I almost always let the dog lick the bowl when I’m finished eating ice cream. The only exception is when the ice cream contains significant levels of chocolate - don’t want to upset his tummy. The problem - he now thinks every bowl contains ice cream and will sit patiently, yet plaintively, at the feet of the holder of the bowl, awaiting his turn. No amount of explaining or logic will convince him that it really is just a bowl of salad this time, or fruit. No, he’s sure it’s ice cream and can’t imagine why we would deprive him of his just desserts.
In what way have you inadvertently conditioned a pet (or spouse, or child)?
Give him a bit of your salad. Doggies like veggies.
Almost everything I do that my female greyhound likes she instantly spins around to her own benefit. She hovers around me in the kitchen and dining room in case I drop something tasty. If I get lettuce out of the fridge she comes running because odds are good that tomatoes are coming soon. If I hold up a spoon, she wants to inspect it for any traces of blue cheese dressing.
Heck, if she sees me holding ANYTHING, she has to inspect it in case it’s food. Makes it hard to take pictures of her loveliness.
I always turned off the computer in the front room before a storm, and it played the Windows XP shut-down music.
My dog was afraid of storms, and thus became afraid of the Windows XP shut-down music. She would get freaked out any time she heard it, here or at my parents’ house.
When I got Windows 7, she didn’t react to it’s shut-down music at all.
Not my doggie! We occasionally offer a veggie piece. He takes it in his mouth, walks to the back of the house and deposits the now soggy veggie on my bedroom carpet.
My pet rabbit LOVES bananas. My wife puts banana slices on her ice cream when she has a bowl at night (pretty often). Even though he (rabbit) can’t see it, when my wife closes the freezer door after dishing up some IC, he goes INSANE, because freezer door=IC=banana slice=happy rabbit. Not bad for a 2-watt brain, huh?
Mostly if I open a can, it’s a can of cat food, or a can of tuna, and when I had one cat, this cat would appear whenever I opened any kind of can. If it was cat food she got cat food, and if it was tuna she got juice.
If it was pineapple for a change, this cat would feel she had been shortchanged, and she would go slash something. The nearest ankle, a leather sofa–whatever.
So one day I opened, instead of cat food, a can of green beans. I just like canned green beans better for salade Nicoise, sue me. She went into her usual snit. So I gave her some green bean juice. Ooh, the look I got.
But she stopped showing up and bugging me whenever I opened a can, and waited to be called.
My cat was used to the concept that humans preparing food would lead to Good Things To Eat.
When I was doing something like cutting up veggies, she’d meow and twine around my feet. Finally I’d give her a piece of whatever it was. She’d sniff, maybe taste, then sit back and glare at me, quite clearly thinking “Right. Don’t expect me to fall for this trick. I know you’re working on something Good To Eat. Make with the goods, puny human, or you shall Feel My Wrath”.
Other cats I’ve been owned by knew the sound of their package of treats. If we needed to find them, and couldn’t, we could stand in the kitchen and shake the package and they’d come running. The sad corollary to that was when the one cat was in his final decline (feline leukemia) and had largely quit eating, the sound still made him come even though he would not eat the actual treat :(.
Then there were the guinea pigs. They learned that fresh veggies were always preceded by the sound of a plastic bag rustling, so would WHEEEEK in excitement when they heard a grocery bag. It got so consistent that we would start to reward them by giving them a bit of romaine or whatever even if we hadn’t planned to - so they conditioned us as well :D.
Since my husband was most often the one to give them veggies, they got conditioned to respond to his voice as well. Hear voice, vocalize excitement. Which was I’m sure gratifying to him except he knew they were just in it for the food.
We used to accuse the piggies of being pathological liars. They’d have veggies, hear someone else come in and make plastic-bag sounds, and beg for more, as clearly they were staaaaaaaaaaarving.
My dog used to like to sleep next to my head. She weighed 80 lb.
My rule is “Farty Part of the Dog, Sleeps at the Footy Part of the Bed.” You probably don’t want to know the story behind that dictum.
So I got some chopped up cheese and trained her to go to the foot of the bed on command. Five minutes tops.
Unfortunately, I had trained her to go to MY SIDE of the foot of the bed. I tried to train her to go to the other side, but she was having none of it.
So, for the next ten years I had to get in bed, and when she jumped on the bed, I would sternly announce “Big toe! Big toe!” and wave my foot in her direction, and maybe poke her.
After that announcement, when I had guests I would hear them laughing in the other bedroom.
My bladder has been conditioned to need emptying the moment I put the key in the front door lock. Doesn’t matter if I peed at the store 10 minutes ago, getting home earns me a bonus trip to the bathroom.
That has a name. I think it’s called ‘urge incontinence’. My urologist told me it’s extremely common. It’s a pavlovian response. I think I was supposed to do kegel exercises for it, or maybe it was something else. Anyway, go to a urologist if you’re a woman and the kegel exercise will be mentioned.
We’ve found that if we shout out “uh-oh!” for whatever reason, our dog immediately runs to the living room window, tail at attention, with a low growl, and looks out the window searching for any “threats.” I was just about to say I have no idea where this came from, but it just dawned on me. There’s this German Shepherd in the neighborhood who is our dog’s “nemesis.” A few times when we looked out the window and saw him coming up the street, we’d say “uh-oh,” kind of as a joke, and he must have made that connection.
I’ve conditioned my bladder to hold it until I get home from work (where I typically work 3-5 hour shifts with no breaks)-only then do I get the urge, unless I have to go really bad…
Approx August 1975: our cat develops a fondness for using the sliding screen door that accompanies the sliding glass door as a scratching post. the screen is quickly hanging in shreds—the screen mesh is made of some kind of nylonesque synthetic, not metal wires
Approx September 1975: my annoyed dad begins grabbing the cat and flinging him out the door each time he catches him using the sliding screen door as a scratching post
Approx October 1975 & beyond: our cat scratches at the screen door whenever he wishes to be let out
Leaking urine immediately after you begin to feel the urge to urinate is urge incontinence, yes. And I have that sometimes, too, and yes, kegels to strengthen the pelvic floor help all forms of incontinence in women with the exception of functional incontinence. Although you should also be aware that overdoing it on the kegels can cause a painful pelvic tilt that you feel in your lower back. When I teach kegels, I also teach flat back drops or, if the patient is up for it, deep squats to balance out the tightness that too much kegeling can create.
Not quite what I’m talking about, however. I don’t have the actual *incontinence *at the front door, just the urge part, even if there’s little urine in the bladder. That’s the pavlovian conditioning part.
I don’t remember how it started, but I always let the dog lick the bowl after I make/eat macaroni and cheese. She knows when I’m making it, and will quietly but intently watch me – from kitchen to couch – until I’m done eating. I only let her lick empty Kraft original flavor bowls, though, so sometimes she gets confused and disappointed if I’ve had a spicier flavor and I don’t let her lick the bowl. (That dog loooooves cheese, but her stomach can be touchy.) She only stalks me when I’m eating mac and cheese, even if I use the same bowl for something else.
She is also conditioned to the sound of the TV being turned off at night: she can be snoring on the couch next to me and the “click” will result in perked ears. She knows it’s time to go outside one last time, then go to bed.
You know that really soft teensy click when you press the home button on an iPad? Yeah that one you can barely hear? When my hound hears that, she launches herself off the couch because it’s clearly time for dinner.
And I do mean launch. Racing greyhounds are fun. They don’t need a lot of exercise like people think. But they do have a natural tendency to move faster than light when they move. Obedience training wasn’t as hard as teaching them that the release word “okay” does NOT mean launch into outer space from a sit/down.
To stop my dog from jumping on me when I came home, I trained him to sit and wait patiently until I squatted down, then he would come and greet me by trying to climb in my lap or nuzzle me into falling over.
Now, the problem is whenever I squat down for a non-dog related reason, say to tie a shoe, I have instant dog all up in my grill.
