Classical Conditioning With My Pup Sadie
Ivan Pavlov is credited with the discovery of classical conditioning, when in 1902, he discovered that his dogs had the unconditioned response to salivate in the presence of food, but could have a conditioned response to salivate at the ring of a bell. He did this by ringing a bell before giving his dogs food, therefore allowing them to associate the bell with the presence of food. Eventually, when he rang the bell without the presence of food, the dogs had the conditioned response of salivating.
My personal experience with classical conditioning stems from attempting to get a conditioned response out of my German shepherd, Sadie. My family and I received Sadie when she was 11 months old. Her previous owners had not really attempted to train her in anyway and she was quite difficult to control, since Sadie was mainly my dog, the job of training her fell largely upon me. I began by training her to be calm by saying “down!” and ignoring her while holding a treat until she calmed down, then gave her the treat. I kept repeating the behavior until she had been conditioned to be calm, I did the same while teaching her to sit, stay, give me a paw, lay down, and roll over. Sadie now has the conditioned response of doing an action due to the newly conditioned stimulus of a verbal command, these newly conditioned responses and stimuli were all made possible by the unconditioned stimulus of a treat.
Another way in which Sadie is classically conditioned is that a previously unconditioned stimulus of the doorbell ringing has become a conditioned stimulus towards her unconditioned response of barking and being a guard dog, this is because the doorbell ringing continuously indicates the presence of strangers, which triggers her instinct to warn the family of the presence of said strangers.
I also have a dog named Sadie! But anyways, conditioning a dog to obey it’s masters can be hard, especially when dogs were originally wild animals. I firmly believe that dogs are some of the most intelligent creatures in the world. By conditioning them it is amazing how fast they can learn to be obedient.
My dog is 5 years old and is still a nut job. We got him when he was 2 months old but I guess we spoiled him too much and didn’t do a good job at training him. After reading you’re post, I realized I have had a classical conditioning experience myself. For some reason my dog likes to hide in strange places around my house so we don’t see him. The only way I can get him to come out is if I make noise with his leash, say the word “leash” or take out the cold cuts and make noise with the wrapper. Every time I want to play with my dog or if I need to make him to come out so we can go for a walk, all I have to do is one of those 3 things and he will magically appear. Also, every time he hears our front gate open, he immediately runs to the front door, if he does not bark it is because he can “smell” the person who is coming and is familiar with them but if he barks we then now it might be someone who does not often visit our home.
The idea of training dogs through classical conditioning is very interesting. It allows us to see the true intelligence of animals. And although they do not possess the intelligence that we do, through psychological training they can show extreme intelligence. Also, classical conditioning has allowed us to have a form of communication with our dogs. Without a name and commands that they have been continuously conditioned to call and respond to, we would have little form of communication with them.