Both these blogs are great. One chronicles what it’s like trying to find the right method

http://baddoglaszlo.blogspot.com/

and this one is more puppy specific:

http://hero.naturaldogtraining.com/

LCK

http://naturaldogtraining.com/blog/marks-questions/

Also you said “since there is only one emotion, only one want and only one drive”. I take it this is the drive to make contact?

Also if food does not work as reinforcer, via operant conditioning, in teaching and rewarding behaviour i.e. a simple sit, why and how does the dog happen to end up learning the correct response to the command?

You also said “Dogs seemingly become non-food motivated, even though all healthy puppies are obviously food motivated, only because they go on to experience during the course of their maturation other forms of resistance that then become their definition of aligning within a group”. What sort of resistance do they go onto experience? How do these experiences affect a pups development? What do you think about the critical or sensitive socialisation periods and what is natural dog trainings thoughts and processes on raising a puppy?

Mark

But back to learning: the discussion on my site about eye contact, which is a technique I introduced to a competitive dog training club in Houston in 1992 and I doubt there are any instances of this method being used before this time because in those days trainers were spitting hot dogs from their mouths, is a case in point. (It’s also an example of how a new theoretical understanding can indeed lead to a practical application.) In seconds one can induce a dog to fixate on their eyes without any learning whatsoever because, in contravention to behavioral science, nature is not organized at random and animals don’t figure things out according to reinforcements. Therefore we can postulate an absolute rule of learning no matter the context and for every species. The negative is access to the positive. This template is applied to every moment and situation as a framework on which associations are formed in every animal’s mind. The “negative” (or predatory aspect) is physically manifested by the eyes, and if these are “open” it grants access to the “positive” (or preyful aspect) which is physically manifested by anything to do with the body, scents, flesh, blood, musk, symmetrical motion and bulbous shapes. {There is a network of “O Rings” in every animal’s physiology that controls the dilation and circulation of everything, from valves in the heart, gastric juices, veins and arteries, glands, even the pupil of the eye. I propose that this is a whole-body mechanism that is the physiological basis for the principle of emotional conductivity. In the “Clever Hans” horse experiment early in the 20th century, it was finally deduced that the horse didn’t know how to count when it stomped its foot, but was reading the dilation of the pupils of the person presenting it with the addition problem.}The irony is that many trainers now use this eye-contact technique as if it substantiates learning theory, when in fact it stands in abject contravention of the very theory that animals learn by associations. Associations in the way they form have to fit a preconfigured template of negative as access to the positive. I’ve had sensitive dogs walk into my office and bark at the eyes of a dog decal in a window, the electrical socket, cracks in a tile, and the glowing red intake of a wood stove. These particular dogs couldn’t look me in the eye by virtue of their sensitive natures, so they had to find a negative of lesser resistance value to focus on so that they could off/load energy by barking.
The pushing technique contravenes learning theory as does the eye contacting technique. According to learning theory it should not make a difference to the dog whether or not it is given a treat, or whether the dog pushes in with all its might to get the treat. The reason it matters to the dog however is that while in the former context food could be called a “reward” or “reinforcer” I suppose, but in the pushing context, this triggers the dog’s emotional drive dynamic, and since there is only one emotion, only one want and only one drive (all of which evolved to overcome resistance) it therefore feels to the dog that by making contact with its owner, it is also making contact with whatever would otherwise be a distraction, such as another dog, cat, deer, stranger and so on. Therefore as far as the dog is concerned it is getting what it wants because it’s overcoming resistance and the owner is now being perceived by the dog as THE NEGATIVE-as-access-channel-to-the-positive rather than it being embodied by the eyes of whatever was previously distracting it. Through the push the owner has now become the access channel to the energy stimulated by the distraction, this flow of energy makes the dog want to align with its owner and this urge is in service to the purpose of being in a group in order to overcome higher and higher levels of resistance. Being aligned in a group is the only way to recapitulate the principle of emotional conductivity so that an individual can feel good.
A dog that learns to push-for-food will want food even when previously it would have been uninterested in food when distracted by something. A dog will push for food even when it’s just been fed because it’s not doing the pushing for food per se, anymore than a dog chases a car for its food value, or wolves hunt moose for food given that there are many environments when they are well fed on moles, voles and field mice and there’s no survival need in risking life or limb in engaging a combative, dangerous prey animal, yet they still go after the moose nonetheless.
So we could make a test. We could take a dog and determine when its interest in food is outweighed by some distraction. This would establish the intrinsic reward value of food for that particular dog and which in current thinking is said to vary from dog to dog. Then, develop the pushing response and repeat the test and see if it raises the dog’s resistance to being distracted. The so-called reward value hasn’t changed from the perspective of a behavioral scientist, rather the dog has a different relationship to the experience of resistance and this changes the way its emotion boots up internally to categorize its experiences and assign emotional value to things, (i.e. as a ratio of predatory energy relative to preyful energy).
We often hear that some dogs aren’t food motivated and yet every dog becomes food motivated after they learn to push for food. This is because overcoming resistance is the one and primary want in the emotional makeup of an animal and once food becomes incorporated into the dog’s experience of its drive dynamic then that which used to inhibit it now arouses it and all of a sudden the dog is hungry when it otherwise would have been shut down. It feels connected to its “self” by virtue of being aligned with its group. Dogs seemingly become non-food motivated, even though all healthy puppies are obviously food motivated, only because they go on to experience during the course of their maturation other forms of resistance that then become their definition of aligning within a group.
Finally, we don’t actually eat food, or I should say we don’t fundamentally eat food, for its nutritive value because as I think I mentioned earlier the energetic value of the food isn’t realized until after it’s been digested and yet the pleasure of eating the food (flow) and the experience of satisfaction (wholeness) is concurrent with the eating of the food rather than an actual input of energy derived from eating the food. We fundamentally eat food or look forward to doing anything, for the feeling-of-flow any such action might induce and which then renders a feeling of wholeness. Because the brain-to-gut connection (the alimentary canal is the primary channel for the feeling of flow) is fundamentally concerned with implementing the principle of emotional conductivity, and because emotion becoming-unresolved-and-then-resolved according to this principle immutably renders group organization, this means that an act of ingestion is fundamentally a social act. (Just go on a long fast if you want to experience a sense of profound alienation from those around you. And that the feeling of flow is synonymous with group alignment is most obvious in the litter/mother interactions) Thus, some people get addicted to alcohol or even not eating (anorexia) in order to control the feeling of flow by which they are trying to feel connected. They aren’t able to directly face the resistance that is necessary to overcome in order to actually be connected to the network.

The reason why something becomes a reinforcer is because of something called “transfer of value.” If you want to know more about behavior science (it’s a very rich and growing field) I suggest you subscribe to JABA and JEAB, and check out their websites. Also, here’s a neat article about the “contrast effect” and how it can affect reinforcement value that you might find interesting. http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jeab/articles/2007/jeab-88-01-0131.pdf.

My point is that I think all the elements in NDT can be explained and proven to work via behavior science research, and why wouldn’t you want to do that?