Overriding functionality

[orbitz@REDACTED]

I had a situation in a python project where for 99% of the uses of this 
class, the programmed behavior was perfect.  But for a few situations 
one of the member functions of that classes needed to use an alternate 
object.  On top of that, we didn't even know it needed that until we 
came across it with one of our clients broken interfaces.  To solve the 
problem all I had to do was subclass the object and override that 
function.  Is there any common erlang idiom for this? This being, 
basically, inheritance I guess.  I'm not looking for an OO model 
really, I don't think, but sometimes it does seem easier to simply 
override functionality.  How is this situation even dealt with in a 
language like erlang?

Thank you