Sarah Babcock

Sarah Babcock

Sarah grew up in Southern California and started training the family dogs at a very young age. She turned her attention to horses and rode and competed with hunters throughout high school and college. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Sweet Briar College with a BA in Math/Economics and almost immediately went to work for IBM.

During 14 years at IBM, Sarah worked as a systems engineer, as one of the first PC sales “fighter pilots”, as a local area network and software specialist, and in database/data warehousing marketing. And then in March of 1996, she found a dog on the street in front of her house. “Crosby” was adopted and marched off to traditional obedience classes almost immediately. During the year that ensued, Sarah attended a number of more reward-based clicker training and agility seminars as well and was hooked. Crosby and Sarah began competing in agility the following year and Sarah began teaching agility classes the year after that.

Fascinated with the “new” application of learning theory to real-life dog training and behavior modification, Sarah left IBM in 1998 to pursue additional education in animal behavior. She completed three years of graduate work in psychology and neuroscience with Dr. Craig Kinsley at the University of Richmond. She graduated valedictorian with honors from Jean Donaldson’s Academy for Dog Trainers at the San Francisco SPCA in 2001, and joined the Richmond SPCA shortly thereafter as their Director of Education & Training. She and her staff currently oversee the in-house training and rehabilitation of dogs presently at the Richmond SPCA, a busy behavior helpline, children’s humane education programs, adult education via Pet University seminars as well as six-days-a-week of public classes for people with their dogs.

She appears weekly on WTVR’s Pets & People segment on Saturday mornings and teaches public classes three nights a week. She speaks regularly to civic and shelter/rescue groups, teaches her “K9 Logic” class (and others) through the University of Richmond’s Continuing Education program, and has been asked to be one of the key speakers for the Virginia Federation of Humane Societies Conference for the third year in a row.

Sarah is an avid photographer, still rides her horse when time allows and shares her home with two turtles, one cat, and four dogs.

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