I saw these tips from kikopup on Facebook and thought it was worth sharing. If you are trying to use counter-conditioning to work with your dog but are not succeeding, these tips might help you figure out what is going wrong.
Dog Training Tip of the Day- Counter Conditioning- clicker dog training - YouTube
Classical conditioning is pairing a stimulus with a response. Think Pavlov's Dog: dog hear's the bell, starts drooling because he has been taught that the bell is a predictor of food.
Counter-conditioning is a type of classical conditioning but it usually comes into play when the subject already has developed a response to a stimulus but you want to change that response to something else. Example: a dog that is afraid of men might be counter-conditioned using positive reinforcement, causing the dog's emotional response to seeing men to be something other than fear (happiness or excitement, perhaps.)
Remember, conditioning is only really conditioning if it works. It is incorrect to say "counter-conditioning doesn't work for my dog," because if it isn't working, it isn't conditioning. All dogs (and most all other animals and people as well) can be conditioned; you just have to do it right.
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