Let’s get some actual conditioning practice in!

We will first start to condition our dog to a NEUTRAL stimulus. This is pretty much exactly what Pavlov did with his dog and the bell.

(A bell is neither positive nor negative for the dog, just like the phone ringtone I will use).

It is your task to be as invisible and passive as possible in this game.

I show you two versions in the video: One where I take myself out of the equation, and one where I appear to be “training” (in the sense of operant conditioning) my dog Party.

The first one is what you are going for!

To clarify: This is not a sound you will actually use later on in the training process. Rather, this is a training for you: Because you will get one chance at counterconditioning your dog to his trigger, we want to start out with something less important. It doesn’t matter if you make some mistakes or need some practice to figure out your timing and treat delivery. This is your training stage – don’t skip it or your dog’s actual training with a trigger will be less effective.