My family occasionally breeds dogs so we have 7 Cavalier King Charles Spaniels (CKCS) and 2 Newfoundlands. Although we have a lot of land for them to run free and an electrical fence so they won’t leave, we also have outdoor pens for them to stay in. On nice days when the CKCS want to be outside but nobody will be around to keep a closer eye on them, we put them in the outdoor pens. This way they get to spend time running around outside but because they are a smaller breed, we don’t have to worry about their protection.

We have 3 cages and typically divide the CKCS up depending on which ones get along best. Some of them are picky and prefer certain dogs over others. When we first started using the outdoor pens we would take treats and stand in the pens so the dogs would follow us in. When the right dogs came into their pen they would get treats and we would take the other dogs out. Then we would go into the next pen and repeat until each dog was in the right pen.

After only a few weeks,  the dogs began to go in their specific pen on their own and wait for their treats. At this point, if we walk outside and go even slightly in the direction of the pens, they will automatically assume that they are going to the outdoor pens and run to sit inside the doorway of their pens. Sometimes the dogs  will even do this when we don’t mean to put them in the pens.

Classical conditioning is learning that occurs by learning to associate stimuli. In the example of my dogs, the unconditioned stimuli was the dog treats. The unconditioned response was for the dogs to come to us to get the treat. Then after conditioning took place, the conditioned stimulus became us walking outside in the general direction of the pens and the conditioned response is for the CKCS to run to their specific pen and sit inside the doorway. Occasionally there will be times when we don’t use the pens for awhile, like in the winter, and extinction will occur where the dogs will not react to us walking towards the pens. However, once we bring treats to the outdoor pens the dogs will experience spontaneous recovery and go into their correct pens.