Every time I walk into a store—any store—my bladder lets me know it’s there.
It doesn’t matter if I just went. It doesn’t matter if I don’t actually need to go. The moment I step through those automatic doors, something deep in my nervous system chimes in: “Hey… time to head to the bathroom!”
Why?
Because when I was a kid, my mom had a routine: first stop on any outing was the bathroom. Like clockwork. So now, decades later, my nervous system still responds to the cue: “store = bathroom.”
That’s Pavlovian conditioning: a predictable sequence became wired into my physiology.
But more specifically, it’s a form of Pavlovian interference—when a previously learned emotional or reflexive response gets attached to a cue, and starts to override what you actually want to do.
What I want to do is shop for groceries, or try on a pair of jeans, or grab a lightbulb. What my body wants to do… is go to the bathroom. Immediately. That’s the power of emotional conditioning—it doesn’t ask what you feel like doing. It just reacts to what it’s learned to expect.
And our dogs experience this all the time.
Take the cue “sit.” In early training, it’s often snappy, clear, and reinforced heavily. But what happens when that same cue starts showing up before something exciting—like a ball toss, or an agility run?
The emotional meaning of the cue shifts. “Sit” no longer just means “place your butt on the ground.” It starts to mean “get ready to explode.”
So instead of sitting cleanly, your dog may sit slowly. Or squirm. Or freeze up. Not because they’ve forgotten the behavior—but because the cue is now tangled up in arousal and anticipation.
Nowhere is this more obvious than at the agility start line.
That “sit” doesn’t just mean stillness anymore. It means “get ready for the chase.” It means “the game is about to begin.” And the dog’s nervous system kicks into that pattern, even if their body hasn’t moved an inch.
So when you cue a sit at the startline, you’re not just asking for a behavior. You’re lighting a fuse.
We want that anticipation. We want our dogs primed to run with power and focus. But we also need a clean, confident sit to start the run.
That’s why this matters: when arousal interferes with execution, we don’t just have a mechanical problem—we have a conditioned one.
And it’s not disobedience. It’s conditioning.
More importantly, treating it like disobedience—by applying pressure or punishment in an attempt to “fix” it—rarely works. It turns out, Pavlovian conditioning is largely immune to operant consequences. That means you can’t punish away an emotional prediction – and you can’t simply reinforce your way out of it either. You may be able to shape a different behavior on the surface, but unless you address the underlying emotional association, the interference often lingers. That’s why understanding this kind of conditioning matters so much: it demands a different strategy.
So when you see your dog’s sit fall apart on the line, or in the ring, or in any emotionally charged context – it’s not about them blowing you off. It’s about a cue that’s carrying more meaning than you intended.
Next time, I’ll talk about how to insulate your trained behaviors from that kind of interference – so you can keep both the snappy response and the excitement.
More soon,
—Daisy
P.S. This is part of an ongoing series on lessons I took away from the Kynology workshop. You can share, revisit, or read earlier posts here at the blog!
For those who aren’t Agility Challenge members already, but are curious about the training I offer, check out the free training available at The Agility Challenge Website!