about Denise

Denise Fenzi is a prolific writer, story teller, dog trainer, problem solver, philosopher, business owner, and advocate for people and animals – in no particular order.

As a competitor, Denise is best known for her flashy and precise obedience work, as demonstrated by two AKC OTCH dogs and perfect scores in both schutzhund and Mondio Ringsport obedience.

She has titled dogs in obedience, tracking, schutzhund, mondioring, herding, conformation, and agility.

Scroll down to learn more about Denise.

While a successful competitor, Denise’s real passion lies in training dogs and solving the problems that her own dogs and her students’ dogs present.

She is a recognized expert in developing play, motivation, and engagement in competition dogs, and is known internationally as an engaging speaker and an expert in no-force training for sport dogs.

Denise has consistently demonstrated the ability to train and compete with dogs using motivational methods in sports where compulsion is the norm.

Denise and OTCH Raika SchH2, MR1 in Mondioring
Photo credit: Jason Roberts.

Denise and Lyra TEAM3 play during a training session.

Denise is highly active on Facebook; follow her there to engage in lively well moderated discussion, watch Facebook live presentations on various topics, and learn more about training dogs!

Click here for all of Denise's books (with links to buy!)

Denise and Deb Jones have recently finished a four-book series, “Dog Sports Skills,” which has received widespread acclaim in the dog sports community. Several of these titles have won Maxwell awards for Best Training and Behavior book from the Dog Writers of America

Denise has written several additional books on her own..

Denise works tirelessly to break down barriers that prevent people from obtaining a truly interactive and enjoyable sport relationship with their dogs. As a result, she created both the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy (FDSA) and the Training Excellence Assessment Modules (TEAM) program.

Denise with her dog, OTCH Cisu SchH3 FH

Latest Blog Posts

Progress via complexity

I often talk about adding "complexity" to training. When I say complexity, I mean adding something, anything, that is a little bit different or new than what you did the last time you worked with your dog. In heeling that could be going a few steps further, placing a...

Personal Play with a mouthy dog

Dogs that love to work and to play tug (bite!) can be a challenge in the world of personal play. The might enjoy the contact but they find the delay between the start of training and an opportunity to win a favored toy to be frustrating. This is no problem. I still...

Mental Frameworks for training

When you're working with a dog, you can start your approach with different mental frameworks, and any of them is likely to get you where you want to go. You can focus on the observable behavior, the emotions that underly that observable behavior, or the arousal level....