Pavlov's Time Table. 3 strikes and your done

I was sitting outdoors with my spiritual teacher.
She LOVES hunting. She loves it for the sake of doing it...no blood lust, just pure unadulterated fixation on a task, no matter how long she has to sit still. Complete concentration. She will turn down play with other dogs, food and companionship to just fixate on a kill.

Reading about Pavlov, I think people get confused at the duration of necessary repetitive stimuli to create a conditioned response.
Twice? Done....
Three times? Might as well tattoo it on your Brain.



A contractor backed into my fence and broke a hole through it into my neighbors yard.
Out of that hole came ambling the Dumbest Rabbit I have ever seen...without even a pause, he came loping into our yard and almost Bumped into Sophie. If I did not intervene, he would have been a DEAD dumb bunny.

But I distracted her long enough for him to run back through the hole , after a long chase of switchbacks and trick moves.

A SECOND Rabbit came out of that hole. After the nip and tuck chase, Sophie now knows that to get the Rabbit, she must wait and fixate on that hole. It is clearly the 'Rabbit dispenser' and she is a very sensitive dog. She also knew to Hide behind my Ladders so she sees the Rabbit before it sees her. She doesn't think it might happen...she is CERTAIN it's gonna happen

Where is MY Rabbit hole. The thing that I fixate on because I am certain it is coming...not intellectually, but from conditioning. We fancy ourselves intellectual; we understand conditioning....but there is a little voice of ego saying "I'd know it if it was happening to me and it's not" It is. Where? I better sit still.

Did it happen twice? I'm probably conditioned. Three times? It's tattooed on my brain

The only way to get free is to know that I'm not.

 

My understanding is that our TMS brains are like the rabbits that keep falling to the holes even a dog is waiting on the other side for a kill. But who knows, my boss always has a beef with me understanding things in the opposite way, lol...

 

Ah, totally get you @Baseball65 that’s pretty much the entire premise I’ve been running on.
The EMDR therapist noted this starts (of course) way back into infancy and childhood because that’s when we learn about this kind of Pavlovian habit and how it can work for us. It’s exactly why Sarno has you look at your personality traits and your personal history and how your mind works in the current moment.
A hyperfocused dog will keep going after the same rabbit because it *might* be “rewarded” by the thing it is hyperfocused on. Frankly I don’t need another symptom to be my reward!

 

@Baseball65 Love that photo of Sophie at the fence!! At first, I thought the ladders were there blocking the hole in the fence. Funny how clever she is to hide behind the ladders.
Thanks for sharing this story...

 

The Hole is over by that BBQ pit thing.... There has been an absolute RIOT of spring time life explosion out there...Blue Jays fighting Robins, Baby birds and DUMB BUNNY's...
We spend a lot of hours out there, but she is now dedicated to monitoring the hole....because of two rabbits.