The Drool Factor

In the very late 1800s Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov stumbled on to something.

Pavlovian conditioning - also known as classical conditioning - was an accidental discovery.

Pavlov showed the existence of the unconditioned response by presenting a dog with a bowl of food and measuring its salivary secretion. Dogs don't need to be taught to drool when presented with food.  That's what dogs do.  They're hard-wired to drool when presented with food.

However, in his experiment, Pavlov used a bell as his neutral stimulus. Whenever he gave food to his dogs, he also rang a bell. After a number of repeats of this procedure, he tried the bell on its own. As you might expect, the bell on its own now caused an increase in salivation

I got the same thing going on.  Getting-up from the chair at dinner time is all it takes to turn-on the drool spigot.

Took the coffee table in the picture to the furniture refinishing man earlier this week.  He says it's the first time he had to refinish quality oak as a consequence of dog drool.  He'll try a finish more resistant to the drool factor.