Hello there. I'm Hannah Branigan, and you are listening to Drinking from the toilet,

where we talk about real dogs, real trainers, and life, which can sometimes be a little

too real.

As trainers, we talk about classical conditioning in the dog training world a lot.

And I've been hearing the term CER or conditioned emotional response more and more frequently

in dog training circles, which is awesome,

mainly because it gives me an opening to get scientific and nerdy in that conversation,

which I find very reinforcing. And also because it means we're evolving our understanding of

how learning happens and what our dogs are experiencing and I hope maybe a little bit of empathy for our learners.

Most people know that classical conditioning is one form of associative learning

that makes up part of what we call learning theory.

And I think most recognize the name Pavlov and know that he did some experiments a long time ago

that involved some bells and some dogs

and some food and some drool. But I think we can maybe do a little bit better because I'm

a big believer that the more we understand about a process, the better equipped we are to use

that process in an application. So thought, let's spend a little time

and get to know classical conditioning a little better, really get inside it and dig around and make a

little nest in there. So what do we really need to know? Well, first, classical conditioning is

dealing with those involuntary behaviors, reflexive behaviors, stuff you do without thinking about it.

Operant conditioning tends to deal with voluntary behaviors or behaviors that you are aware of or doing on purpose.

Now, there's a blurry line there, but we're going to mostly ignore it for our purposes today. And we'll talk about that

later on maybe in a different podcast or a blog post or something. But emotions, as we call them,

...