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Heather: “The two-brain makeup, would you say that is also virtually present in humans?”

KB: Yes, all mammals have two brains, the central nervous system (Big-Brain) and the enteric nervous system (little-brain.) The reason animals have two brains is so that their mind will be an action potential, a state of dynamic tension which is a source of energy. Thus, their front end isn’t connected to the hind end unless they complete this internal circuitry with an external connection.  And because the front end isn’t connected to the hind end, the front end can go faster than the hind end, and the hind end can go faster than the front end and this will cause the animal to act just as if it’s either an electrically or a magnetically charged particle. For example, if the front end is going faster than the rear end, there will be an electrostatic pressure and the dog will work on a load/overload type of static discharge kind of behavior. Whereas if the hind end is going faster than the front end, then this hunger will be a sexual or a magnetic kind of orientation wherein the dog will move circuitously and be readily deflected. This two brain makeup inculcates a principle of emotional conductivity whereby the individual either goes the path of least resistance (electrical frame of reference) or couples with another and is attracted to the path of highest resistance (magnetic frame of reference.) This is adaptive is because emotion and the principle of conductivity is the embodiment of the laws of nature, and since nature changes in accord with said laws, then if the physiology and behavior of an animal is predicated on these laws it will be able by dint of its constitution to “predict” where potential energy is going to be. In other words, social structures are a computation of change which inspires the group to position itself to capture and harness potential energy.

Heather: “When re-reading your description above, I thought about how accurately it described my behavior last night – I took Happy out for his last bathroom break of the night, and he started woofing at something in the yard (it was dark, I couldn’t see anything), and was more persistent about it than his routine boof-boof-boofing he does to scare away any boogey men lurking in the woods before settling down to his business. So I went to check it out, and I saw what I thought was a light moving around – at first I was moving in a straight line (slowly) and I was really “charged” as I approached and felt enough pressure that at some point I didn’t want to go forward anymore, but as I got closer and saw that it was indeed something non-threatening but I wasn’t sure what, I began to circle around, and in the circling I realized that it was the deck light reflecting off of the handle of the pool skimmer, which had been left leaning against the fence (normally it’s put away).”

KB: Things that reflect energy are predatory aspects and these interrupt the sense of flow and trigger physical memories of resistance/stress/shock.  And then something upright (leaning against the fence) thereby fits the form of a predator as the physical memory in the emotional battery potentiates the higher processes of the nervous system so that the mind construes variables of the present in terms of forms from the past.

Heather: “Also the quality/quantity issue – I can see how different temperaments could be tuned differently to different objects of attraction with different perceived prey/predator values (so for eg Happy, he will notice a squirrel but for him he readily perceives playing tug with me as the displacing of more emotional energy, because the emotional mass of the squirrel, and thus the force it induces in Happy, is not very large compared to mine.) Things that are very prey-like to him do not move a lot of energy, he is tuned to a higher predator/prey ratio.

Very cool, I am excited to start really looking at things in this manner and making my own observations.”

KB: Exactly, the higher the prey threshold of the temperament, the more it takes to displace the dog and the more physical tactile contacting it requires to feel grounded. Thanks for the observations. You can completely deconstruct the dog’s mind by paying close attention to your own emotional experience without injecting thoughts. Keep On Posting!

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Again, we’re not saying that dog’s aren’t intelligent, we’re exploring the possibility of a group consciousness and if we want to extrapolate to a broader metaphysics, if consciousness is energy, in other words if one believes they have a consciousness that supersedes the form and material matter of their physical makeup, then the principles of consciousness are very likely the same principles as energy and therefore physics would be our entry point. Physics would be the mind of God playing out through the process of evolution. And if we want to know what God is “thinking” we might try divining the principles of physics in one of the most spectacular feats of creation that has evolved, the dog by our side.

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NS: “LIKE children with their hands in the cookie jar, dogs steal food quietly to make sure they don’t get caught. The finding adds to evidence that dogs can work out what others are thinking. Shannon Kundey of Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, and colleagues, gave 40 dogs, which had previously been trained not to eat food left on a plate, a chance to take food from inside two containers. Both containers were fitted with bells, but on one container the bells were muted. When someone was watching, the dogs took food from both containers equally. But if the watcher looked away, for instance by putting their head between their legs, the dogs went for the silent container. This suggests they knew they could get a meal without the watcher hearing them (Applied Animal Behaviour Science, vol 126, p 45). Kundey says her results back up other evidence that dogs can represent for themselves how others perceive their actions. For example, previous studies had found that dogs are more likely to take food when people are not watching them. Marc Bekoff at the University of Colorado at Boulder says the findings are more proof that humans’ mental abilities are not unique. “Great apes do amazing things, but so do other animals,” he says.”

As the article is written I’m confused and I haven’t been able to find clarification on/line. These dogs were trained not to take food from under the container, and yet they took food from both containers equally if researcher was watching. (Was this before being trained? But the article specifically says “previously.” And if they took food after training, did they not do so sneakily?) Then, if researcher wasn’t watching only then did the training take effect with the dogs acting in response to the judgment inculcated through training that they weren’t supposed to take food from the forbidden plate.
If I can clear this up I also need to know how the dogs were trained not to take food from under the plate, as well as how they came to learn that some of the bells were muted. Before I venture an opinion I would like to find the answers to these questions.

However having made that disclaimer about not having all the facts or seeing a video which is always telltale, and going from what I presume the dogs might have behaved like, I feel I can nevertheless make the following definitive comments. A long time ago I watched an espionage thriller that revolved around a magic trick that was intended to misdirect the other side. The hero was consulting a magician who told the man flummoxed as he was by the sleight of hand being conducted, to always remember that he was dealing with a magic trick and that whatever he was thinking was his mind being tricked. Likewise, the intellect always tricks our mind to seeing thoughts as the only explanation for complex behavior. In my experience these experiments always prove the opposite of the intellectual consensus that immediately collects around it. Always bear in mind that the dog’s mind is an energy circuit, whereby other beings, and even inanimate objects become incorporated into its state-of-mind and as a function of its “self,” indeed even material objects of matter can become part of its consciousness. So it’s only in the human mind that the researcher isn’t seen by the dog as a feature of the dog’s frame of reference, a part of its very mind. On the other hand by seeing the dog’s mind as a self-contained intelligence, we immediately think we see a dog acting “sneaky.”
The key to this experiment is understanding Pavlov’s research. In a dog’s mind as an energy circuit, the vibration of things that are made to stand out become associated with the essence of the thing, and this happens according to the strength of its hunger. Every moment has frame of reference which is organized around a negative-as-access-to-a-positive channel, this is a vibrational value, with the intensity value being the negative and the grounding value being the positive. The degree to which the intensity is grounded into the positive, is the resonance value, like the pitch on a guitar string. The dog tries to resonate with the negative in order to gain access to the positive and behaviorally this means becoming its equal and opposite, and/or aligning with it and mirroring it. It does not mean constructing a theory of mind for what it is attracted to. (If this were true, then we would have to say that dogs are constructing a theory of mind for a ball when it is amusing itself by playing with a ball. The ball is a living thing as far as the dog is concerned because it projects its “self” into it. Tom Hank’s character in “Cast Away” evolved a relationship with “Wilson” in this way because he projected his self into it and evolved feelings for it as a reflection of his own mind.)
In Pavlov’s dogs the ringing of the bell became associated with the meat, which means with access to the meat and so the most intense variable was the human as the negative, with the bell’s vibration becoming resonant with that access channel. The bell rings, the dog experiences pressure because it is tasting meat (drooling) but there is no meat in its gut to complete the circuit, and so it vibrates and radiates a lot of behavior which we observe as a state of excitement. It associates the ringing of the bell with the researcher’s eyes and the meat as relief from pressure, and vibrating intensely in a state of excitement as the means of resonating with that frame of reference which then leads to grounding and reduction of pressure. The dog is giving the human credit for the meat, and the vibration of the bell the most overt resonating variable that connects the negative to positive. (This is also why dogs howl.)
This modern experiment is that same energetic circuit in reverse and I find it especially ironic that a bell is being used. The dog is seeking to relieve the pressure from the person’s eyes by keeping the bell FROM ringing. The dog has no idea that it is not supposed to get the meat, it learned that if it vibrated too intensely like Pavlov’s dog getting excited, it was corrected, i.e. disconnected from its “self.” It didn’t even learn a cause and effect linkage, rather by vibrating too intensely it became the object-of-attention and this caused it to have to internalize drive and absorb stress. Innately in response, it then flipped polarity and muted its “self” in order to focus on the object of attraction and not become object-of-attention because bearing the brunt of focused energy disconnected it from its “self.” Even so, it’s still giving the human credit for the meat, but it is dampening its body as a resonating chamber because as long as it wants the meat it is feeling vulnerable, and can’t let anything into its consciousness which will cause it to vibrate too intensely, so it avoids anything that vibrates (metallic and plastic sounds are especially predatory, paradoxically even more than gunshots as many deer hunters can attest who fired and fired at an unsuspecting deer, but it didn’t take flight until the sound of a new cartridge clinking into the chamber sent that same deer flying. The deer had no idea it was being fired upon, and it had no idea that the metallic clink was a source of danger, the sharp metallic sound as a predatory aspect collapsed the state of attraction and that’s why it fled.) In other words, the dog is acting “sneaky” TO STAY IN RESONANCE WITH THE RESEARCHER, not in defiance of the human. It would be more accurate to say the dog is trying to keep the food from vibrating, which is the same as saying the dog is trying to keep its “self” from vibrating. Because of earlier training, it didn’t learn that it wasn’t supposed to take the meat, it learned that flipping polarity to a human who was acting so dynamic, i.e. active and direct, by becoming the equal/opposite, i.e. reactive and indirect, was the vibrational tone that represented access channel to the meat. It is not sneaking to get the meat, it is trying to remain in harmony with the human as access channel to the meat. It avoids the bell because it would vibrate its “self” and make it the object-of-attention, the recipient of focused energy. It has no idea what kind of mind is capable of focusing energy and making it the object-of-attention, but if you have ever seen a dog avoid a camera, it is because it is perceiving the lens as an intense predator focusing energy on it and it does so innately and because it isn’t capable of thinking, but trying to go by feel and it can’t feel an access channel.

I’m not sure the following variation on the experiment would resolve my objection, but it could confirm it. The researchers should try the “Clever Hans” approach and remove the researcher to a closet in the room with which dog is allowed to become fully familiarized as connected to the main room, which shouldn’t be hard for a dog to grasp if it’s capable of a theory-of-mind construct for another living being. Now if the dog had acted bold and “stole” the meat by acting like it was doing nothing wrong (which is my favorite story of how some American POWs escaped a prison concentration camp in Germany during WW2, they got a tape measure and some tools and measured their way right through the camp gate and into the forest while the guards watched them from their towers. They acted like they were doing nothing wrong because given that they were capable of generating a theory of mind they realized that being obvious was the best way to avoid raising suspicions in the mind of their guards) now that would be something. Fortunately for those of us who want to live with a dog, they can’t think, otherwise, we’d be in serious trouble. So two cheers for the temerity of modern behavioral researchers. Let’s hope for our dogs sake they’re wrong.

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Thanks to Burl for today’s stump-the-chump question. Let me answer it by way of contrasting the dog’s mind with the human’s mind and the latter’s capacity to compare a moment or a point of view, with another moment or point of view versus the former’s “group mind” point of view.  In other words, I’m going to compare how an immediate-moment, group consciousness frame of reference (the dog)processes inputs of energy in comparison to how a self-contained intellectually driven consciousness (the human) processes inputs of energy.

Imagine that you are working at a job wherein you sit at a desk and perform 4 units of work for $20 per hour. Then out of the blue you are promoted to a new desk where you perform 2 units of work for $40 per hour. The human mind is excited, this is great. I’m getting twice the return on half of the effort, what a deal. Wow, do I have a great boss. He’s very good to me. I really respect and admire him.

But then you become acquainted with your coworkers and in the course of inter-cubicle banter discover that the person sitting at the dest next to you is making $80 per hour for perfoming 1 unit of work. What now do you begin to think?  You begin to THINK resentment. Your intellectual mind begins to race. What does my boss really think of me, maybe I’m being a sucker, my work is much more valuable than this measly pay if that slob next to me is getting twice for less.  Who does my boss think he is, did he think he could buy my integrity for a measly $40 an hour? Why the nerve of that jerk. I’m outa here.

Meanwhile consider the group mind of the dog. As he makes his way through the world he’s expending 4 units of work for the doggy equivalent of $20 return. And then along comes a new situation and he finds himself experiencing $40 doggy dollars on 2 units of work. Wow, life is grand. Then it eventually becomes known to him (apparently by way of a short-lived burst of human intellectual relativism) that the dog next to him is experiencing $80 dollars of return by performing a mere 1 unit of work. How would he feel? A dog would feel that in order for him to earn $40 dollars for 2 units, the dog next to him must receive $80 for 1 unit. And this would mean that if his boss offered him a raise of $80 for 1 unit, he would say great, but of course for that to happen then the dog next to me must get $160 for 1/2 of a unit otherwise that wouldn’t FEEL right.

Dogs experience everything in terms of a group mind, not as an isolated self equipped with an independent agency of intelligence that takes stock of relative situations in order to compute some sense of the world. So if vibrating at a pitch of 40-to-2 makes the world go round, then whatever vibration others have, that ratio must constantly be maintained so that the world might go round ever faster. A dog’s mind is a circle and if being at his point on the circumference eventually gets him to the center of the circle, THAT’S ALL HE CARES ABOUT. Whatever pitch everyone else was vibrating at, (dogs can feel these pitches because of emotional projection) that precise scale of frequencies must be maintained as new energy comes in order for the feeling to be right. In other words, if dog A gets five biscuits to every biscuit given to dog B, then in dog B’s mind it takes Dog A getting five biscuits in order for it to get the one. If Dog B could think it would think “Thank God for dog A because that biscuit sure did taste good.”

Your dog is the luckiest dog in the world because you care about it. So don’t think guilt. You haven’t done anything wrong. There is no such thing as fairness in nature so don’t beat yourself up because then your dog will HAVE to express a behavior to make you think guilt and to prove you are right. In other words, to maintain the group harmony. Whereas if you treat dogs fairly then you are not creating a circle, you are being abstract and intellectual and a dog can’t feel an intellectual abstraction. DO WHAT YOU WANT. A dog can feel a want. Then however you are and whatever you did is the frequency that made the wheel go round. Keep On Pushing!

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Please feel free to come here and leave a comment about your experiences, a question about your dog’s behavior, something that you’re stuck on, or something you’ve accomplished. In short, if you’re going through the site, and have something to say that doesn’t quite fit elsewhere – this is the place! We hope this will make your reading experience a little easier, and we’ll continue to develop the tools you need to Keep on Pushing!

~ The NDT Team

The Selbach family dog, Athos

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She also pushes her cheek to mine and yodels excitedly while wagging her tail. especially if I start singing a song for her at that stage (resonating chambers?)

Would all that be behaviors that prompt regurgitation?”

I agree as Lee has said that it represents a sublimated bite, but I also would like to look at it from the perspective of the dog pressing near to get to Christine’s face and deconstruct the behavior from there. Putting aside for now any functional benefit of the behavior, as in prompting another being to regurgitate food, which I contend is derivative and not fundamental, why does the dog want to get close to Christines’ eyes? What do eyes represent to a dog, or to any animal for that matter and what effects do the eyes of another being exert on an animal’s body/mind? In other words, try to account for the behavior without using anything related to a thought or the construct of time as in cause and effect;  an immediate-moment interpretation.

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“My first contribution is a scenario:
A few years ago my family was out at camp. My sister brought her dog “Happy” a very nervous and high-strung beagle mix. The first thing she did was to bite Duncan in the face! Duncan did not retaliate but later in the day, she and Duncan were hitched up opposite each other but not within striking distance. We were all sitting in the sun room and watched this scene unfold:

Happy was barking (obnoxiously) in Duncan’s face and wouldn’t stop. Duncan stood facing her and would look left and then look right, he’d turn around with his back to her and turn to look at her. All the while, every movement he made was slow and seemingly deliberate. As this scene played out, Happy stopped barking and watched Duncan intently. Before long they were standing in parallel both looking in the same direction and Happy was much calmer. At the time, this seemed to confirm Turid Rugaas’ explanations of Calming Signals. I’d like to hear Kevin’s explanation of NDT.

My first ‘Stump the Chump’ question is: Why is it that some dogs wait until their people come home before they will evacuate their bowels? (That is, for those dogs who are not crated all day and are let out by other people or are free to dump during the day.)”

~

Once we understand that a feeling is a wave, and that a wave is composed by two beings as equal and yet opposites relative to the other we can see that the two incidents {a) Happy and Duncan and (b) a dog waiting for the owner to come home in order to poop} are in fact variants on the same phenomenon.

a) The direct and intense expression of focused energy by Happy biting Duncan was an electrostatic discharge and so Duncan migrated to the magnetic polarity whereby he would be induced to express his energy via a deflected manner. And because he wasn’t matching her intensity with his own intensity, Happy couldn’t find any traction in his feedback and so she began to feel she was wasting energy and began to be tired as electrostatic discharges easily dissipate. By experiencing that she was losing energy by pushing out so much intensity, this gave Duncan a window to look directly at her with small looks, which then began to give her the experience of displacement and hence a strengthening of attraction toward Duncan from a more sober perspective of not wanting to waste any more energy. Meanwhile Duncan was moving side-to-side mirroring her energy (acting prey-like) which induced Happy to align with him along a central line of focus. So this back and forth and then mirroring is indeed calming, but it is not a signal in any way shape or form in regards to displaying one’s intentions relative to another. The two dogs are not two self-contained entities of intelligences, separate agencies of being, they are beginning to become one wave function, Duncan basically absorbing and smoothing out the electrical spikes of “Happy” until they collectively can describe one wave function. Duncan has a stronger temperament and so he will orient to the magnetic to balance Happy but he has no cognitive understanding of what he’s doing, he’s simply feeling more and can thereby feel the open magnetic polarity since Happy is occupying the electric one.

b) What’s going on between any two dogs is but a macroscopic extension of what’s going on within any dog via its bipolar, two-brain makeup. Big-Brain neuro-chemical electrical activity has to be grounded into little-brain smooth muscle peristaltic action in order for a dog to experience that it is emotionally digesting its surroundings and what’s happening to it. So to a dog, a feeling is a wave and the strongest organ of wave generation is the systemic rhythmic action of the stomach and intestines. In other words, a dog doesn’t make a distinction between a bowel movement and a feeling, which is why they turn around to inspect their own elimination since it is the only object available to account for what “touched” them. So when an owner praises his dog for eliminating, then the owner is associating himself with that wave function of a bowel movement, the owner is becoming the object of that feeling (which is why it’s even possible to housetrain a dog or cat in the first place) and thus becoming a component to this wave function. This means that a dog is attracted to his owner with the feeling of a strong intestinal contraction, the dog is emotionally “digesting” its owner, and because the peristaltic involuntary action of its deep smooth muscles is rhythmic, it’s pleasurable. So the dog gets excited to see its owner, and earliest physical memories come to the surface and the entire system gets revved up. For this reason when I work aggressive dogs, I contrive for them to relieve themselves next to another dog so that they give the other dog credit as the object for what made them feel good. If I can get them to synchronized pooping, I know it’s only a matter of time until they will want to play with each other because that’s the ultimate experience of emotional digestion.

*Please feel free to use the comments section of this post to pose your own Stump the Chump challenge!*

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Persistence Hunting

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The Barefoot Professor

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Kevin: What’s profoundly compelling to me is watching these hunters get into an almost musical rhythm as they synchronize with the movements of their prey, they pick up the cadence and I believe this internal music is what then informs them as to what their prey is feeling when they lose the actual track and have to feel which way it went. The other striking thing is the reverence and sensual affection they feel for their prey as revealed when it has been brought down, again they have achieved a deep state of emotional attunement by way of the hunt. Hunting is communication, it’s not a competition. My thanks to Donnie for bringing this to our attention.

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