Sarah Owen Dog Training and Behavior Consultations

15/08/2025

Some of you may know that my *other* job is teaching shaping skills courses at Behavior Explorer. (Well, that's one of my other jobs, anyhow!)

The next round of Behavior Explorer's Reinforcement Systems 101 course will run in October, and registration for it is now open.

This course is probably my favorite course to teach, and also is a prerequisite for all the other courses in The Shaping Skills Workshop. So, if you think you might ever like to join us for the "more advanced" shaping courses we offer, now is a good time to take the prerequisite :)

The cohorts are small and students get a lot of individualized feedback from my colleague, Maia Huff-Owen, and me. We hope students will come out of our courses with some new ways to think about – and to apply! – positive reinforcement. Our goal is to create a safe, fun learning environment where students can build their own skills and explore complex behavior principles :)

We'd love to have you join us for this next round of Reinforcement Systems 101. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly or you can contact us through the Behavior Explorer website (https://behaviorexplorer.com/contact-us/).

Join Behavior Explorer in October for our next Reinforcement Systems 101 course!

We have just opened registration for our next Reinforcement Systems 101 course. This course is the first part of Behavior Explorer’s Shaping Skills Workshop.

In this six-week course, you will learn about reinforcement systems. A reinforcement system describes the back-and-forth interaction between a teacher and a learner during the delivery of a reinforcer.

Reinforcement systems are often overlooked during teaching.

However, learning will be much slower if your reinforcement system is poorly designed or if your learner does not understand your reinforcement system.

In addition, small adjustments to your reinforcement system can have a huge impact on learning.

During the course, you will learn what a reinforcement system is, the elements of a reinforcement system, and how to diagram reinforcement systems.

This is a hands-on course.

You’ll use a shaping game called PORTL to explore the idea of the reinforcement system and to practice your reinforcement delivery and timing. In addition, you will build a reinforcement system with an animal learner.

You’ll have access to a course platform with step-by-step activities, as well as video coaching and support. You’ll also be able to participate in weekly Zoom discussion hours.

This course will be taught by two fabulous instructors, Sarah Owen and Maia Nahele Huff-Owen.

If you want to look closely at the details of your training sessions and better understand the nitty-gritty of how reinforcement works, you’ll love this course!

You can find out more about this course and the other courses in the Shaping Skills Workshop on the Behavior Explorer website.
https://behaviorexplorer.com/shaping-workshop/reinforcement-systems-course/
Image description: The image shows three photos of reinforcement systems in action with a dog, a horse, and a chicken. The text in the bottom right-hand corner of the image reads: Reinforcement systems are essential for good teaching!

02/08/2025

Deelie and I love playing Frisbee together 🥏 and she is getting pretty good at it!

But, I don't leave our Frisbee game to fate or rely on Deelie's instincts. Instead, I think about all the skills an exceptional disc dog might need, and then Deelie and I work on those skills together.

We can conduct a component analysis and errorlessly teach each component, to build a perfect (or nearly perfect!) fetch game.

30/07/2025

Now that we're pretty settled in the new house, I was able to get back to the nail trim project I had been working on with Rosie!

Here's an update on how our cooperative care training is going :)

https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/cooperative-care-update/

And a video for the CliffsNotes ;-)

20/07/2025

I've really been enjoying the Cue Repair! course Mary Hunter and Jesús Rosales-Ruiz are currently teaching over at Behavior Explorer. One of my favorite quotes so far was this one, from Dr. Rosales-Ruiz:

"Whatever you are doing at the moment of reinforcement, you will do again when the conditions are recreated."

I've been thinking about that in terms of my dogs' behavior at our new house – how this idea can help us when we *don't* want our learners to do certain behaviors, and how it can help us when we *do* want our learners to do certain behaviors!

Instead of thinking of my dogs' behavior as "bad habits" or "good routines," I can think of them in terms of stimulus control. And that is a powerful idea!

If you're curious about the Cue Repair! course, registration is still open. More info here: https://behaviorexplorer.com/summer25/

https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/breaking-bad-habits-building-good-routines/

Bad habits can be hard to break! And, sometimes, the beautiful habits we've worked hard to establish disappear! What's a trainer to do?

24/06/2025

A few days ago, I started some cooperative care training with Rosie. Here's a new blog with a little update on how it's going!

https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/training-should-be-easy/

And, here's the short version ;-)

21/06/2025

One thing that I think makes training difficult – or what some people might consider a form of art – is knowing when to raise criteria, when to continue with the session, and when to stop doing whatever you're doing.

Often, we make these decisions subjectively, based on what "feels" right. But teaching others how to make these subjective decisions is tough! If *we* aren't even sure why we made the training decisions we made, how could we possibly teach someone else to make good training decisions?

This is one of the reasons I love training with thoughtfully designed reinforcement systems so much. A well-trained reinforcement system makes it much easier for the teacher to objectively determine whether or not the learner is ready for another repetition, or whether they need to take a break.

Take a look at this example of me working on some cooperative care with my border collie, Rosie. We started by teaching her a reinforcement system, and then I used that reinforcement system to make training decisions.

https://sarahowendogtraining.com/blog/using-a-reinforcement-system-for-cooperative-care/

12/06/2025

Negative reinforcement is a pretty hot topic, in dog training. Is it good, is it bad, should you use it, or shouldn't you?

Like most things, I think the answer is "it depends." There are some situations in which the kindest thing we can do for a dog is implement a negative-reinforcement-based training plan.

So, what does good, kind, effective training with R- look like?

Take a look at some videos in which I (negatively) reinforce Deelie's behavior around other dogs.

Negative reinforcement is the removal, escape from, or avoidance of something aversive. The kindest thing to do, when I recognize that the dog is working to avoid something, is not to push treats at the dog; it is to get the dog the heck out of there.

06/06/2025

If you're an animal trainer, you may have heard that the way to "transfer cues" – or to get the animal to perform a behavior when you present a new cue – is by giving the new cue for the behavior, followed immediately by the old cue. The idea is that the animal will learn to anticipate, or predict, the old cue and will, therefore, start to perform the behavior when you present the new cue.

But is this what actually happens? In my own experience, I've found that sometimes this procedure works and sometimes ... it doesn't.

Sometimes, it just teaches the animal to wait ... and wait ... and wait ... for the old cue. They never anticipate the old cue, and so they never start to perform the behavior when I give the new cue.

This is exactly what happened when I tried to use this new cue/old cue transfer procedure with my pup, Deelie. Not only did she learn to sit and stare at me while she waited for the old cue, I also seem to have confused and frustrated her – you'll hear her whining a bit in this video. I think this might be a good way to "bake in" some barking and whining to our training sessions!

I believe, surely, there must be a more reliable, less confusing way to help our animals learn to transfer cues.

My graduate research has focused on this problem. And, I am seeing some really promising results! I hope you'll stay tuned, and follow along here, as I continue to try to develop a more reliable way to transfer cues :)

*Note: No Deelies were harmed in the filming of this video. She seems to have suffered no permanent ill effects from this mildly frustrating training session ;-)

26/05/2025

Some thoughts on socialization.

Spoiler alert: All is not lost, if you missed your puppy's "socialization window." 🐶

If you missed your dog's "socialization window," don't despair. You still can construct a beautiful social repertoire for your dog!

20/05/2025

Deelie and I are getting lots of training opportunities, now that I'm on summer break! This week, we've been using Premack's Principle to work on increasing the likelihood that Deelie will check in with me when she sees a critter on the path ahead of us – and therefore *decreasing* the likelihood that Deelie will bolt after said critter.

How might Grandma's Rule (If you eat your vegetables, then you can have your dessert!) apply to dog training?

16/05/2025

I currently have the pleasure of sharing my life with a teenage dog. While I truly believe there is nothing more exciting or fun in the world than seeing the world through a teenager's eyes, there are also some challenges that come with teenage-hood!

Is reactivity in a teenage dog cause for concern? How should you handle it, if your dog has a big blow up?

06/01/2025

Deelie and Cheaters would like to show you the projects they are working on right now!

Deelie is starting to learn to wrap around jump wings and is practicing the cutest little wave you've ever seen in your life.

And Cheaters is making sure he still can spin in a circle on a verbal cue. We haven't practiced that one in months, but he says of course he never forgot it. We're also working on cleaning up his sit pretty.

Deelie's just working on stuff for fun and to be cute and to prepare for disc-agility crossover games, which she'll be old enough to play in the spring. Cheaters is helping me with research. The plan is to transfer his sit pretty from a hand signal to a verbal cue, the same way we did with his spin cue. Stay tuned to see how it goes 👀