Better To Receive Than To Give

“Huuney” has discovered that it’s better to receive than to give. In other words, it feels better to be the object-of-attraction and absorb the other dog’s energy, than to be at the predator polarity and transmit energy to the other dog. This guarantees social behavior because acting prey-like softens “Luke’s” tension and rather than getting stuck in the load/overload—-friction/making-dynamic (pack instincts), it allows them to play emotional ping/pong, the high frequency of flip/flopping back and forth then “magnetizes” Luke and raises his emotional capacity. Huuney, having learned that being the object-of-attraction feels better than being the predator, can thus hold back her predatory impulses WITHOUT building up a charge. Because she feels sensually aroused to Luke, she presses in on Luke when he drifts away in order to trigger his predatory impulses, and then she absorbs these by acting prey-like. Because she is so conductive this smoothes out Luke’s load/overloading behavior so that all sound between them begins to dissipate as they come into emotional syncopation. Emotional synchronization resolves unresolved emotion. In other words, rather than going by the particulars of how her physical memories of unresolved emotion were acquired (dog fights), her physical center-of-gravity now serves as an emotional center of gravity between them and she becomes his emotional counterbalance (this is clear to see in the “weightlessness” of her body movements as Huuney is aligning her body around the way Luke is aligned around his forequarters). How did she gain this awareness? By learning how to go through these same steps with a human being.

 

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Published July 5, 2011 by Kevin Behan

6 responses to “Better To Receive Than To Give”

  1. john says:

    would it be the exact same behavior between two dogs or two bitch’s playing together, Was there any special techniques used with huuney apart from ndt, because i seem to be spending most of the time with the dog playing the moose(prey), and the dog the predator, how do you get the dog to flip polarity without it affecting its self conifidence or misunderstanding our relationship,,thanks

  2. kbehan says:

    Yes, it’s exactly the same between two females or two males. But in addition to push/bite/bark/hide ‘n seek/etc. the dog also has to learn to soften its shoulder muscles so that it is induced to become prey-like by writhing upside down on the ground. You can see from Huuney that she’s not becoming submissive, only soft. Notice how she springs up and rushes into Luke after he loses interest in order to incite him to flop her over again. (I’ll post another video showing how much energy she puts into her work) It feels better to be upside down and being gripped in the neck than being at the other polarity so this is a natural inclination. (For example, would one rather give a massage or receive a massage). So I do a whole body massage (rub-a-dub) so that the dog can experience the pleasure of being upside down. Then, I teach the dog how to go from intense shoulder muscle action, barking/biting/pushing, to “flopping polarities” and rolling over to get the massage in the blink of an eye. This capacity to flip and flop instantly, then becomes available to her when interacting with other dogs. There is only one energy so if we condition the energy between the dog and ourselves, then this will inform the dog with other dogs even though the situations seem so different.

  3. Adam Silverman says:

    You mean you rub the dog’s belly, while she’s on her back? And then intermittently do this with intense drive behaviors?

  4. kbehan says:

    I rub the dog’s belly, massage the neck, and work all along the top line. I don’t go from calm to high drive, but in the other direction, intense action and then rub-a-dub. This teaches the dog to be able to flip and flop polarities in an instant and not get stuck in a sensation of resistance, which is the spark of an aggressive outburst. The front end isn’t connected to the hind end, and the top half isn’t connected to the bottom half, they connect through resonance with surroundings. So massage is connecting the front to hind, top to bottom, through handler as that ground.

  5. Alwynne says:

    So interesting, I will try this with Cholula. She has come a long way but there are still some odd elements of her energy and her ability to flip is not great. Maybe it is connected to this lack of connection you describe between front and hind ends–it came out strangely this past weekend at my sister in laws. They have a new house with several types of flooring, which made Cholula very nervous–but the thing that completely freaked her out was a steep back stairway with doors at the top and bottom of the stairs. Forget going up and down the stairs–she was terrified even to walk by the closed doors at the top or bottom of the stairs — she acted like she might be suctioned into the stairs just by passing by the entrance to them. At our house she doesn’t like to cross by the basement stairs (same thing, she acts like she might get sucked down there just by walking by) unless the door to the stairs is closed, but once the door is closed she is okay with passing by.

  6. Annie says:

    Very interesting to see, Kevin!

    Marc and I just watched this..can a dog like Luke ever flop down for another dog, or will we need to work more on our massage techniques to help him out? I noticed that at one point, Huuney shook herself from head to tail….was this a type of energy discharge?

    As a Music teacher, I have used many methods with children for body/spatial awareness….with the very young, 3-4 years old, I may begin a class by saying, “find the top of your head. Touch your cheeks, your throat, your chest, your belly, the tops of your legs; now grab your toes.” No matter how high the energy becomes during the class, I can always “flip” them back to a state of calm, having made a cellular/tactile memory at the beginning of the class. Thank you for posting.

    Btw, the large dog that was mounting Luke….was his behavior considered submissive as opposed to soft? Or is there really no such designation as “dominant” and “submissive”, only “Predator” and “Prey”?

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Books about Natural Dog Training by Kevin Behan

In Your Dog Is Your Mirror, dog trainer Kevin Behan proposes a radical new model for understanding canine behavior: a dog’s behavior and emotion, indeed its very cognition, are driven by our emotion. The dog doesn’t respond to what the owner thinks, says, or does; it responds to what the owner feels. And in this way, dogs can actually put people back in touch with their own emotions. Behan demonstrates that dogs and humans are connected more profoundly than has ever been imagined — by heart — and that this approach to dog cognition can help us understand many of dogs’ most inscrutable behaviors. This groundbreaking, provocative book opens the door to a whole new understanding between species, and perhaps a whole new understanding of ourselves.
  Natural Dog Training is about how dogs see the world and what this means in regards to training. The first part of this book presents a new theory for the social behavior of canines, featuring the drive to hunt, not the pack instincts, as seminal to canine behavior. The second part reinterprets how dogs actually learn. The third section presents exercises and handling techniques to put this theory into practice with a puppy. The final section sets forth a training program with a special emphasis on coming when called.
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