The science of associating something with an activity is known as classical conditioning. There is an excellent experiment that was conducted by acclaimed scientist Pavlov that proves an excellent example. Whenever he served food to his dog, he used to ring a bell. The dog started off salivating when seeing the food. Later he began associating the bell with the food and at a point of time, he used to salivate at the sound of the bell. This doesnít mean that the actual noise of the ringing bell made him salivate. The dog had created an association between the ringing of the bell and receiving food and that made him salivate.

If you have pets there is a good chance that you would like to train them to behave well and to become an integrated member of your family. As well as becoming loving family members, they can also be trained to perform some useful duties around the house, like collecting newspapers. You can even train them how to keep rabbits out of gardens and to ward off other household pests.

Classical conditioning cannot actually make the dog to sit or jump at the command, but it does change the way the pet feels about a particular situation in which it is right now. It gives explanation about the behavior relating to a particular place, object or event.  It explains how the emotional response is developed. An animal can develop these responses by pure chance, or wontedly. Something that must be remembered is that a trained behaviour is very often irreversible.

One of the most common behaviors dealt with in conditioned emotional response is fear. Fear can be a learned emotion, or it can be instinctive. For example, if a cat gets scared upon seeing a dog, this is instinctive fear. If the cat backs off upon seeing a raised hand, this is learned fear. This can be the case with an abused cat. The fear of the unknown can be brought about by lack of exposure to a certain situation.

The conditioned emotional responses, which are dislikeable, can be reduced with the help of classical conditioning. Desensitisation and counter-conditioning are two further concepts of classical conditioning. Training an animal to have a reduced sensitivity to a certain situation is called desensitisation. The bad situation is repeated over and over until the animal is no longer sensitive to it. Crate training is when an animal is locked inside a crate over and over until he gets used to it for example.

In counter-conditioning the animal is exposed to a lower degree of extremity. The intensity is less and as well a positive thing is presented to the animal. The pet will begin to like the distasteful situation by doing this. The animal is trained to react in a way that goes against their previous response. For example, a pet doesnít like to be locked up in the crate all the time. But this horrible situation can be presented as a pleasant one if the pet is given a treat now and again on the condition that it remains calm inside the cage.

Negative counter conditioning is another technique, but it is used very rarely. For example, if the cat likes to bite the hand of the owner very frequently, the person can rub something distasteful on the hand. When the animal bites the hand, it will taste the distasteful substance and then associate the bad taste with the hand and will not bite again, if done repeatedly.

If you have read this and are now thinking of introducing a pet into your home, there are many other things that you need to think about on top of how you will train it. Please view these tips and see this page for some further pointers.