Paws for Psychology

Last night, I let the dogs in the front door, but it turns out that Ian had other ideas.  He quickly had me put Ruthie back out on the porch, and before closing the door, he suspended, from the door nob, a string of "jingle bells" - the kind designed to make the door jingle every time you open it.  And, as usual, there was a method to his non-madness:  he wanted to try to train Ruthie to "ring the bell" to get into the house.  He figured that if she wanted to come in, she would jump up on the door, hit the bells, cause them to ring, and see that when the bells ring, the doors open.

It was a brilliant experiment in operant conditioning.  Unfortunately for science, and fortunately for Ruthie, there was no time to leave her out there long enough to figure out the trigger required to get her designed outcome.  But one shouldn't be discouraged:  I imagine that even Pavlov's dogs didn't salivate the first the that the bowl of borscht was set before their hungry little snouts...

(December 27, 2012)