- WHO THIS IS AND WHAT THIS IS -
A model built in person, over years, one dog at a time.
This practice is grounded in data and evidence-based best practice. Applied to dogs, it becomes a welfare-forward assessment and intervention option for dogs who are high-drive, hard-working, and often labeled complicated.
Instead of posing as a flashy new approach, this work deepens our understanding of dogs' points of view. It's not a replacement for training or behavior modification, it works alongside both, addressing a layer of need that neither was built to reach on its own.
- HOW THIS WORKS -
Co-regulate, play, move.
Co-Regulation
Re-train our brains to become present with our dogs in the way they need us to show up for them.
01
Play
The core of sensory integration builds upon re-wiring our dog’s behavior tendencies through the use of enjoyable, self-driven activities that your dog learns to choose in moments we likely call “arousal issues.”
02
Movement
The magic happens here. Dogs already know how to regulate themselves best: learn how to empower them through intentional use of their bodies.
03
Go beyond theory and back to how everything starts: truly hearing what our dogs tell us.
- TWELVE YEARS IN THE FIELD -
Over twelve years working professionally with dogs, and five years developing this specific approach, the pattern kept repeating:
Dogs who had done everything right in training, and still seemed unsettled in their own bodies.
Our dogs are the experts here! When we listen to our dogs tell us what it is they need from us, we create the connection that goes missing when we skew too far into the mechanical rigidity of “dog training” them through their emotions.
- ABOUT JORDAN -
My name is Jordan Bowdish and I'm the human behind Sensational Dogs.
This is Zuko, the dog behind Sensational Dogs.
I've been in dog training since June 2014. I went through the typical progression: dogs in the background while pursuing my doctorate degree in occupational therapy, certain I was going to work with assistance dogs and their people, into +R training paradigms to learn how to better connect with dogs, and then to living and working with dogs that don't quite fit the mold, applying what I'd pulled from my education and experience into creating multi-layered interventions that worked for the misfit cases I was seeing.
I deeply valued the idea that meeting a dog's needs comes first, but that wasn't happening with Zuko. Nothing was ever enough. When we couldn't quite get the puzzle to fit together, I went back to my instincts.
Zuko's sensory experience wasn't being addressed.
Today, bringing this piece of the puzzle back is what brought me my dog back. It taught us to connect with each other, to understand how each of us works, and to meet his needs in a way that enables him to live a big life chasing the dreams we shared together.
After keeping this work within my local practice for so long, I'm ready to bring this assessment and intervention model out on a larger scale, to help the "zebra case" dogs and the people who love and care for them.
I'm happy you're here, and I can't wait to get started!
Jordan Bowdish
- MEET THE INSPIRATION -
Zuko
When Zuko was a puppy, it was apparent that something within him wasn’t going to fit the mold.
was different than my previous ACDs and definitely not what I was used to seeing in 8-week-old puppies a professional dog trainer. From puppyhood, it was apparent that he had intense feelings and was struggling to process through the human world as he knew it.
We set out into dog sports together after life changes took away the farm work we all new. After getting into a groove of training together, an adverse experience changed the way he perceived the world around him and sent me head-first into figuring out how to change his behavior.
Through that process, Zuko repeatedly threw curveball after curveball into all the rules of dog training as I understood it to be. Dedicated to ensuring I gave him what he needed, I went back to the drawing board of all the education, skills, and experience I had. From that came this sensory-informed lens that completely transformed Zuko’s dysregulated state of being back into the training and adventure parter I always knew I had.
Zuko is not a different dog. He is very much himself, with extremely high needs, complex feelings, and a draw toward acting before thinking. He is able to function throughout daily life without limits caused by a lack of understanding of what he needed from me.
Thanks to him, I completely reshaped the way I live and learn alongside dogs. After applying this lens large scale into my full-time professional practice and consistently seeing the same results, I’m ready to share this with other professionals and dog people who feel just as strongly about letting dogs be who they are as I do.
- HOW THIS IS SHARED -