Conditioning involves teaching the dog various reflexes through training. To understand this better, let's start with the natural, innate reflexes of animals: for example, dogs salivate when they see and smell food. They are subject to this reflex, which is why it is always triggered as soon as the food is nearby.
After successful conditioning, however, the dog reacts reflexively to a stimulus that would not normally trigger a reflex. This phenomenon is easily explained by the so-called Pavlov's dog. Professor Ivan Petrovich Pavlov wanted to prove that conditioning works in dogs. To do this, he rang a bell in front of his four-legged friend and initially noticed that this did not cause increased salivation - after all, it was only a simple ringing. Pavlov then rang the bell every time before giving his dog food. He stuck to this routine for a while until one day he left out the food. So the only thing left for the dog was the ringing of the bell, to which it now reacted with increased salivation. So even though there was only a noise that would not normally trigger a salivation reflex, this reflex was now triggered by the bell. The dog's conditioning was successful and thus Pavlov's dog was born.
Animals are still trained today based on Pavlov's dog conditioning. You can try the experiment yourself with our BARF dog food . You're sure to find the right food in our BARF shop .
