We have recently bought a caravan, however, due to a number of unforeseen circumstances, outings so far have been limited to a grand total of 9 nights, within 2 trips, to 1 caravan park; not exactly the grand UK tour originally planned, but if I am honest, maybe a bit of a blessing in disguise, as being newbies to this hobby it has been a somewhat steep learning curve.

The easy bit (singular!) which I must admit I hadn’t planned going so favourably, was our Jimmy taking to the caravan like a Scottie to a romp in the heather. He seemed to have no issue with the comparatively miniscule new living quarters, or the fact that he couldn’t keep on boomeranging in and out the door (to the outdoors/garden) as he does at home. When he was in the caravan, he either went to his bed, or if you were cooking, installed himself as an immovable trip hazard right behind or to the side of your legs, basically exactly the same modus operandi as at home. So, settling in to a more compact way of life thankfully has not appeared to be an issue, although saying that, I did prepare for it not going as well by planning to do a little ‘classical conditioning’ just in case; the reason uppermost in my mind being that a friend’s dog took an absolute aversion to their new motorhome which has tainted somewhat their touring retirement plans!

What is classical conditioning and why should you invest in it? Well, in fact, it is a very useful behavioural training tool, which actually requires you to do no formal training – great for the lazy and those in holiday mode! All you are doing is just getting your Scottie to pair or associate one occurrence to another occurrence. The simplest and best known example of the process – aka Pavlov’s Theory –  being from the Russian physiologist,  Ivan Pavlov himself, who demonstrated (with dogs as his subject) that when a bell was rung (one occurrence), food would be brought out (second occurrence) which  paired the bell being rung with the food being brought out in the dog’s mind;  the resultant behaviour was the dog drooling in anticipation every time he heard the bell.

So how was I planning to use Pavlov’s theory of association with my Scottie in a caravan? Well, I did buy in a little help in the guise of a LickiMat and Primula cream cheese. The idea was to smear the LickiMat with cheese and stick it to a surface in the caravan; maybe on the fridge door or the panel under the sofa. I would then progressively start moving where the mat was located to make it into a game of go and find each time we entered the caravan. Therefore, the sight of the caravan (first occurrence) in essence was Pavlov’s “bell” which was indicative of the food source, my cream cheese filled Lickimat (second occurrence) within.  The resultant behaviour could well have been drooling every time he saw the caravan, however, even if it hadn’t actually been drooling, the sight of the caravan would hopefully have triggered a heightened sense of anticipation and a flood of dopamine, the happy hormone.  Then once in the caravan, and finding the prize paired with the caravan, the whole action of licking away at the cream cheese would have allowed for even more happy hormones to be released, as eating foods that we like, produce in the moment and the surrounding time period, even more dopamine and serotonin, both pleasurable chemicals being associated with time spent in our caravan.

In the end I didn’t really need to use this tool within the caravan as aforesaid, although I did practice with the LickiMat in the kitchen at home before we first set off so that he got the idea if needed, although he certainly didn’t need any more positive association with our kitchen!

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  LickiMat

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  Jimmy “paired” with caravan and beer