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.