Counterconditioning

This is where the dog's emotions are changed from being scared of something to being excited/happy instead.

This technique involves conditioning an animal to alter its emotional response to a stimulus (the scary thing). When a problem behaviour is associated with an aversive or negative emotional response, the objective is to change the negative association to the stimulus to a strongly opposite, highly positive, emotional response i.e. the scary thing becomes a predictor of wonderful things.

So counterconditioning can be used to undo the effects of an earlier conditioning experience. Take, for example, a person that is frightened of spiders. A spider is introduced at a distance at the same time as the person is given their favourite food. Gradually the spider is moved closer, until the person is holding the spider whilst eating their reward. A negatively conditioned stimulus (e.g. spider, noise, etc.) is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (food).

Counterconditioning is particularly useful when working with dogs that are anxious or fearful. Leon was frightened of being touched by strangers, so the presence of people was paired with high value food rewards (roast chicken or cocktail sausages in his case). People were kept at a distance which Leon found comfortable (i.e. he didn't react but he knew they were there) and then he was fed continuously until the people went away. The aim of this is to get the dog to change its emotional state from seeing the person (or dog) as a 'scary thing' to seeing them as a positive thing. So we go from a dog barking or growling to a dog wagging its tail and wanting to be around people/other dogs.

The dog's reactions need to govern the pace of this process and the more often that you can set-up the situation so that the dog gets a positive experience with its 'scary thing' the faster this positive cer (conditioned emotional response) will develop.

The basic process is that the 'scary thing' is presented at a distance such that the dog doesn't react to it (so the dog doesn't growl, bark, lunge, stiffen, show any tension around its face, raise it hackles etc.). If the dog does react, the 'scary thing' is too close. As soon as the 'scary thing' appears, the dog is fed and is fed continuously. It doesn't matter if at some point the dog does react, all we are doing at this stage is getting the dog to associate its 'scary thing' with the most wonderful reward ever. Remove the 'scary object' after a minute or so and then stop feeding the dog and just let it chill. Repeat three times on this first session.

Repeat at least 3 times a day for a week, then change the scary person/dog for a different one. What you are looking for is the dog changing from a neutral response when it sees the person/dog/object to it actually wagging its tail. Once this point has been reached with person one/dog one, then change to another person/dog and repeat until the same stage has been reached, and repeat the process with at least 10 different people/dogs.

You are now ready to begin the desensitisation procedure.