Classical Conditioning For Puppy Training Articles | Dog and Puppies

By: Jeremy C.W

Having a puppy at home is stress-relieving. They will entertain you with their cute puppy face and wagging tail. But all hell breaks loose when a guest comes knocking at the door. What was once a very innocent and cute puppy charges to the door barking at the every knock. If you are experiencing this problem, you may need to teach your dog how to behave when a guest is knocking at the door.

A puppy training class is highly recommended. However, if you are on a tight budget, why not try to use the age-old technique of classical conditioning and try to train your dog by yourself. Puppy training can be frustrating but if you follow the right steps, your dog might just learn a thing or two.

Classical conditioning is very popular among puppy trainers. To be able to teach a puppy a new trick with classical conditioning, you must define the initial position of your puppy, the action-stimuli, the reaction of your puppy and the consequence.

Defining the initial position of your puppy can be limited to sitting or to be still -- any form of instruction that he will easily respond to. Defining the action means that you have to establish what action you want to do to train your puppy. If your objective is to train him to behave when there is a guest knocking at the door, the action is knocking at the door.

The next thing is to establish the reaction of your puppy after the door-knocking. You have to define the right behavior. If the initial position is to sit, this position should be maintained as much as possible even while there is someone knocking at the door. This is the point where you can teach your puppy by using the action of the door as the consequence.

If the puppy breaks his sitting position while you are opening the door, quickly shut it close. Do this repeatedly until your puppy does not break his sitting position. Once the puppy successfully completes the sequence, praise him with a treat but stay calm because that is what you want your puppy to behave. You can basically use the concept of classical conditioning on any kind of activity you want your puppy to learn.