To affect external behaviour we change the internal emotional response to the trigger. The example used is that in the presence of the food (unconditioned stimulus) a dog becomes excited (unconditioned response).

However in the presence of a bell (neutral stimulus) he doesn't care (neutral response)

But when the dog hears the bell (neutral stimulus) while being given the food (unconditioned stimulus) he begins to associate the sound of the bell with the taste of delicious meat (unconditioned response)

Eventually even if you don't have the actual food around, the dog will hear the bell (now a conditioned stimulus) and begin to get excited (now a conditioned response) in anticipation of that tasty treat

This theory was created by Dr B.F Skinner to show how consequences of behaviours can make that behaviour more or less likely to happen again in the future.

The usual terms are Positive (+) and Negative (-) but this doesn't mean good or bad, it simply means we are adding or subtracting a 'stimulus' (see above).

Same with Reinforcement (R) and Punishment (P), they indicate if a behaviour will be more or less likely to be repeated vs whether something is rewarding or not.

 I have also coloured them in by an ethical traffic light system. Green does no harm, red causes distress, yellow should only be used in conjunction with green as MEBs (see below)

Duration: If we are teaching a sit, we are initially rewarding as soon as their bum touches the floor, so they know what we are asking of them, but then we change to waiting a second or so before rewarding the behaviour, then a few seconds more etc. This builds duration so the dog knows it has to sit until told otherwise.

Distance: Once they have the duration mastered, you will take a small step back before rewarding, then more steps, going back and forth while the dog holds position. Eventually you should be able to go out of sight and the dog keeps the sit.

Distractions: Finally we introduce distractions to prepare them for real everyday life. A toy dropped on the floor, someone else making a noise, another dog, etc. Any time we are adding something new, we need to reduce the previous Ds, so we will stay close by and reward rapidly then build them up again.

The 3Ds are a lot of rinse and repeat but it cements behaviours deep in your dog's mind and helps them remember for longer.

We obviously can't give our dog a treat every single time for everything they do for the rest of their lives, but we also don't want them to stop finding value in doing the behaviour so we change it up gradually and it affects learning like this:

Let's say you press a button on a box, and a piece of chocolate (or money, or tacos, whatever takes your fancy) emerges from it. You are going to push the button again to get more chocolate. After five delicious squares of chocolatey goodness you establish that this behaviour (pressing the button) is always going to bring good things your way.

One day you press the button and nothing comes out. Do you leave it alone or do you try again, wondering why it didn't work? Of course you press it again, and chocolate pops out! Okay so it just didn't work that one time, you go about as usual. Every now and then the button doesn't work but that's okay, you just press it again a couple of times to get the chocolate to fall out.

After a while it's barely giving anything out but you still press it when you walk past, like checking the fridge every five minutes in the hopes that something has magically appeared in there.

We've already established that it is hard to teach a dog to not do something such as jumping up and in an effort to "get the job done", traditional trainers will use aversive methods to try and speed up the process such as corrections or e-collars. (P+ and R-).

But how can we humanely help our pup along when it comes to leaving guests' sleeves alone instead of mouthing them the moment they come through the front door?

Well, the good news is it's super easy to teach a dog to do something else instead, and here's where we introduce MEBs; a behaviour that can't be done at the same time as the undesired behaviour. In the case of our chewy friends, we can teach them to bring a toy or cushion when guests come through a door, which not only looks adorable, but your dog can't put their mouth around a guest's sleeve if it's full of tug toy.

Ever had one of those days where nothing goes right and later on something as small as dropping your spoon is the last straw and you freak out? That's trigger stacking. Lots of small little things adding to our stress levels until we seemingly erupt out of nowhere. It's the same with our dogs. Maybe they didn't sleep well, then a dog barked at them, then a loud bus drove by, then it rained, then another dog barks at them and this time they bark back. You may wonder why they didn't bark at the first dog but they weren't so riled up at that point. When we talk about keeping your dog under threshold, this is what is being referred to. It doesn't just have to be stress, over excitement can do the same thing if your dog doesn't get chance to calm down.