Bash said: "Everything I do, I think of the dog’s point of view. I actually think like a dog."

He said that it usually takes six to eight lessons for him to "city train" a pet on a leash, and another seven lessons to "county train" it off the leash. Given the life styles of many of his clients, a "town and country" dog, as he calls it, is a must.

In April, Bash flew to Paris for an emergency visit to a Jack Russell terrier that had forgotten its table manners. Although the dog had been trained to lie quietly under outdoor restaurant tables along Madison Avenue, once away from home, it lunged at other dogs. Bash spent two days going from bistro to bistro, teaching the dog to nibble baguette crumbs peacefully off the cobblestones at its owner’s feet.

"Bash is as much a dog psychiatrist as a trainer," said Victoria Newhouse, the wife of S. O. Newhouse Jr., the owner of Condé Nast Publications.

"My dog, Nero, at 12, started to withdraw," she said. "Bash came up with the idea of teaching him a new trick every year. It would revitalize him. The challenge of learning something new made it not true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks."

Bash, who is 46 and was born in Albania, has accompanied dogs to their owners’ interviews with co-op boards on the Upper East Side. While the people try top prove their own good breeding, Bash shows off the dogs’. After one such appearance at 1185 Park Avenue, he said, a board member told him, "I wish the kids who lived here could be so well mannered."

Bash and his family came to America in 1963, settling in Riverdale in the Bronx. Bash is still based there, operating his private training service through Fieldstone Pets, a grooming and pet supply shop owned by his sister, Mereut. He has a degree in animal behavior from City University and is the author of "Dog Training by Bash" (Dutton, 1993).

In 1975, he was hired to train and domesticate a wolf pup for a television movie, "A Boy Who Cried Wolf." He named the pup Mariah. "This was my greatest teacher, the rearing and training of her," Bash said. "The wolf is the ancestor of the dog. It’s the primal part of the dog that exists. It gave me insight into the mind of the dog."

When he is not making house calls (all of his lessons are private), Bash is a bog kahuna on the pet charity circuit. In 1992 he started the Dog Walk, to benefit shelter programs sponsored by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and in 1993 he created Paws for Cause, a dog walk for the American Cancer Society to promote awareness that animals can also get cancer. He has been on the board of the Delta Society, which brings dogs together with people with disabilities. Earlier this year he created Canine Court in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, the first dog playground in the city. And he is creating Starpet.com, an on-line animal talent agency for advertising and entertainment.