Behaviour & training
Desensitisation (desensitization)
Exposing an animal to a trigger at an intensity low enough to stay calm, then raising it in steps small enough that calm never breaks.
The variable you control is intensity — distance, volume, duration, movement. A dog that panics at a vacuum three metres away may be entirely fine with one switched off across the room, and that is where the work starts. Each step up happens only after the current step is boring.
Flooding is the opposite and is still common advice: hold the animal in the presence of the thing until it gives up struggling. What that produces is usually shutdown rather than recovery, and it can make the fear worse. The tell that you have gone too fast is simple — the animal stops eating, stops responding, or tries to leave.
Related
More in Behaviour & training
Positive reinforcementAdding something the animal wants immediately after a behaviour, so the behaviour happens more often — the R+ of training, and a technical term rather than a synonym for kindness.Socialization windowThe early period when a puppy or kitten accepts new things readily, and after which the same things start to be treated as threats.Resource guardingDefending food, a toy, a spot or a person from someone approaching — normal animal behaviour that becomes a problem when it escalates in a living room.Redirected aggressionAn animal worked up by something it cannot reach turns on whoever is nearest — the classic cat-at-the-window incident.Counter-conditioningChanging what something predicts, so the animal's feeling about it changes — the nail clippers stop meaning restraint and start meaning chicken.Trigger stackingStress that has not been given time to clear adds up, so a small final trigger produces a reaction wildly out of proportion to it.