Peggy: BAT is perfect for your situation. See my comments in the August 3 installment for more on BAT Stages. You could start with Stage 1 on walks, and move on to Stage 2. You can also do setups with friendly loose dogs who are under good verbal control, with the help of a trainer.

Amy, Kenzo, and Roxanne: Thanks! Glad you are enjoying it!

Mary: I don’t have such a guide on my website, but I will put one together ASAP. Great suggestion!

Crystal’s elegant rendition of what happens in a dog’s mind with the “I will choke you until you sit” idea is getting emailed to someone I know – thanks Crystal!

And I LOVE the screaming pug video! I laughed and laughed – thanks Edie!
Mary E Haight recently posted..P&G Pet Food Recall- Iams

In this scenario several things have happened.
1. sit was negatively reinforced- sitting made the bad thing go away
2. standing after the owner said “sit” was punished- standing made the bad thing happen
3. the word “sit” has been paired with a bad thing- so it is a threat from here on out- either you sit when I tell you or I will choke you. (some people like to fool themselves into thinking that the dog “respects” them- when really the dog is frightened or it wouldn’t work)
4. Because of the “or else” attached to the word “sit” you can get a slow and sloppy response because you have activated the dogs fear system- really skilled trainers usually don’t have this happen because their timing is so good- but the average dog owner usually ends up with a dog who is almost afraid to move when they hear the word “sit”. The fear of moving is the sloppy fallout that I was talking about earlier.

But when you are dealing with fear of things in the environment- the bad thing is already happening- (in set-ups where we set up an artifical situation we make sure the dog is far enough away from the bad thing that they are not overwhelmed or too scared). Ofen, the dog is concerned about the trigger (could be a man with a hat or another dog or even a car) and all they really want is for that trigger to go away or for themselves to be moved away from the trigger.

Many dogs try to use distance increasing signals such as barking and growling to make the bad thing go away- and it usually works! The owner may be embarassed by the dog’s behavior and takes him away from the situation, or the person with the hat is scared of the dog and he moves away. The dog was just reinforced (negatively I might add) for barking and growling. BAT keeps the dog far enough away from the trigger so that the dog does not feel the need to bark and growl- when he offers more acceptable behaivor- he is rewarded by getting further away from the trigger (again, his behaivor made the bad thing go away- negative reinforcement).
Negative reinforcement is actually a pretty good way to go when dealing with some fear-based reactivity because the bad thing that is made to go away already exists in the dog’s world. We are simply teaching the dog a different way to respond to make trigger go away.

I hope that clears up a few questions about negative reinforcement and why in this particular circumstance it isn’t a bad thing.
Crystal Saling, CPDT-KA, KPA-CTP

When taking it more relaxed and just turning around and leave the source of fear (because I was not happy with the result before) she was at least relaxed.

So I think BAT is just the right thing for me and Viva. It could show us the way to move forward from here.
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