There are many reasons I wanted to write about this dog-friendly neighborhood of one of my favorite cities for one of my favorite blogs — as opposed to, say, for this one.

• I owe Dog Jaunt’s Mary-Alice Pomputius, who wrote two extremely useful posts for me, one offering five training tips for traveling with your dog, one on securing your small dog in a car.

• As regular readers know, Frankie doesn’t really enjoy travel. This virtual excursion won’t stress him out.

• One of the places I’m going to highlight is Cafe Chloe, and Chloe is the name of Dog Jaunt’s titular small dog. This was meant to be.

***

BAT was created by Grisha Stewart, and is being discussed here by her fellow trainer and BAT expert Irith Bloom. Last week we covered some basic theory and techniques. Here I continue to grill Irith about how BAT works.

How, when, and why did you start using BAT?

I began using BAT about a year ago, when a friend and fellow trainer mentioned it to me as an alternative to CAT (Constructional Aggression Treatment), a technique that uses negative reinforcement to teach animals with fear and aggression problems a different way of responding to things that cause them stress. BAT sounded like a kinder, gentler variation of CAT, so I was immediately intrigued. Although both BAT and CAT use negative reinforcement, I find BAT is a little easier for my clients to apply when I am not around.

Could you explain negative reinforcement, which always sounds like punishment to me?

“Reinforcement” is anything that increases the likelihood that a behavior will be repeated. “Negative” refers to subtracting, rather than adding, something.  “Negative reinforcement” therefore means taking something away from — rather than adding something to – the environment to increase the likelihood of a behavior happening again.

In the case of Fido and men with hats — see last week’s post — the negative reinforcement is moving Fido away from the man with the hat (or the man away from Fido), thereby taking something scary away from Fido’s environment. Removing the scary thing rewards Fido and makes him feel better, so that he is more likely to repeat the behavior that got him the extra distance from the man.

You said clients can apply BAT when you’re not around. How?

I advise clients to use certain BAT techniques when faced with the stress-inducing thing in “real life” situations. There are two main ways to do this:

A. As soon as the animal notices the stress-inducing thing, the handler says “Yes!” and immediately gives the animal what it wants, which is called the functional reward. This helps keep the animal from getting overly stressed in the first place. The handler can then add a bonus reward. This might be a food treat or an opportunity to play with a favorite toy, but regardless of what the bonus reward is, it always comes after the functional reward.

For example, if my client ran across a man in a hat while walking Fido, the proper course of action would be to turn and walk away from the man, giving Fido an increase in distance from the man – Fido’s functional reward – and following that up with a treat as a bonus reward once they were at a safe distance.

B. When the animal notices the stress-inducing thing, the handler stays still, breathes calmly and deeply, and waits for the animal to offer an acceptable behavior. As soon as the handler sees that behavior, the handler marks it and gives the animal what he or she wants. Again, the functional reward can be followed by a bonus reward.

Grisha recommends the use of bonus rewards initially in the real world since it’s so much harder to control the triggers (the man with the hat might come straight at you). Note, however, that she recommends fading the bonus rewards and working towards using only functional rewards as you and the animal get more experienced.

Does BAT replace or just supplement the other positive techniques that you had been using, i.e., are there certain dogs that it’s ideal for, others that it’s not?

BAT is a supplemental technique that I use with many clients, but not all situations lend themselves to the use of BAT. For example, if a client comes to me with a dog who is prone to chasing moving things – people on skateboards, small children, or other pets, to name a few possibilities – BAT would not be an appropriate choice. What the dog wants is to chase and possibly catch the moving thing — behaviors I can’t allow. Since I can’t give the dog the functional reward, BAT is not really an option in this situation.

On the other hand, BAT can be extremely helpful for clients whose pets respond fearfully or aggressively to other animals or people.  Probably the most common technique used by positive reinforcement trainers for dealing with fear and aggression is counter-conditioning and desensitization (CC&D). In CC&D we pair the stress-inducing thing at a low intensity with something the dog enjoys, such as a food treat or a toy. Unfortunately, some animals are so stressed by the situations that inspire their fearful or aggressive reactions that it’s difficult to get them to accept any kind of food or toy reward, no matter how much we lower the intensity of the stressful thing.

BAT neatly sidesteps the issue of whether the animal is interested enough in food or toys to take them while under stress by focusing on giving the animal relief from the stress. As a result, BAT works very well for many different animals, even those who aren’t normally interested in food or toys. It’s a great training system for semi-feral animals who would prefer to avoid contact with anyone outside a few trusted humans, as well as for diabetic animals and those who fill up easily. Best of all, based on what I have seen, BAT often works faster than CC&D.

Coming next week: An example of how BAT worked with a dog that got upset at people entering his home, and a list of behaviors that BAT trainers are looking for.

And no more bat cartoons, honest. The editor reserves the right to continue to use bad bat puns, however.

Irith Bloom is the owner of The Sophisticated Dog, a pet training business offering services to clients on the Westside of Los Angeles. She specializes in clicker training and other pet-friendly methods of animal training and behavior modification. Irith is a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner) and a member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT). You can see more of her writing on her Sophisticated Dog website, on Karen Pryor Clickertraining’s website and on Examiner.com.

Um, why?

In this case I’m not talking about switching to a new product, one that Frankie’s never tried. I’m soon going to finish a bag of sample kibble and now I want to go back to a brand he’s enjoyed and did well on before.

But even if I was talking about a total switch — what’s the problem?

Are dogs’ constitutions delicate? I think not. Dogs eat poop, for heavens sake, without negative consequences.

Consider too: Dogs in the wild used to — and still do — scavenge to get scraps. I’d wager their diet changed on a regular basis, depending on what humans ate and discarded. Which is not the same every day, if we humans can help it.

So why should dogs eat the same thing every day — unless it’s for our convenience?

And I don’t care whether the diet we’re discussing is raw, freeze dried, or home cooked. As far as I know, advocates of those diets tend to feed their dogs the same thing every day — or switch them over gradually.

What am I missing? Why can’t you vary your dog’s diet — so long as you keep it healthy — or switch it quickly? I’d especially love links to/comments by nutritionists.

Naturally, it’s only people who care about their dogs who worry about such things.

Last week, I got this email from a woman named Dawn:

I saw your blog and I was wondering if you could PLEASE help me.  I just had to put my 16 year old dog down on Monday.  I had Sheba since she was 6 months old and she was my best friend!  She was having issues with arthritis in her back legs and from the way she was acting I knew that it was her time.  I can not seem to make peace with the guilt I feel.  I know in my heart that I did the best thing for her but the guilt is more about “did my dog know that I did this for her” and “was she mad at me”.  When we were getting ready she seemed very unsettled and acted like she wanted to leave.  The vet gave her a sedative that calmed her down but Sheba never really looked at me at the end.  She did give me a quick kiss and then went to sleep.  I am feeling so much guilt that my dog hates me because she didn’t look at me much.  Do you think my dog knew that I loved her?  Do you think that Sheba is in a better place now and is happy and not alone or scared?

In Memoriam -- Sweet Sheba

Every time I read this letter I cry. For the difficulty of the decision Dawn had to make. For her loss. And for the fact Dawn could doubt for even a moment that Sheba knew she loved her.

Dogs may fear people who mistreat them and they may fear people who remind them of people who mistreat them. And the latest research shows they’re capable of a wider range of emotions than we previously thought, including anger and jealousy.

But they’re not capable of hate or revenge or anything that requires complex memory processes to sustain.

And if they were, why on earth would we imagine they could hate the people who loved them for an entire lifetime?

Yet almost all devoted dog owners are capable of the type of painful irrationality and guilt that Dawn experienced.

Even experts in canine cognition. The other day I saw my trainer, Crystal, apologize profusely to her dog, Winnie, when she accidentally touched Winnie’s leg in a tender place. Crystal is a scientist and an expert in reading dog body language. She knows on a rational level that Winnie might respond for a second to a painful stimulus but would never generalize that momentary flinch to fear or dislike of her.  Yet there Crystal was, hugging Winnie and bombarding her with a stream of (to a dog) incomprehensible words.

Faced with the desire to shield those we love from pain, we can’t help ourselves.

But we can see others’ responses more clearly and give solace.  I can (and did) assure Dawn that her instincts that “it was time” were rightfully honored. And that whatever she thought saw on Sheba’s face was, maybe, dislike of being at the vet’s office or of getting an injection. But it was not a fear of death (dogs are very Zen when it comes to living in the moment). And it was never, ever hatred of or anger at Dawn, who faithfully cared for her for 15 1/2 years.

***

As regular readers of this blog know, assurances about an afterlife are not my strong point. But Dr V. over at PawCurious has been writing a wonderful series of posts that pay tribute to Emmett, the dog she lost last year; this is the final one. She is a firm believer in “Kevin” — as her daughter called “heaven” — and all the good company that Emmett (and Sheba) will keep there.

Get out some more tissues before heading over there.

I wanted to learn more about what exactly Frankie and I were getting into. Because Grisha Stewart, BAT’s creator, has a lot on her plate at the moment, her fellow trainer and BAT expert Irith Bloom agreed to fill in and answer my many questions. This is the first part of my interview with Irith; there will be at least two more installments.

***

1. Could you briefly describe the theory behind BAT?

To quote Grisha Stewart, “BAT uses functional and bonus rewards, combined with clicker training and systematic desensitization, to help dogs make better choices in an error-free way.”

In plainer English: Animals, like people, try to control their environment using a variety of behaviors.  They generally decide which behaviors to use based on what has worked before. For example, some animals have learned that aggressive behavior makes scary things move away from them, so when faced with a scary thing, they act aggressive.

The goal of BAT is to teach the animal a set of more acceptable tools for dealing with situations they find stressful, and to which they currently respond in a way we humans don’t particularly like.

What kind of techniques does BAT use?

BAT includes a few different techniques but the most important one involves artificially created situations (setups) where the trainer can control how stressful the situation is for the animal.  In these setups, we train just at the edge of the animal’s comfort zone, and wait for the animal to offer an acceptable behavior, instead of the one we don’t like.  When the animal offers an acceptable behavior, we “mark” that behavior with a clicker or other marker — we tell the animal “that’s it!” in one way or another — and then give the animal whatever it was the animal wanted in the first place.

Here’s an example of how a setup might work:

Fido is scared of men wearing hats.  Whenever Fido sees a man wearing a hat, he starts barking and lunging.  When he does this, the man with the hat usually backs away, and Fido’s owner also tends to pull him away. End result?  Fido winds up farther away from the man with the hat.

In working with Fido, I would bring in a friendly male volunteer who is wearing a hat (the decoy).  I would figure out how far apart Fido and the man must be for Fido to notice the man, without being so stressed that he starts barking and lunging.  I would then begin with Fido and the man at that distance and wait for Fido to offer  an acceptable behavior ([Note: I'll be defining and giving examples of acceptable behaviors next week]).  As soon as I saw that acceptable behavior, I would mark it and have Fido’s owner move Fido away from the man with the hat.

I’ve shown Fido that acceptable behavior gets him what he wants (or at least, what I think Fido wants).  Assuming Fido wants distance from the man with the hat, Fido will be likely to offer the same behavior again to see if it results in increased distance a second time.  (Note that if Fido doesn’t start to offer the acceptable behavior more promptly after a few repeats, I would begin to wonder if I had misdiagnosed what Fido wants, and review the situation to figure out what Fido might want instead.)

We would repeat this exercise until we got a variety of acceptable responses from Fido, and then gradually decrease the distance to the man with the hat.  Variations might include having the man walk away in response to acceptable behavior (instead of Fido walking away), or having the man speak to or reach towards Fido rather than standing still.

Note that we would only practice one variation at a time, and each at a very safe distance before the distance was decreased with that new variation. Once Fido was relaxed even up close with the decoy doing strange things, the next step would be to get another friendly male volunteer, put him in a hat, and start all over again with that new decoy.

After going through BAT training with two or three different decoys, most dogs begin to offer acceptable behaviors fairly quickly even when encountering a completely new decoy for the first time. For some animals, one decoy is enough to establish a new set of behaviors (though this is rare).  For other animals, more different decoys are required.  The number of decoys required depends on a variety of factors, including the animal’s inherent personality, how deep-seated the anxiety is, and how carefully the training is managed.

Being careful not to add too much difficulty at any one time can prevent the wrong kind of responses.  When we do everything in a slow, careful way, we can achieve “error-free” learning where the animal never again has an over-the-top response to the trigger.

Irith Bloom is the owner of The Sophisticated Dog, a pet training business offering services to clients on the Westside of Los Angeles.  She specializes in clicker training and other pet-friendly methods of animal training and behavior modification.  Irith is a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner) and a member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT). You can see more of her writing on her Sophisticated Dog website, on  Karen Pryor Clickertraining’s website and on Examiner.com.

• I’m a nonbeliever
• I grew up attending a synagogue, not a church, and synagogues don’t have choirs
• It’s a tired cliche, and I try to avoid those

But the topic came up when Karen Friesecke, DIY queen and blogger at Doggie Stylish, suggested that Friday’s avoiding puppy mills post was preaching to the choir because no one who read my blog would ever consider buying a dog via the internet.

I’m going to let you read through the responses to that comment because this post isn’t so much about generally speaking to an audience of converts but about a specific example: The guy I talked trash about in my Sex & the Single Dog Blogger post.

The only reason I felt comfortable putting that up was that I was certain the guy never read my blog — which was part of the problem I perceived with the relationship.

I was wrong.

I got this email the other day:

It may hearten you to know that Buster and I  have just successfully completed his first session of learning how to sit.  Yea!  He’s ready (and so am I) to learn. I might add that he has picked it up almost immediately [....]  I felt badly about punching him the other day. It’s really not his fault and he loves to please.  He just hasn’t been properly taught yet. So I am committing the time to teach him at least the basics of behaving in public.

He added:

I had read your bio and some of your blogs before but was unaware you had made an example of me as an unenlightened dog owner when I looked at your site again. I am not offended by your observations….

First — wow! I wouldn’t be nearly as understanding. If someone had been even slightly negative about me in public, even anonymously, I would be furious and probably never speak to that person again.  So credit where credit is due — and extra credit for following through with dog training.

And I’ll assign blame where it belongs. You know what they say about people who assume… So I’m an ass. But one who is capable of learning too. I will never again make public what should be private, even though I’m pleased with the outcome this time — i.e., the dog training and the consciousness raising.

I would have said “Mea culpa” but that’s kind of, you know, religious.

So the more I thought about it, the more I thought about how defining the term isn’t useful. This site is about education, not recrimination. If the term “rescue” is getting trendy, all the better. Whatever gets the job done of saving dogs’ lives.

I fervently wish people would adopt rather than buy, but people shouldn’t feel guilty about their past choices or their mistakes (says the queen of guilt; hey, we’re all works in progress). What’s important is how you treat the dog you have now.

That said, some people deserve recrimination — as in criminal prosecution — and those are the ones who operate puppy mills.  The word is getting out about not buying dogs from pet stores — my friend Mary at Dancing Dog Blog had an excellent post about that topic earlier this week — but buying dogs on line is a far greater problem, one that’s not as much discussed as it should be. It’s debatable whether the site that inspired the original Friday Focus question was a puppy mill front; what’s not debatable is that many, many online sellers are.

Online purveyors are shifty: Changing web addresses when they’re found out (assuming they’re found out), pulling-bait-and-switches, or just taking your money without sending any “product.” I’m not sure which is worse — actually receiving a puppy mill graduate who might be seriously ill and break your heart as well as your bank account, or wiring money to Nigeria and getting no dog at all.

So here’s the education portion of this post:

How to recognize puppy mill purveyors on the Internet

• No reputable breeder would sell puppies on a site that sells other items like clothing.

• Reputable breeders focus on one breed, at most two, so they become familiar with breed characteristics, and especially with breed health problems. Be wary of sites featuring more than one type of puppy and especially lots of small designer breeds like “Shih-Poos.”

• Reputable breeders won’t always have puppies available. At puppy mills, dams are kept bare-pawed and pregnant in cages, reproducing as often as they’re able to. A good breeder will only allow each mother to produce one litter a year, at most two. When you deal with an honest breeder, there’s a good chance you’ll have to wait for your puppy.

• A reputable breeder will not sell you a puppy without meeting you or, at minimum, without first asking you for lots of references — and taking the time to check them. If they inquire about your first pet, it’s because they want to know if you’re capable of caring for the dog they’re entrusting you with.

• A reputable breeder won’t try to manipulate your emotions with soft and fuzzy ad copy (or, ahem, religion).

One last point that’s a bit more open to debate (feel free to weigh in, reputable breeders)

• Many reputable breeders don’t sell puppies on the internet directly to buyers, period. Good breeders tend to advertise in breed group publications, through the AKC or UKC sites…. or not at all. Many of the best breeders are known through word of mouth or through other personal referrals.

Looking back on my posts for the past year or so,  I realize two causes keep cropping up: car safety and greyhound rescue. In fact, they’re connected because it was a car accident by a responsible greyhound owner — she was rear-ended at high speed by an irresponsible car thief — that resulted in the formation of the Beading Divas, a group of Tucson greyhound owners whose bracelets help support a number of animal causes. I know several of the divas — see some pictures of a celebration I took part in here — but I’m particularly friendly with Karyn Zoldan, a board member of Grey2K USA who never lets the greyhounds down.

So check out these five car safety tips. And consider buying a bracelet to support the animals (there’s a great July fundraiser going on). Something for you, something for them.

Now go add yourself to the Be the Change for Animals website.

Then get back to work. Those nagging internal voices won’t stay shut up indefinitely.

What’s with the fledgling superheroes, mammals that turn bugs into guano, or baseball go-fers, you may be wondering. I’m talking about B.A.T — Behavior Adjustment Training, the new, non-cave related frontier where Frankie’s continuing education is taking us.

As I’ve no doubt mentioned: Our trainer, Crystal, is a science geek and is always interested in refining her positive training techniques. These days her interests have turned to a protocol created by Grisha Stewart of Ahisma Dog Training in Seattle.

I asked Crystal to explain B.A.T to me — and readers of this blog –  in terms I can understand; I’m interested, but I tend to glaze over when she gets all technical on me. She was hesitant to do so because she’s just learning it herself and doesn’t want to get it wrong.

As it happens, I know Grisha from Twitter as @DoggieZen. Well, I only sort of know her, but I can be pushy. I asked if she would write about B.A.T. for me, and she said she would be happy to — after she finishes a new training film, and after she moves house. So stay tuned.

In the meantime, all I can say after one session is that it’s subtle and involves a lot of really keen observation of your dog’s body language. At the first sign of discomfort, you move away from whatever is creating stress — in this case Crystal’s dog.

On another level, this technique is made for Frankie. I often call him bat boy because he has ears that make him look capable of echolocation.

Incidentally, I’m very fond of actual bats, which are deeply misunderstood. I would much rather have them in my belfry, if I had a belfry, than pigeons.

It started when an acquaintance of Clare’s who had initially expressed interest in rescuing a dog ended up buying one from a Pomeranian breeder with this over -the-top website. Clare joked, “I usually don’t approve of buying fancy bred dogs, but she is truly rescuing one in this case.”

I hasten to interject here that, based on the site’s graphics and music, I was initially convinced that the acquaintance had ordered online from a puppy mill front. I began going into my “There’s no such thing as rescuing from a puppy mill” tirade. Clare assured me that her acquaintance had personally checked out the facilities, which were clean and pleasant, and that the dogs were well cared for. Moreover, after browsing the site, I found a section on housebreaking puppies that recommended positive and humane methods. So while I think it’s nuts to spend $1250 or more for a dog when you can get one from a breed rescue (if your heart is set on a purebred, although, no, you can’t check bloodlines), I’m glad I was wrong about my suspicions.

But that brings me back to my Friday topic. Rescue is trendy and lots of people throw that term around to show how compassionate they are. And others, who are holier than thou (not in the way of that website, though), tend to be purists. So who can legitimately claim to be a dog rescuer?

As Clare wrote:

If you adopt from a rescue group, you’ve rescued.  If you adopt from a shelter is that a rescue?  How about if your pup was a stray and you just kept him? How about if he was a stray, got turned in, and adopted out immediately (like Arch)?  If you take a dog from a friend who has to move, is that a rescue?  If you adopt from breeders who might turn him into a religious zealot?  [Ed: Joke alert] I’m sure there’s a plethora of other categories.  People have told me Arch isn’t a rescue because I didn’t get him from a rescue group, and he was incarcerated at Animal Control, but hadn’t yet gone through the Animal Shelter system.

Thoughts?