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.
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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
Your Dog Won’t Hate You. This I Know.
When you have a blog with a name like mine, you get a lot of hits from dog owners doing a Google search for “dog hates me” or similar terms.
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:
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.
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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.