Core Concepts and Commonly Used Terms. We want our puppies to have good feelings about crates, that is a vital goal of this course. To be sure dogs have lots of feelings and using these feelings to help them with their life skills is just smart. Unfortunately, we can’t ask puppies how they feel about their experiences in the crate or sit them down and explain to them that being confined is safe and pleasant. However, I’ll be teaching you how to observe your puppies for clues about what they are experiencing and many techniques to imprint positive emotions around crating.

The three concepts below work together, as a team, and in most cases it’s impossible to separate them.

Classical Conditioning: I like this.When we refer to classical conditioning in this course we are talking about learning through association that occurs when two things (one neutral and one pleasurable) are paired repeatedly.Much of this conditioning occurs naturally and without our direct intervention.For example: When we provide a dog with a comfortable bed, the dog will learn on it’s own (by experiencing pleasure when laying on the bed) that dog beds are good. Our dog will then seek out a comfortable bed to lay on when it’s tired and wants to rest. We don’t need to “do” anything more than provide a comfortable resting place for our dog to learn that beds are wonderful.

Who is Crate School For Breeders and Fosters For? - 2

Operant Conditioning: I like to DO this.When we refer to operant conditioning in this course we are talking about learning that occurs when a behavior results in a consequence of our choosing. Much, but not all, of this type learning occurs with our direct intervention. Puppy enters a crate and finds a treat we placed there, we have used operant conditioning to make going into that crate again more likely. Further, since the consequence of entering the crate was something the dog found pleasurable (resting comfortably) we have also by association created a good feeling about the behavior of entering the crate, and the crate itself (Bonus classical conditioning)

Management: Making the desired behavior likely, and the undesired behavior unlikely through arrangement of the puppy’s environment.One of the easiest and most efficient ways to cultivate the habits we want in our puppies is to set up the environment so that the behavior we would like our puppies to try is very easy for them them to try. Conversely, if there is a behavior we do not want our puppies to try, we can set up the environment so that behavior is difficult or impossible for them to try.

Core Concepts and Commonly Used Terms (Core)