Pavlov's chicken

We have this neurotic chicken running around the yard here this year. She takes a brown marker to her toes because she doesn't want the others to know she quit smoking. Yes she has quite the complex. But since she quit smoking she's taken to chasing Fritz who being a cross between an Irish Wolf Hound and a real wolf, his mother chased one down, picks her up all squawking and drops her in the water trough.

Mystified at this behaviour, we stumbled upon Pavlov and his behaviour theory. The central doctrine of this school is that an understanding of all behavioural responses may be acquired through a grasp of the concepts of drive, cue, response, and reward and their derivatives; rewarded responses become habits through a process of conditioning, and unrewarded responses tend to be extinguished. This doesn't seem to really apply to our wet smoke free chicken as we ponder of our fountains of amusement. Our guess is Pavlov didn't raise neurotic chickens.

The results of two studies indicate that people who are high in openness to new experience and high in neuroticism are likely to be bloggers, and additionally that the neurotical relationship was moderated by gender indicating that women who are high in neuroticism are more likely to be bloggers as compared to those low in neuroticism whereas there was no difference for men. So our chicken being a women for all intents and purposes, we wondered if bringing her in the house to the keypad would ease her sillier tendencies as she vented herself on the world at large. Us not being fluent in hen peck, do not really know if it is working, but she does seem to enjoy the house more than the water trough, although Fritz with his insight can't stop anticipating the friendly fire with his eye on the back door.

Being high on positive emotion is an element of the independent trait of extroversion. Neurotic extroverts experience high levels of both positive and negative emotional states, a kind of emotional roller coaster. Being intent on comprehending the masochistic tendencies of our chicken, we're pretty sure the water trough episodes and ensuing grooming sessions are needed to gratify the needed negative emotional states. Pavlov would be exalted by our acumen, and his theory would stand unabated.

With all due respect to our chickens, we do not harbour any ill will, or even entertain ridicule. We mostly poke fun at our own misunderstandings of your appreciated presence on our planet. And we enjoy having you over for dinner. We don't seem to be able to dig ourselves out of this hole now, do we?   We do wonder what Pavlov would say.      You all keep the pot covered, okay?