Also known as Pavlovian Conditioning, this is the oldest-known and most basic way for a dog to learn. If you have ever taken a psychology or biology course, you may be familiar with Ivan Pavlov and his dog-related experiments. In these tests, he gradually conditioned dogs to begin salivating at the sound of a bell - not really just a bell, but an arbitrary noise that had no prior meaning to the dogs. He did this using food, a stimulus that naturally makes dogs begin to salivate. By repeatedly giving food immediately following the sound of the bell, those dogs came to associate the sound with feeding time. As such, the dogs would begin to salivate even if the food did not come.

For our purposes, there are a few key points to consider. First, the dogs could not help but salivate at the sound, having been conditioned to expect food. Classical conditioning is an automatic physiological response and requires no effort from the dog. Second, it is possible to extinguish these associations over time. Pavlov went on to teach the dogs to forget the meaning of the bell, by separating its sound from feeding time. With some of his dogs, he rang that bell over and over, without the subsequent feeding. Eventually, those dogs stopped salivating at the sound. So dogs can become habituated to a stimulus and stop reacting to it. Third, this process works for both appetitive (pleasant) stimuli and aversive (unpleasant) stimuli.

For the purposes of dog training, we are less interested in classical conditioning, because it does not require the dog to do anything or refrain from doing anything. It does not matter what exactly Pavlov’s dogs were doing when the bell sounded. Whether they were sitting, standing, lying down, pacing around their kennels, barking, or quiet, the bell sounded and they either got food or they did not. Mostly, you will find that classical conditioning helps explain why our dogs do certain things, like barking at doorbells, and how we can use it to break that cycle.