Kiki Yablon is a dog trainer (KPA CTP, CPDT-KA) from Chicago. A former newspaper and magazine editor who grew up in a mostly animal-free household, she adopted a life-changing dog in 2005. Her burgeoning interest in training led her to Laura Monaco Torelli, with whom she worked as a client, intern, and then trainer (until 2018); to KPA in 2009; and to a career change in 2010. It also led her to a broader interest in the science of behavior analysis. In addition to helping pet owners, she also works as a co-instructor for Dr. Susan Friedman’s Living and Learning With Animals professional course, and is pursuing a master’s degree in applied behavior analysis at the University of Kansas.

In this episode we discuss:

  • As dog trainers, do we care about emotions?
  • How you might talk about dog emotions (or people emotions) with pet clients.
  • How do you account for emotions in your day-to-day training plans?
  • Why is a functional description important?
Links mentioned:

Kiki Yablon’s Website
Kiki’s Facebook Page
Kiki’s Instagram Page
Blog on dog emotions
Episode #51 with Laura Monaco Torelli
Chirag Patel’s Bucket Game
Susan Friedman’s Clicker Expo presentation on emotions
Lindsay Wood Brown’s Clicker Expo presentation on operant and classical conditioning
Living and Learning with Animals

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