Counter-conditioning
Changing how your dog feels about something by reliably pairing it with something better, until the scary thing predicts good news.
Also called: ccm · changing the emotional response · counterconditioning
Obedience changes what a dog does. Counter-conditioning changes what a dog feels, which is the only thing that holds when you are not watching. A dog taught to sit while frightened is still frightened, and it will stop sitting the day the fear wins.
The mechanism is boringly simple and easy to get wrong: the trigger must come first and the good thing second, every time. Other dog appears, chicken arrives. Reverse the order and you have taught your dog that chicken predicts other dogs, which is not the lesson.
It is almost always run alongside desensitisation, because the pairing only works while the dog is under threshold — a terrified dog does not eat.