About Urban Pawsibilities
We’re a dog training facility based in Portland, Oregon. We aim to foster a collaborative relationship with our clients. We understand the weight of the work we do, getting personal in people’s lives through their pets. Through this work, our goal is to ensure that needs are met, expectations are clear, and behavior is reliable.
Our Owners & Head Trainers
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Emma is a born and raised Portlandian with a love of learning and a passion for animals. She established Urban Pawsibilities in 2020 with the goal of helping people create a dialogue with their dogs where needs are met, expectations are clear, and behavior is reliable. Emma specializes in socialization, foundation and advanced skill development, and reactivity rehabilitation.
Emma has a German Shepherd, named Modoc, who is training for herding and obedience, and a Dutch Shepherd, named Vector, who is training for Mondioring. -
Emma has taken, and continues to take, many professional development courses to improve her skills as a dog trainer and a teacher, including Living and Learning with Animals, an Applied Behavior Analysis course, taught by Dr. Susan Friedman, an acclaimed behavior science expert, and Smart Reinforcement, taught by Ken Ramirez, President of the Karen Pryor Academy and world-renowned animal trainer.
EMMA BRENT (She/Her)
MEAGHAN SUMMERBELL (They/Them)
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KPA, CTP, CPDT-KA, CTDI, CGC Evaluator
Meaghan is an all around Dog-Guru. Raised by Akitas, they were prepped for a life in the animal training industry since birth. With a background in daycare, boarding & training, Meaghan has worked with thousands of dogs over the last 10 years, with hundreds of dog breeds and mixes. Their training experience extends to cats, horses, goats, and more!
At home, they have six dogs and two cats: Katie, 11 yo Chug, Molly, 10 yo Chug, Josie, 10 yo Bully mix, Brad, 11 yo Golden Retriever mix, Dio, 5 yo mini Dachshund, Dani, 4 yo German Shepherd mix, Daphne, 7 yo DSH, and Stori, 6 yo DSH. Meaghan co-founded the GoodPaws dog training app in 2020, and joined as co-owner for Urban Pawsibilities in 2021 just prior to the opening of the facility.
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Meaghan is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer-Knowledge Assessed, a Karen Pryor Academy Clicker Training Partner, a Certified Trick Dog Instructor, and a CGC evaluator. Meaghan has completed coursework such as the Puppy Start Right for Instructors course through Karen Pryor Academy, Living and Learning with Animals taught by Susan Friedman, Training Across Species, an immersive course with Ken Ramirez, the Aggression in Dogs Mastercourse with Michael Shikashio and more. They are working towards becoming a certified canine behavior consultant and certified separation anxiety trainer (CSAT). Meaghan finds working with fearful and reactive dogs, puppies, and new dog guardians especially rewarding.
Our Trainers
SAMANTHA HOAGLIN (She/Her)
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CPDT-KA
When Samantha adopted her first dog, an adolescent terrier mix named Buffy (now 2.5 years old), she was met with a lot of unexpected behavioral challenges. She quickly took up positive reinforcement training to help Buffy learn that the world isn’t so scary! After reading lots of training books and practicing with her own dog, she decided to make a huge career change from video production to dog training.
Samantha has been working professionally as a dog trainer for about 2 years. She finds reducing reactivity, building confidence with fearful dogs, and trick training especially rewarding! She works with both daystay and daytraining dogs.
FERN PAGANI (They/Them)
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CPDT- KA
Fern has been working with dogs professionally for 3 years. They have worked at three different dog daycares in Portland, where they've learned about dog behavior and appropriate play styles (Fern worked under Meaghan at Club K-9 in 2019). Through taking classes with their own dogs (including classes at Urban Pawsibilities), they've grown to love dog training. At home, they have 3 dogs: an 11 year old Rat Terrier named Pickles, a 2 year old Decker Rat Terrier named Hercules and a 5 year old Corgi Chihuahua mix named Dwight. Their favorite dog breeds are Terrier, American Staffordshire Terriers, and Border Collies. In addition to trick training (Pickles knows over 20 tricks), Fern loves working with reactive dogs and teaching people that reactive dogs are good dogs, too.
We're excited to have Fern at the facility helping with play groups and working with the Daystay pups! As of Nov 2023, Fern assists in our Green Dog classes with Meaghan and Emma. They recently passed their CPDT-KA in Oct 2023!
Our Support Team
SKY P. (They/Them)
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Sky started with us in March 2024. You can usually find them playing with the dogs or at the front desk.
At home, Sky shares 4 adorable small dogs (with Fern). They love watching the dogs grow up and being a part of each dog’s training journey.
Not Sure Which Service is Right for Your Dog?
Take the quiz below to discover what service is best suited for your dog or puppy.
Common FAQs
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We use positive reinforcement centered training plans to modify behavior. But what does that mean, and how does that differ from other training methods? There are a lot of misunderstandings and misconceptions about dog training, dog behavior, and animal behavior in general. To make a long story short, humans have been trying to use punishment as a technique for changing animal behavior for a very long time. What scientists have found, through thousands of studies of hundreds of different species, is that if you are trying to teach any organism, any new behavior, punishment - decreasing the likelihood of a behavior - is not as effective of a teacher as reinforcement - increasing the likelihood of a behavior. Animals learn faster, with more retention, and with better accuracy when we use positive reinforcement centered training plans to modify behavior.
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We want to be good teachers, but we can’t refrain from ever punishing our dogs?
Sometimes we have to employ management strategies to prevent our dogs from being able to practice problem behaviors.
Those management strategies often rely on removing access to reinforcement, and when reinforcement is taken away or out of reach, that can surely act to punish behavior.
But using management strategies and taking away access to reinforcement is psychologically different for our dogs than adding something aversive, like a buzz on an e-collar or a correction on a prong collar, in an effort to get them to stop performing a behavior.
Even with the option of taking away reinforcement to punish behaviors we don’t like, the premise of our training methods is always to teach and reinforce behaviors we want to see and set our dogs up for success, so that we don’t have to rely on management strategies, and certainly so that we never have to use aversive tools to punish behaviors we find dislikable.
As Dr. Friedman puts it in her Living and Learning with Animals course, “Procedures that rely on the presence of aversive stimuli and resulting escape-avoidance behaviors have been well researched and shown to have serious disadvantages (Azrinand Holtz, 1966).”
Behavior modification that uses escape-avoidance training methods have been linked to increases in aggression, over-generalized aversion to other stimuli in the environment, escape-avoidance behavior, and increased apathetic behavior, also known as shut down behavior.
Training doesn’t have to be scary for your dog!
Quite the opposite, it should be really rewarding.
To read more about positive reinforcement and its uses in animal training, visit www.clickertraining.com.
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To sign up for any of our services, you will need to create an account in our client portal system, Gingr.
To create an account, navigate to the top of this page, and hover over the "Client Login" button. A drop down menu will appear.
Click “For New Members”.
This page has a direct link to our client portal. It is an orange button that says “CREATE AN ACCOUNT HERE»”.
There is an instructional video and information about an optional app you can download.
Once you’ve completed your profile, you can send in requests.
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Booking services can all be done through the client portal.
To create an account, navigate to the top of this page, and hover over the "Client Login" button. A drop down menu will appear.
Click “For New Members”.
This page has a direct link to our client portal. It is an orange button that says “CREATE AN ACCOUNT HERE»”.
There is an instructional video and information about an optional app you can download.
Once you’ve completed your profile, you can send in requests.
In the portal, select the picture of the dog that you wish to book for services, and then select "Start Booking".
This will bring you to the booking page where you can select the type of service you are looking to book.
For daytraining and daystays, take note that there is a link to our School for Dogs Availability Document.
It is not uncommon for our School For Dogs to book out a few weeks ahead of time. You can still send in requet for full dates, but we will waitlist them. We will contact you directly about openings if you’re on the waitlist! -
We sell packages for all of our services that reduce the cost per visit.
To purchase a package, you will need to login to an existing account in Gingr.
Navigate to the top of this page, and hover over the "Client Portal" button.
A drop down menu will appear. Select "Login to Your Account".
Once you are logged in, select the "Shop" button from the navigation bar on the lefthand side of the page. From there, select "Shop packages". This will bring up all of the packages that are for sale. Please note that package sales are non-refundable and non-transferrable.
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We do not typically offer discounts, unless we're running a holiday special. Signing up for the Newsletter is the best way to stay updated with any promotions we run.
We do have a rewards points program available to all of our clients. Points will automatically accumulate with every purchase you make.
Redemption Tiers:
250 points - $5
500 points - $15
1000 points - $40
1500 points - $75Please let us know if you’d like to redeem points before checking out, over email or in person at the facility.
You can check your points balance in the client portal. -
The short answer is: We don’t know… Yet!
When we meet for you and your dog, we will discuss all of the possible reinforcers available.
Every dog is unique in what they find reinforcing. We recommend creating a comprehensive list of what your dog finds reinforcing, and ranking reinforcers to create an exchange rate for behaviors we want to reinforce. Reinforcement needs to be equal to or better than the environment that you are in and the behavior for which you are asking.
A COUPLE OF EXAMPLES:
Your dog in your home: Most dogs will perform all of their learned behaviors inside their home for mild reinforcement. In your home, kibble and attention/personal play is generally reinforcing enough to use for your training.
Your dog on a walk: When you take your dog for a walk, it’s you versus every other sight, sound, and smell in the world. On walks, we’re going to use special food, toys, and the best reward of all, sniffing! As your dog learns how to walk nicely on leash, you can use the environmental reinforcers that are all around you on walks in the form of really interesting smells for your dog.
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At Urban Pawsibilities, our motto is learn together, live together.
We are here to help you develop a better dialogue with your dog because clear communication and reinforcing expectations help us both live our best lives.
Your dog‘s learning process is quite straightforward. We are going to analyze behaviors that we see, and deliberately change them through systematic reinforcement of new or alternative behaviors.
Your learning process will be more challenging. To change our dog’s behavior, we ultimately must change our own behavior.
We have to be calm and collected at the right times; and in our experience, it’s needed most at times when we are feeling frustrated and frazzled.
Our program is designed to help you develop the skills you will need to be able to teach your dog new behaviors, maintain those behaviors, and modify existing behaviors.
Throughout the process, you will learn how to read your dog’s body language and better understand your dog’s threshold for stimulation. We will also help you build a vast store of management and prevention options that you can employ between training sessions.
It is our goal that by the end of our sessions you and your dog will have learned how to communicate your needs to each other and live happier lives together because of it.