In the 1890’s, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov was looking at salivation in dogs in response to being fed. After trying a variety of tools, he ended up using a bell to initiate salivation. The result was what we call “conditioned learning.”
Lacey has not been alerting when she has to go potty. Standard potty-training methods have not worked, so I had to think outside the box a little. I decided to try using Pavlov’s technique: I bought a counter bell, and introduced both Lacey and Glimmer to it. The goal is to teach them to ring the bell when they need to go outside. The trigger word is “outside.”
The first day using this technique was not filmed, as it was an introduction process. This video is the second day’s work. We still have a lot of work to do, but yesterday, Lacey had only one in-house accident after working with the bell. This tells me that the bell just might be the ticket to finally house-breaking Lacey.