Using Pavlovian Conditioning To Bring Your Pets Under Control Once And For All

The association of a thing to an activity is regarded scientifically as classical conditioning. There is an excellent experiment that was conducted by acclaimed scientist Pavlov that proves an excellent example. He would ring a bell each time the dog was served food. The dog started off salivating when seeing the food. Later he began associating the bell with the food and at a point of time, he used to salivate at the sound of the bell. This doesnít mean that the actual noise of the ringing bell made him salivate. The dog had created an association between the ringing of the bell and receiving food and that made him salivate.

If you have pets there is a good chance that you would like to train them to behave well and to become an integrated member of your family. As well as becoming loving family members, they can also be trained to perform some useful duties around the house, like collecting newspapers. You can even train them how to keep rabbits out of gardens and to ward off other household pests.

Classical conditioning cannot actually make the dog to sit or jump at the command, but it does change the way the pet feels about a particular situation in which it is right now. It gives explanation about the behavior relating to a particular place, object or event.  It explains how the emotional response is developed. An animal can develop these responses by pure chance, or wontedly. Also the trainer must remember that the change in the behavior is irreversible most of the times.

One of the most common behaviors dealt with in conditioned emotional response is fear. The fear can be instinctive, learned or unknown. For example, if a cat gets scared upon seeing a dog, this is instinctive fear. When a raised hand causes a cat to back away, this is an example of a learned fear. This can be the case with an abused cat. The fear of the unknown can be brought about by lack of exposure to a certain situation.

The conditioned emotional responses, which are dislikeable, can be reduced with the help of classical conditioning. Desensitisation and counter-conditioning are two further concepts of classical conditioning. Training an animal to have a reduced sensitivity to a certain situation is called desensitisation. The bad situation is created again and again until the animal becomes insensitive or doesnít feel about it any more. For example, if the animal is given crate training, it is locked inside the crate again and again, till he gets used to staying locked inside the cage.

In counter-conditioning the animal is exposed to a lower degree of extremity. Something positive is shown to the animal and there is a lesser intensity. By doing this pet begins to like the nasty situation. The animal is trained to react in a way that goes against their previous response. Eg, being locked in a crate is something very few pets will enjoy. But this undesirable situation can be made to look pleasant if the pet is fed with a treat from time to time as long as it stays calmly inside the cage.

Negative counter conditioning is another technique, but it is used very rarely. For example, if the cat likes to bite the hand of the owner very frequently, the person can rub something distasteful on the hand. When the animal bites the hand, it will taste the distasteful substance and then associate the bad taste with the hand and will not bite again, if done repeatedly.

If you have read this and are now thinking of introducing a pet into your home, there are many other things that you need to think about on top of how you will train it. Please see this resource and see this page for some further pointers.