Training Tuesday: A BAT Landmark

By Edie Jarolim | Published: August 31, 2010

Winnie, the wonder dog decoy

Frankie and I haven’t done much Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT) with Crystal Saling and her wonder dog decoy, Winnie, lately because it’s either been raining — which means scary thunder and lightning — or too hot to spend much time outside. But we managed a get together this past Sunday and saw quite a bit of progress.

That would be in me as well as in Frankie.

Let me backtrack. Frankie gets a tad upset when there’s a strange person or dog in “his” yard; he barks his little head off and has been known to chase the offender around the property. So Crystal and Winnie have been doing set ups (see the first in the series of BAT posts by Irith Bloom of the Sophisticated Dog for an explanation) with Frankie and me. Winnie has been waiting in a corner of my yard with Crystal as Frankie and I move progressively closer to them — but then back off as soon as Frankie expresses discomfort.

After about 20 minutes of the latest encounter, Crystal declared “Mission Accomplished,” and suggested we move on to a larger decoy, her dog Penny.

Really? I’d assumed Winnie and Frankie needed to be BFF before our goal was achieved. Read More »

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Training Tuesday: BAT Calming Signals, Some Visuals

By Edie Jarolim | Published: August 17, 2010

As part of the continuing series on Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT), a system created by Grisha Stewart that trainer Irith Bloom has been kind enough to explain to me — and you –on the last several Training Tuesdays,  here’s a video that Irith put together. It demonstrates calming signals, discussed in our last post on the topic. It’s so riveting that I didn’t even need to come up with bat puns, verbal or visual.

Everything is pretty much self-explanatory, or explained in the notes to the video (click through to the YouTube site itself to read those).  I loved the part where Irith asks which dogs responded appropriately to the calming signal –  a quick test I could pass! I also loved the calming music, which Irith told me was Minuet by Boccherini.

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.

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Training Tuesday: Batboy Forever

By Edie Jarolim | Published: August 3, 2010

This is the conclusion of the formal interview that I’ve been conducting with trainer Irith Bloom about Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT), which was created by Grisha Stewart. The first week we covered the basic theory and techniques. In the second, we got into some more esoteric issues like “negative punishment,” which turns out not to be a bad thing. Opinion was divided about the accompanying video, the pug screaming “Batman.” As a result, I promised no more bat illustrations.

As you can see, I lied.

What can I say? I couldn’t resist these amusing — and far more tasteful — images, brought to you by Karl Edwards who, as it happens, also does custom dog portraits. Check out the wide range of work of this talented, award-winning illustrator at his website.

There will be videos and more about BAT in the future as my training with Frankie and Crystal progresses. This is just the end of the Q & A. Thank you, Irith, for your help in explaining this program — and your patience with my endless questions.

***

You’ve been talking about the different signals to look for in your dog during BAT setups. Could you please detail them?

One of the side-benefits of doing BAT is that you tend to become more attuned to what your pet is “saying” because the method requires very close attention to the animal. That said, even the most astute trainers can’t enter the mind of the dog. Sometimes a dog’s intentions are surprisingly obvious, but often it can be hard to say if the dog is (a) calming himself/herself down, (b) trying to calm the other dog down by signaling that no threat is intended, or (c) saying “back off” or “I’d like to end our play now.”

In a BAT training context, my primary concern is to see appropriate behavior from any of these categories so that the dog doesn’t reach a stress threshold, though in the latter stages, I may make judgment calls about whether to allow greetings, etc., based on my perception of the intention.

Here are some calming signals one tends to see when doing BAT, in alphabetical order:

  • Blinking
  • Lifting one paw
  • Lip licking
  • Looking down or away
  • Scratching (as it the dog has an itch)
  • Shaking off (as if wet)
  • Sniffing the ground
  • Turning head or body away
  • Yawning

Here are some relaxed and friendly behaviors one might see while doing BAT, again in alphabetical order:

  • Following a curved path, rather than moving in a straight line (this is ideally how all dog greetings should start, rather than face to face on a narrow sidewalk)
  • Loosening of joints and general body relaxation
  • Play bow
  • Relaxed mouth position
  • Relaxed panting (excessive panting can be a sign of stress)
  • Relaxed, slow approach (stalking does NOT qualify, since it is tense)
  • Relaxed tail carriage
  • Relaxed tail wag

Note that friendly and relaxed behaviors don’t necessarily mean the animal is ready to interact with the stress-inducing thing. Closing those last few inches (so to speak) can increase the intensity for the animal suddenly, so that you get an explosion even though things were going perfectly just seconds earlier. It’s best to spend much more time than you think you need working on near approaches before allowing actual greetings.

Can you give me an example of how BAT has worked with a client of yours?
I have a client who first contacted me after she had already been doing CC&D with her dog for quite a while without really getting anywhere. The dog was highly agitated by people ringing the doorbell and then walking in the front door. No matter how far he was kept from the door, how many treats he was tossed by visitors and by his owner, and how many toys he was distracted with, he continued to behave aggressively. Given this history, I suggested we try using BAT.

At our first BAT session, I had my client keep the dog about 15 feet away from the door to begin with, and I started out at the end of the path through their yard, by the driveway. I walked up the path, watching the dog through the front window, and as soon as I saw the dog notice me, I stopped. I stood in the same spot until the dog offered an acceptable behavior (a look away, as I recall), and as soon as I saw that behavior, I quickly said “Yes!” and walked away.

We alternated having me walk away and having the dog walk away for a while, with me approaching to the same spot, until we got a range of acceptable behaviors from the dog. Then I began coming farther down the path in stages, waiting for a range of acceptable behaviors at each new spot, until the dog offered acceptable behaviors even when I got right up to the door. Next, I started to knock on the door, first very softly, and then louder and louder, and finally I rang the doorbell. Thanks to all the preparation we’d done, the dog, who had been unable to tolerate people even stepping up to the door in the past, looked away from the door calmly the very first time I rang the doorbell.

We ended the session there, since it’s always good to quit while you’re ahead. In subsequent sessions, we dealt with other things, such as turning the doorknob, opening the door, and stepping inside.

Not every case goes this well, or this fast. I hadn’t planned to ring the doorbell during that initial BAT session, in fact, but the dog’s behavior indicated he could handle it. This particular dog was very quick to catch on to the “game,” and he made rapid progress as a result. Subsequent sessions have gotten him to the point where he is able to remain relaxed at his handler’s side when people walk in.

BAT was a revelation for this dog — you could almost see the light bulb turn on over his head.

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.

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Training Tuesday: Batboy Continues

By Edie Jarolim | Published: July 27, 2010

Forgive me. I needed to get this video out of my system and since I don’t have any serious footage to accompany this week’s post on Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT) it seemed like the perfect fit.

***

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. Read More »

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Training Tuesday: Batboy begins

By Edie Jarolim | Published: July 20, 2010

As I mentioned last week, my trainer Crystal suggested that Frankie and I try Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT) — not only because it’s a good technique but because it’s a good fit with Frankie’s diabetes. That is, although the technique can include food rewards, it doesn’t rely on them.

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. Read More »

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Training Tuesday: Bat Boy!

By Edie Jarolim | Published: July 13, 2010

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.

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Training Tuesdays: Hitting a Wall

By Edie Jarolim | Published: June 29, 2010

Lucrezia Borgia, poisoner -- my role model?

A friend asked me the other day, “So, how’s the dog training going.” That gave me pause. Not because I have any doubts about our trainer, Crystal Saling, who is talented, smart and an advocate (as I am) of positive methods. But at the beginning of the first session we had after my trip to San Diego and Santa Barbara, during which I let all training lapse, I found myself asking Crystal if we could do something that didn’t stress Frankie.

What I didn’t say was: “Or me.”

Hmmm. Early on, I was worried about my clicking abilities, but I seem to have mastered that skill. So what am I concerned about now?

To recap.

Dog M.O.

Frankie can be described as a fearful dog, but that’s a pretty broad term. His fearfulness doesn’t manifest in aggression towards other dogs or humans. Mostly it means he avoids other dogs (and people) when we’re outdoors, only growling and snarling if they literally get in his face.

He does bark and growl at people and dogs who invade our personal space: House, backyard, hotel room… But that only happens when I’m around –  people whom I’ve asked to check in on him while I’m away report that he totally ignores them — and he settles down pretty quickly.

He doesn’t like car rides and he doesn’t like the street noise outside my house.

General goals

To make Frankie’s life — and our life together — better.

Purely projective, no doubt paranoid assessment

So far I have made Frankie’s meal times and treat times unpleasant and caused him to fear the backyard.

I guess the good news is that I know for a fact he is miserable because I have become much better at reading his body language.

Reality check

I should explain: The key challenge to training Frankie is that he is diabetic, which means that I can’t reward him with food at any old time of the day. In order to keep his blood sugar regulated, he is supposed to eat two meals, twelve hours apart, no snacking. With the permission of the vet, I also give him a bit of food in mid-morning when a blood glucose curves determined his sugar is lowest. This is not to prevent hypoglycemia (dangerously low blood sugar) but to make me feel better about depriving him of food all day long.

I have therefore been opening the door and getting Frankie accustomed to the street noise while he eats. Because it’s essential for him to eat in order for him to take the insulin, those mealtimes, especially those in the mornings when he’s not always hungry, have always a bit stressful for me. Now I guess we’re in the same boat.

And for our morning walks, to which I drive Frankie, I have been parking the car in the back, where it is quieter, so Frankie won’t associate car rides with the noise out front. Instead of making Frankie happier about getting into the car, however, it has made him unhappier about going into the backyard.

Crystal has suggested various antidotes for what she has termed my “poisoning” of this formerly pleasurable space and I plan to use them, but in the meantime I feel terrible that I have become the Lucrezia Borgia of dog owners.

Practical question

Can I really blame Frankie for being afraid of the car now when I’ve just hauled him off to undisclosed locations — though I kept assuring him that San Diego and Santa Barbara were lovely — for what must have seemed like endless hours? I don’t know his past. Frankie might have spent his first five years with a long distance truck driver who sold crack cocaine and used him as a front.

Philosophical question

This relates to my Friday Focus question about whether dogs require a social life with other dogs.  Frankie is nearly 12 years old. I give him plenty of exercise, good food, medical attention, and love. It would be wonderful if he enjoyed the car and if he enjoyed other dogs. He provides me with great joy and I’d like to reciprocate.

But just how happy is happy enough?

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Training Tuesday: Suck it Up!

By Edie Jarolim | Published: June 8, 2010

Nicholas Cage says "Yum," * but I say "EEK!"

As  those who have been keeping up with my Training Tuesday series know, I have been working with trainer Crystal Saling to get Frankie over his fear of the noisy outdoors. The ultimate goal: to get him to my car, parked in the driveway of my house which fronts a busy street, without stress. Methods to achieve that goal include leaving the front door open while Frankie is eating, so he will associate the outdoors with good things.

But I’ve been taking a multi-pronged approach to the problem, one that includes using the Through A Dog’s Ear driving CD, which got a very pawsitive review on this blog recently. Part of that program involves playing a soothing track on it to Frankie at a time when he is relaxed, then playing it in the car without the motor running, then in the car with the motor running… you get the picture.

All was going smoothly. The music was playing soothingly right before bedtime when all of a sudden a big roach comes scuttling by.

I did what comes naturally. I picked up a shoe and went “THWACK.”

Frankie jumped up and ran out of the room.

I thought I did sufficient damage control by playing the track three times in a row after I induced him to come back. He didn’t seem permanently traumatized.

But when I told Crystal about the experience, fully expecting her to be sympathetic and say, “Well, that’s okay, Frankie will get over it,” she said instead, “You’ve got suck it up!”

Sensing my confusion, she elaborated: “If you see a roach, wait until it goes into the other room. If there’s a snake on your arm, leave it be. You know, just suck it up.”

I generally trust Crystal’s advice implicitly but this time… not so much.

According to Cockroach-Pictures.com (I know, what isn’t there a site for?):

American cockroaches are 1.5 inches long, making them the largest of the house-infesting cockroaches. American cockroaches generally live in moist areas, but they can survive in dry areas if they have access to water. American cockroaches prefer warm temperatures.

I don’t think anyone doubts my devotion to Frankie, but when it comes to choosing between a slight setback in his training or getting insomnia from worrying about where exactly that roach went and if it’s going to visit me in my bed, I’m going to choose upsetting Frankie slightly.

A sleep-deprived owner is a crabby owner.

Besides, I’m an animal too. I was only doing what came naturally when confronted with an enemy. Until I’m counter-conditioned to do otherwise, it’s instant THWACK!

Who’s with me here?

*In “The Vampire’s Kiss” (1989), Cage plays a literary agent whose consumption of a live cockroach is the first of many signs that he’s either insane or turning into a vampire.

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Training Tuesday: Are You Sabotaging Your Dog’s Training Without Knowing It?

By Edie Jarolim | Published: June 1, 2010

This week I’m turning my blog over to Crystal Saling, a font of wisdom about the dog training process in general, and first-hand observer of how Frankie and I are dealing with it in particular. We inspired her to wonder:

Are you inadvertently sabotaging your dog’s training?

It happens so frequently that even professional dog trainers catch themselves doing it.

There are two main ways to sabotage even the best of training plans.  The first way is to accidentally reinforce behaviors that you don’t want. The best example of this is when an owner who is wearing gardening clothes pets a dog that is jumping up, but yells at the same dog for jumping up when he or she is wearing nice clothes.

The second way people sabotage training plans is by accidentally punishing the behavior they are trying to encourage.  Here is where Edie and Frankie come in. Edie lives in a noisy area and we are trying to get Frankie feeling comfortable walking to the car. I noticed in the comments section to last week’s post that Edie replied to a concern for Frankie’s safety by stating that she has been using body blocking to keep Frankie from going through the front door.

Sure enough, during their subsequent lesson, I observed Edie body blocking Frankie.

If you know anything at all about positive training you may be asking: “What is wrong with body blocking?”  After all, it’s considered a positive training technique championed by industry giants such as Patricia McConnell and Victoria Stilwell.

While considered benign, it is anything but when you are trying to teach a dog that the door and what lies beyond it is a safe place with nothing to be afraid of.  Frankie is a small dog — about 10 lbs.  Compared to him, Edie is a giant (no offense Edie)! One slight movement of Edie’s shin was all it took for Frankie to skitter off in the opposite direction. Body blocking is actually scaring Frankie and conditioning fear-based emotions near the door.

To solve this problem, I advised Edie to always have a leash on Frankie when she opens the door so that she can either hold it or step on it.  That will prevent any accidents with Frankie and get rid of the need to body block him.

Bio: Crystal Saling is the owner/proprietor of Delightful Dog LLC in Tucson, Arizona. She is a CPDT-KA (Certified Professional Dog Trainer- Knowledge Assessed), KPA CTP (Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner). She is a contributor to Dogster’s Good Dog Blog.

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Training Tuesday: Will Not Work for Food

By Edie Jarolim | Published: May 25, 2010

First, the good news. The counter-conditioning portion of the get-Frankie-into-the-car-comfortably program is going great. I demonstrated last week how our trainer, Crystal,  is accustoming Frankie to street noise by having him associate it with eating. I served Frankie his meals  semi-alfresco, moving his dish closer and closer to a door that was opened progressively wider.

The next step was getting Frankie not to fear the gear associated with car rides, his harness and leash. To that end, I was instructed to get him outfitted for a trip outside and then feed him, with no follow up excursion.

It turns out that Frankie is pretty good at eating while ignoring various annoyances such as street noise and outdoor gear.   Actually working for his food by performing different behaviors?

Not so much.

Which behaviors? We’re practicing “Look at that,” whereby I point to an object and — surprise! — try to get Frankie to look at it; and hand targeting, which involves Frankie tapping on my hand or on various objects I hold in it, such as pieces of junk mail and my TV remote control. I admit that I didn’t initially see the purpose of these exercises, but Crystal explained that they’re designed to teach Frankie to investigate his environment, and that giving Frankie jobs that he can succeed at will make him more comfortable in a stressful situation. She used a great analogy:

It’s like giving someone who suffers from shyness or a social phobia a job at a party. If that person is passing out drinks or handing out napkins, for example, she won’t focus on the stress of having to make conversation.

It’s a great theory. But Frankie doesn’t seem to want the jobs. He would do the nose tap thing a couple of times and then walk away. Or bark at me in annoyance. I’m not completely fluent in speaking Dog but I’m fairly familiar with the Frankie dialect and this particular bark — a new one — had a definite tinge of irritation to it.

It’s gotten to the point that when I put on the white apron that signals training — it has lots of pockets for the clicker and treats — Frankie runs away.

So what has Frankie learned? To avoid the party hostess.

I have some theories about what’s going wrong. But I’ll wait for the expert analysis.

Stay tuned…

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