Your Little Dog, Too: Bill Berloni Talks Stage Pups

BILL BERLONI'S REMARKABLE CAREER stretches from the first versions of "Annie" in the mid-70s through the current long run of "The Wizard of Oz," hitting the Warner Theater through Dec. 7. The animal trainer and memoirist (the charming "Broadway Tales: Heartfelt Stories of Rescued Dogs Who Became Showbiz Superstars") has rescued scores of strays, trained them to appear onstage and then found them loving homes, eventually bringing many into his own menagerie.

» EXPRESS: Tell me a little about "Oz" and the dogs you've trained for it.
» BERLONI: The tour just began a month ago. It's going to be a three-year tour across the country. "Wizard of Oz" doesn't get revived very often, because it's such a huge technical show: pyrotechnics, flying witches, dogs, fire and scarecrows — you know. … The dog starring is named Princess. She has an understudy named Snickers.

Princess is about 8 years old. She's done productions the last four or five years of her life, so now she's just locked in. She's in this tour for a while.

» EXPRESS: Were the methods commonly used to train animals when you were starting out crueler than yours?
» BERLONI: Yes, and to an extent, that still is a prevailing thought. ... I would never meet a human and go, "You must do my will," and I don't take that attitude with animals. I went, "How can I make them want to do it?"

And it flies in the face of conventional animal training. I'm not an alpha dog. I'm just creating a pattern that they want to do. And, certainly, 30 years ago, it was all choke collars and negative reinforcement.

» EXPRESS: Can you teach an old dog new tricks?
» BERLONI: I hope so — I'm 52, and I would like to think that I can still learn things. No, seriously, their intelligence doesn't wane as they get older, but sometimes, if a dog has had a certain lifestyle, it's hard to break them out of habits. It's like teaching a 70-year-old person to stop smoking. We get dogs that are 8, 9 years old and train them to do shows — no problem.

» Warner Theatre, 13th and E streets NW; through Sun., Dec. 7, $40-80; 202-397-7328. (Metro Center)