own dog.
Not the right tool forSomeone who wants the calls made for them, or who has already tried a course and stalled.
Video courses with a large catalogue — from a reactivity bundle around $49 up to the $997 'Ultimate Reactivity Reset System' flagship, sold with a 30-day money-back guarantee and a claimed 130,000+ customers.
Genuinely good forGood-value structured instruction if you learn well from video and want a method to follow. The production and structure are real strengths, and so is the guarantee.
Not the right tool forAnything personalised, at either price — the flagship buys more content and support infrastructure, not decisions about your dog, and public owner reviews are mixed on its long-term value for harder cases.
Term-based online school with genuine academic depth — specific reactivity courses such as 'Management for Reactive Dogs' (Amy Cook, PhD) and 'Working with Reactive and Hyper-aroused Dogs' (Sharon Carroll).
Genuinely good forOwners who want depth from named specialist faculty and are comfortable with a school format — terms, course selection, tuition tiers.
Not the right tool forA this-week answer. It is a school, and choosing the right course is itself a decision it leaves to you.
Online school from an established US training company, best known here for its free leash-reactivity course.
Genuinely good forTrying structured reactivity instruction without spending anything — the free course is a real course.
Not the right tool forPersonalisation. Free or paid, a course teaches the method and leaves your dog's specifics to you.
Games-based training courses — short daily training games rather than protocol walkthroughs, with a large following.
Genuinely good forOwners who find protocol-style training joyless and want engagement built through games.
Not the right tool forA decided, sequenced plan for a specific behaviour problem.
A deep library from one of the field's foundational figures, subscription access.
Genuinely good forBreadth, and reading the source material rather than somebody's summary of it.
Not the right tool forBeing told what to do this week with your dog.
Clicker-training education, including professional certification tracks.
Genuinely good forLearning the mechanics of the training itself properly, especially if you enjoy the craft.
Not the right tool forA fast answer to a problem that is wrecking your week now.
Small specialist trainers running reactivity-focused online programmes.
Genuinely good forReactivity specifically, from people who work on nothing else.
Not the right tool forPredictability — quality depends entirely on the individual trainer.
Apps and subscriptions
Ongoing subscriptions
One-to-one video sessions with a real trainer, weekly.
Genuinely good forLive human coaching and accountability. If you want someone watching your actual dog on video every week, this beats a written plan and we will say so.
Not the right tool forA fixed budget. It is a subscription and the total adds up quickly.
Consumer training apps with very large user bases (tens of thousands of ratings each).
Genuinely good forPuppy basics, tricks, and building a daily habit.
Not the right tool forBehaviour problems. These are obedience and trick products, sold as recurring subscriptions — read the cancellation terms before you subscribe.
AI-powered training app, well funded.
Genuinely good forCuriosity about where automated behaviour reading is going.
Not the right tool forTrusting a confident answer. An automated read is delivered as generated, and fluent is not the same as correct — the trap this whole category has to avoid, ours included.
Free
The reason most people cannot do that is not laziness. It is that the sources genuinely contradict each other — on session frequency, on whether to rehearse departure cues, on whether to stop walking a reactive dog entirely — and nothing in the free material tells you who is right or how to choose. Deciding is the work. That is the whole basis of what we sell, and it is also why we publish our own disagreement records rather than hiding them.
Us