Science understands energy as an “action potential,” as a differential in concentration of “charged” particles between one place, or pole, and another place or pole, as for example when water is held behind a dam or there is a concentration of electrons at the negative terminal of a battery. A charged particle transmits the action potential, the force that’s built up, but it isn’t energy itself.

The only meaningful way science can discuss the notion of energy is in regards to how much work this force can do as the action potential goes from a charged to a neutral state and we can content ourselves with this understanding as it will not prove any more limiting to our inquiry than it is to the utility company’s ability to charge us for whatever it is that is running through our meters and jiggling the electrons in our homes and toaster ovens thereby making every appliance and electrical device hum with “energy.”

One can also say there is a universal motive in everything a charged particle might do, whether it’s running a computer, a refrigerator or driving a water wheel set in a stream. Charged particles “want” to move so as to return the system to a neutral or discharged state. So an action potential creates “like-minded” charged particles, like-is-attracted-to-like in order to return the action potential to neutral. Furthermore, when charged particles move they create a field of energy, like a standing body of water that pools between an inlet and an outlet, or a magnetic field that surrounds an electrical current, or the gravitational field that envelops our solar system. (These fields are social systems.)

This phenomenon of an action potential that results in a current and a field is exactly how I mean the term energy as it applies to emotion, consciousness and animal behavior. By observing behavior without projecting any thought, intention or reason onto what’s going on, we can observe a “current” of emotion running within an animal (two-brain makeup) to bring an internal action potential “to ground” and which is the source of any and all behavior because it is the substrate of animal consciousness, it is how physical energy is internalized and presented to the higher processes of the nervous system as information.

Observe a dog being held back by some restraint from something it wants. Refrain from reading any intention into what the dog is doing. Simply, consider that the dog is exhibiting energy by the strictest scientific definition of the term. The dog is manifesting an action potential, a build up of force on one side of the restraint or barrier, relative to the object of attraction which constitutes the complementary polarity of lesser concentration. This physical energy is measurable by every scientific metric, hormones, neurons firing, valves open/closed, dilation, skin tension, body movements, immune system activity; metabolic rate, muscle stiffness, etc., etc.. Meanwhile, behavioral science simply describes this as a state of excitement, agitation, aggression, frustration, fear and so on and in the process ASSUMES that the underlying animating energy is neutral, blank, and that the only meaning to this state of energy manifested in every cell of the dog’s being is derived from the higher processes of its central nervous system. This is an assumption that leads to many more assumptions all of which are taken as self-evident and therefore remain untested and which then compels the behavioral scientist to take the dog’s brain and body apart cell by cell and gene by gene trying to find the source of the meaning to its behavior.

Once one can see a dog as the physical embodiment of an action potential, and that the disposition of this action potential follows the laws of nature, one will next be able to see two dogs as coming to represent one action potential, and then together becoming an action potential in terms of a collectivized want. In other words, one will learn to see the action potential replicating itself. This is the real purpose of genes. They are not fundamentally concerned with gene replication, they are fundamentally concerned with building organisms that replicate action potentials. These action potentials must evolve into existence in real time and these are how energy moves through an ecosystem and creates a network consciousness as the “mother” of all action potentials and which incorporates every element of the natural world into its matrix.

Pavlov demonstrated that even neutral, emotionally sterile stimuli such as the ring of a bell, can provoke a physiological response in a dog’s very viscera and thereby turn the dog’s body/mind into an ACTION POTENTIAL. In other words, the dog ends up FEELING physically connected to its surroundings and feels incomplete in terms of the object of attraction. Even the neurons in the dog’s brains function as an action potential and this is the organizing principle of its mind as well. A state of conflict is an action potential that animates an animal. And it also INFORMS an animal because energy always moves from a pole of high concentration to a pole of lower, the basic law of thermodynamics, a motive that instantly digitizes the dog’s sense of its surroundings into two values, that which conducts its energy (what we can call preyful aspects because dog becomes driven to ingest it) and that which does not (what we can term predatory aspect because dog becomes driven to avoid it). All complex behavior elaborates on this simple platform and it is easy to see this in everything a dog does. Whenever two dogs encounter each other, they begin to differentiate into prey and predator polarities. In other words, they are externalizing between them, a duplication of the internal action potential by which their body/mind is organized.

An internal action potential also polarizes the animals’ body so that its posture, movement and even its physical eliminations and secretions exhibit a bipolar signature recognizable to every other animal – internally the head region represents the positive (+) terminal {it projects emotion} and the gut/loin region represents the negative terminal (-) {it absorbs projected emotion} – just as if the animal was an electrical battery. (Visually to the observing animal, it’s the other way around. The eyes are the (-) polarity because it reflects the projected emotion back at the observer and TRIGGERS its battery, and the gut/loin region is the (+) polarity because it absorbs projected emotion.) Thus constructed, every change in the environment becomes an emotionally ionizing event that polarizes an animal. Then, its physical secretions and actions become a physical manifestation of its internal chemistry, which is a computation of an overall emotional value, like the electromagnetic value of an atom on the periodic table. (Intuitively we use the word “juice” to describe both a battery and emotion.)

Therefore, the most conservative interpretation of advanced, complex canine behavior is that the connection between a dog and its surroundings is a physical, visceral one, just as if the dog is physically connected to objects of attraction, just as if the dog’s body/mind serves and functions as an action potential. And because this action potential replicates itself, a group of wolves are attracted to each other with a force that cannot be consummated by mutual contact and so they hunt larger prey, i.e. their internal action potential is now replicated as an external action potential between the group of wolves and this large dangerous prey. This is a physical connection in that the wolf feels the moose in its very viscera and feels physically connected to it. And because this connection constantly replicates by constantly adding new energy into this relationship, it can therefore be considered an emotional circuit that incorporates the many into one. Likewise dog and owner form this same emotional circuit so that the dog can become driven to do what its owner WANTS.

Any other model of behavior without such a precise definition of energy will at some point break down, and by necessity and intellectual expediency resort to thoughts/intention/reason in order to explain complex behavior. And if a model for a natural system is not based on the energy on which such a system must necessarily have evolved upon, these rationales will always end up contradicting themselves at higher orders of magnitude.

Unknowingly because behavioral science takes so many things as self-evident, it is projecting thoughts onto the behavior of animals (although recently lately this has become overt in many scientific writings) and this ultimately is a fatal error that actually puts it in contravention of basic evolutionary tenet that the complex evolved from unformed, i.e. energy.

Energy is motion. Form is motion that repeats itself. Form adds quality to energy. Consciousness is a form of energy that reliably repeats itself. The quality of consciousness is to add new energy to the network in order to reliably repeat itself.

Related posts:

1. I agree there is energy – everything does have energy – but there are also plain old basic learning principles that have been around for a long time.
2. Definitions
3. Why Do Dogs Investigate the Eliminations of Other Dogs?

Related posts:

1. An Interview with Kevin Behan
2. Why do dogs roll over in “submission?”
3. Born Wild, Trained to be Free

Related posts:

1. What Are Dogs Thinking?
2. What is natural about Natural Dog Training?
3. I agree there is energy – everything does have energy – but there are also plain old basic learning principles that have been around for a long time.

Related posts:

1. What is natural about Natural Dog Training?
2. A Challenge
3. Behan is too new-agey in his explanations to be taken seriously. He also dismisses large tracks of learning theory and psychology and ethology. He prefers undefined explanations like “emotional circuitry of dog and owner” Frankly I tend to dismiss and distrust anyone that talks about ‘energy’ or ‘vibrations’ to explain animal behavior.

When the dog was but one millimeter beyond some invisible threshold between the dog and myself; he bolted and slammed at full speed into a cow hitting her in the soft pocket under her front leg and right behind her shoulder. Now this dog was raised in the tony town of Greenwich, Connecticut and had never seen or dealt with a cow in its young life. And yet he hit her in the one and only spot that would be safe to grab onto because for the next twenty minutes he went on the ride of his life, over walls, through fences, through wooded thickets and over hill and dale and was protected from her bucking and kicking and the other cows and bull trying to ram him as well. When I finally extricated him from this Wild West rodeo gone wrong, there wasn’t a scratch on him. How did he “know” what to do, and I predict that were any other dogs in on the escapade they too would have invariably acted in a complementary way so as to harass and separate the cow from the bull so that the herd would have been confronted with a group acting in concert. Of course with repetition this hypothetical group of dogs would have perfected their style but not by virtue of practice, but because they would have become more uninhibited and therefore more EFFICIENT at every step of the operation by virtue of tuning into the geometry of feelings. They would have started orienting according to the mathematics of unresolved emotion decompressing from their respective physical memory banks back into pure emotion.

This is exactly what happens when training police dogs. The dogs don’t learn by virtue of reinforcements as to how to bite the sleeve calmly, and then carry it around, hold the criminal at bay and then release their bite cleanly. These behaviors reflect an internal emotional force that evolves into existence once the dog feels uninhibited. The dog actually regresses through every phase of its past and this is then recast in terms of pure emotion. Pure emotion is composed of one part arousal (hunger) coupled to one part vulnerability (balance) so that an impulse is informed by a perfect calculus of force and motion, then to be moderated by a geometry of feeling (deflection of energy without loss of momentum) that occurs when unresolved emotion as physical memory is triggered by circumstances. Complex expressions of behavior aren’t “learned” by virtue of classical or operant conditioning, rather they evolve according to the laws of nature that are merely DESCRIBED by the above systems of description. And since the emotional battery requires an external trigger, just like a consumer needs an external source of money because the network (economy) doesn’t allow us to print our own, it LOOKS like learning by imitation, repetition, trial and error is taking place but this is a serious misreading of the phenomenon and cannot accommodate the evidence as sooner or later such a model needs to say the animal is thinking.

So while it takes external triggers to fully catalyze the behavior, this isn’t learning in the behavioral science sense of something reinforcing something, any more than a chemical reaction transpires because it was “reinforced” by a catalyst triggering the reaction. When the dog’s drive is strong enough, what previously would have inhibited it all of a sudden becomes a catalyst to a more complex behavior. Learning is a function of temperament evolving into its various forms of manifestation; each form being a slice of a group configuration, i.e. an expression of sociability, in other words, working as a group to overcome a common objective. This is why we breed dogs for temperament rather than for the capacity to learn skills. Temperament is a faculty of discrimination and therefore a dog doesn’t “learn” how to be a police dog. First, the dog must want to bite, and then it can learn anything, most especially and most paradoxically according to behavioral science, when not to bite.

Related posts:

1. Why We Push
2. In the past, when ever I’ve seen “natural dog training” it has seemed anything but natural to me
3. Definitions

http://r-plusdogtraining.info/lexicon.htm

Reinforcement = anything that strengthens a behavior
Punishment = anything that suppresses a behavior
Positive = something added to influence a behavior
Negative = something taken away to influence a behavior

These are comprehensive DESCRIPTIONS that do indeed encompass the phenomenon of learning so it is possible to DESCRIBE Natural Dog Training through these terms of behavioral science. However they are superficial and ultimately meaningless because descriptions are not definitions. These “definitions” don’t say anything about the process of learning within the dog’s mind. Now a behavioral scientist would immediately complain that they are strictly studying the external behavior of an animal and have no need to consider what’s going on “under the hood.” But then when pressed about comparative behavior between species and between the same individual from one context to another, they always resort to the latest finding on neuro-anatomy and neuro-chemistry as a way of dealing with the question of comparative behavior and variability across the spectrum of behavior, thereby revealing the internal contradiction at the heart of learning theory that it needs to turn away from observed behavior in order to justify itself. They always reference some material function “under the hood” that’s inside the brain or genetically encoded. NDT only studies the observed behavior and never reads a thought/intention/reason into the behavior of the animal or ascribes to its genes some mysterious “intention” to replicate itself.

In order to entertain the distinction between describing and explaining, consider the following “definitions.”

Fuel = anything that adds speed to a car
Brakes = anything that reduces the speed of a car
Positive = something added to influence the behavior of a car
Negative = something taken away to influence the behavior of a car

These descriptions masquerading as definitions are right some of the time, however once we know what’s going on inside the car we can immediately see how they are sorely deficient as well. For example, when the key is turned and the car starts, saying that the car ASSOCIATES starting up with the turning of a key isn’t really saying much. It merely describes that a car starts when the key is turned. Such a description does have some value because a driver now knows they need to turn the key to start the car, however if one day the car doesn’t start when the key is turned, one finds themselves forced to look under the hood because the question remains, why does the car start when the key is turned? Why does one dog WORK for a food reward and yet another one doesn’t? Why does a dog work for food in one context, but then doesn’t in another? Are there such things as “high value” rewards according to some human rationale or rather is there a consistent LAW OF NATURE that can take us under the hood and reveal the consistency that’s going on within all dogs, within all animals, and that simultaneously generates variability from individual to individual, from context to context, and from species to species?

Related posts:

1. I was just told that Kevin Behan is into the old wolf pack theory etc…
2. I agree there is energy – everything does have energy – but there are also plain old basic learning principles that have been around for a long time.
3. October 23 – 25 Seminar: Journey to the Heart of the Dog

NDT overtly defines the dog’s nature (the drive to be in harmony) whereas other models either do not, or generate a definition that immediately contradicts itself. (Such as dogs have an instinct toward dominance and this must be suppressed in the interest of group cooperation. Or, dogs learn to be social and must be taught to be social because it’s not their nature. Because of these inherent contradictions, I am compelled to challenge mainstream dogma.) NDT is consistent from top to bottom because what is natural about Natural Dog Training is energy, and since energy in unarguably the basis of everything in nature therefore if a model is predicated on energy, it will be consistent and comprehensive. (If someone can show me a natural system that isn’t predicated on the laws of nature, I will close down this web site and study up on Cesar Milan and Behavioral Science.)

Natural Dog Training argues that energy not only animates but informs the dog as well. The dog feels, and then it knows. Therefore if one wants to affect a dog’s behavior we need to change the way the dog feels. So while I do indeed use all sorts of artificial props and contrived situations, I use them in order to impact how the dog’s TEMPERAMENT is processing the energy inherent in the situation. The use of artificial aids in training does not make a method unnatural. The training model makes a method unnatural. For example, a chemist can concoct an artificial compound never to be found occurring in nature, and yet the process of concoction is not arbitrary, the chemist must always work in accord with the principles of nature and therefore even a chemical artifice is composed by natural law. On the other hand if the chemist is appealing to alchemy, then that is an unnatural approach.

The nature of energy is to move and the laws of nature define the stability of natural systems. So if a training model allows the dog’s energy to move, then it is natural. If the model is blocking the free movement and consummation of energy, then it is unnatural. Most training models allow energy to move otherwise they wouldn’t be around in the marketplace, but only up to a point and this is the point to which they are successful. The point at which they stop allowing energy to move, is when they become unnatural and begin to break down. Therefore, even pinch collars and electrical collars if applied correctly can be part of a natural approach by virtue of adding “grounded” energy to the dog’s experience, and conversely praising the dog and giving it attention that ultimately makes it feel incomplete, is unnatural.

Related posts:

1. What is natural about Natural Dog Training?
2. From what I have read, young wolves DO need to be taught to hunt – what they already have are the ritualistic behaviors that make up the act of hunting, but they need to be taught how to apply them properly
3. What is Natural?

Sooner or later, virtually every puppy, no matter how juicy the tidbit thrown into the back of its crate, is going to balk at going in once it’s now mature enough to form an association that the cookie in the crate leads to confinement; i.e. the crate equals an interruption to the flow. What now?

I often hear the advice that an owner should try to make the crate a positive experience. Letting the puppy go in and out for a cookie without getting locked up is perhaps the best neutralizing strategy of this method, but other than that I don’t recommend the philosophy and overall methodology in this approach because in the final analysis if one is trying to make the crate positive by investing in all these positive things, they are in fact working against the nature of temperament which works according to an energetic logic (-) – - > (+) i.e.: a negative is always access to a positive. In other words, an animal’s mind is constructed so that it isn’t possible to have a perception of a positive without a counterbalancing perception of a negative as access to that positive. A negative that isn’t access to a positive, we can then colloquially call “negative” because the dog will avoid it. So once the crate has acquired a “negative” value in that it is perceived by the dog as representing an interruption to the flow of energy, then the more energy someone invests in making the crate so-called “positive;” in reality the more the dog will come to associate this so-called positive energy with its perception of the crate-as-a-negative-that-denies-access-to-the-positive.

When I was ten years old, no one could have convinced me that going to the dentist was a positive experience. I suppose if someone offered me a million dollars and a million ice cream cones, and since while sitting in the chair I could think about all the ice cream cones a million dollars could buy after I had finished off my first million ice cream cones, I could have voluntarily submitted my body to the chair. But I still wouldn’t have believed that the dentist experience was positive, it was simply something I was choosing because I now perceived it as a negative that led me to a positive.

So in the absence of the capacity to think and mental time travel, we can’t make the crate positive by adding more and more positives to the equation because in reality we’re merely adding more and more energy to the impasse with the dog coming to perceive its owner as trying to control it, and which paradoxically is thereby knocking it out of CHOICE. “Wow, there must really be something wrong with that crate if they’re trying so hard to convince me it’s positive.” Every kid dopes this out when they sense their parents seem to want them to do something a little too much.

However, you can make the crate positive RELATIVE TO THE ALTERNATIVE. (For example, if a comb is run through hair it acquires a surplus of electrons so that the hair becomes positive RELATIVE TO THE COMB. No actual positives, no protons, have in reality been added to the strands of hair, it’s just that electrons have leaped from the hair to the comb and so the two become electrically drawn together. So in my analogy, if the comb is the crate and the dog a strand of hair, the dog would magically leap into the crate because it feels that the crate is a relief of an electrostatic pressure.) Therefore, when the alternative to going into the crate becomes more intense than the crate, the dog feels an electrostatic pull to the crate and it CHOOSES to go in. And once the matter of choice is invoked then the crate is assigned to the energy loop as a-negative-that-leads-to-a-positive. By this I mean that if anything ever positive ever happens again in the dog’s life, as for example if it is ever let out of the crate, then the dog’s temperament records the crate as the negative-that-led-to-that-particular positive. Eventually, as the dog’s temperament gets more and more involved in the dog’s way of being, all positives are perceived as being linked to the negatives such as crate duty. I have never owned a dog that as an adult didn’t race to get locked up in a crate, kennel or house when I needed them to, even when they were leaving something compelling outside. In their minds, getting confined was how they were going to connect with what they were attracted to. (I also didn’t have to do anything in regards to crate training because they naturally came to associate the crate, kennel, indoors as being integral to the positive, prey-making things they got to do outdoors, and this was because I never gave any thought to making the crate positive.)

So if one is dealing with a dog balking at the crate, how does one make the crate RELATIVELY POSITIVE? By objectifying the problem

In other words don’t give the dog a psychological problem to solve, “Go into the crate because I think you should think it’s positive.” Give the dog a physical problem to solve.

A woman once called me about her big dog that was destroying her apartment when she left it alone. She was about to be evicted. I told her to get a crate and confine it so that it could learn that being calm in the crate is how it WILLED her return. She bought a crate and soon called me back telling me that she was a big, strong woman, and her son was a big, strong man and yet the two of them could not get this dog into the crate. It wasn’t aggressive but it was like trying to wrestle the Samsonite gorilla into the luggage it was stomping into the ground. (Sorry for the dated pop-cultural reference.) She had a pickup truck so I told her to come over to my farm with the dog and crate.

When they arrived I put the dog on a “high collar” (snaked up tight behind its ears) with the crate positioned on the tail gate. I also placed a narrow bench as a halfway step and by cranking up on the collar, the dog became slightly uncomfortable and this caused the dog to get up on the bench so that now it was now facing the opening of the crate, and halfway committed to making the choice I wanted. There was a gap between the dog and the crate, with the crate about a foot higher.  I should have whispered into the dog’s ear. The woman didn’t notice it but as I pulled up on the collar again and pointed into the crate, the dog began to have a mini-panic attack but now its options were reduced to two physical realities, the abyss below, or the crate above. It instantly chose the crate. After a dozen repetitions, I had the woman practice the exercise and soon the dog was zooming into the crate even when the crate was on the ground. In about five minutes the dog had associated getting into the crate with getting out of the crate. (The long term goal is that once a dog will play with its owner and wants the toy the owner wants it to want, no-matter-what, then the crate becomes linked on that continuum as well, one more negative that leads to the ultimate positive, the ultimate positive being hunting with its owner.)

This dog above was an extreme case just to make the point. Usually, before we get to the moment of truth, I have already placed the crate onto a box about six inches off the ground, and the dog is dragging a lead around. I get to the lead and then walk the dog into position, I pitch a cookie inside the crate, invariably to be consumed later, and then extend my hand a few inches inside the crate and as high to its top as I can. Then I wait as the dog becomes uncomfortable. I say nothing. The more the dog resists, the more uncomfortable it becomes and the sooner it will work out the choice. Paradoxically, the question of control is shifting away from the human and onto the dog itself, whereas with the positive approach the exact opposite tends to happen. The instant the inside of the crate is perceived as being more comfortable than the outside, the dog hops in. I’ve said nothing, I’ve invested no energy into the equation, I was merely a “smart” post leaving the dog to learn for itself that it can choose either to make itself uncomfortable, or to make itself comfortable by getting into the crate.

It turned out that I never got that blank check for unlimited ice cream cones and yet I now go regularly to the Dentist. I even pay him. Sure does beat the alternative.

Related posts:

1. Quantum Canine ‘Eye Contact’ Episode Part 1
2. Quantum Canine ‘Eye Contact’ Episode Part II
3. Final Post Of 2009

The first thing to say of course is compassion for the unspeakable horror the victim must have endured, as well as for the suffering of her family. The trainer was obviously full of life, she loved her work, and the world needs more people like her who fearlessly pursue their life’s dream. And I’m also not going to drum away on the obvious point that keeping a highly social animal, adapted to the vastness of the open ocean, in a small tank might be a bad idea. As one Orca advocate put it, “We don’t belong in their world and they don’t belong in ours.” And finally in cases such as these, for any of us that work with animals, humility rather than sanctimony is always in order. On a much smaller scale I’ve been through my share of training disasters, like the time a dog bolted from me, sunk its teeth into a cow, and started a stampede that drove over twenty tons of cattle back and forth across a quiet country lane (and this was during the pre-SUV era of tiny cars such as the Pinto and Honda Civic) and it was only sheer luck that no one was killed. So I know all too well that sinking feeling of helplessness and morbid dread when everything goes south in one split second, accompanied by the futile feeling of desperation that can so clearly be seen in the trainers at poolside, frantically slapping the water and trying to entice the Orca to them for a “cookie”. My sympathies are with them as well.

But there does unfortunately remain an important lesson to be drawn. As we all know there’s usually more to be learned from failure than success. One motivational speaker put it this way: it’s okay to fall, just make sure you always fall forward. And over the course of my career in dogs I’ve learned to always “fail” forward by never indulging in the luxury of telling myself a dog story. So one of the main reasons I’m writing this commentary is because it seems to me that in the aftermath of this incident, the PR machine at Sea World is hard at work crafting a whopper of a fish story.

The usual spin on these kinds of animal acts gone awry is a poly-sided bromide, one side being a dose of hard cold wild animal realism: “These (bears/Orcas/tigers) are wild animals and wild animals are unpredictable.” Therefore we should view trainers of dangerous predators such as Orcas as if they are aquanauts, the theme park equivalent of astronauts; and as such they knowingly assume the risk and understand the danger, all of which is in service to advancing the general public’s awareness and appreciation of the animals of the deep, just as astronauts quicken the public’s awareness and appreciation of space exploration.

And then another side of the spin is the romanticized version, as in: “That tiger wasn’t attacking Roy; it was trying to stop him from falling and hurting himself.” (I want to point out just how precise a control of its body an animal can have. I once took care of a large, overweight border collie/cross “Columbo” that would run across the yard and if I wasn’t paying attention, leap from the ground and delicately “buss” me on my eyeball. All I felt was a little smudge of wetness on my eye being that he was so gentle at the moment of making contact. And if it happened when I was wearing sunglasses he would slightly knock my glasses askew because the point of impact apparently remained perfectly calibrated for the lens of my eye. It was annoying, but I couldn’t help but marvel at the kind of physical dexterity Columbo manifested that an NFL wide receiver or principal dancer in the Russian Ballet would envy. So needless to say I don’t think a tiger would try to break someone’s fall by crushing their skull and I don’t think the Orca was playing with the trainer either.)

Eventually, the third side of damage-control, PR spin will end up being “pilot error”, although the reports seem to be conflicting. Was the trainer violating prescribed policy by being in the water with the Orca, or in the shallow pool, or was she outside the pool and on the coping when the attack occurred? I’m not sure what actually happened. However, the official version from Sea World seems to be in: the Orca seized the trainer by her hair and then violently thrashed her around and dragged her under because it was “curious” about her pony tail.

So does injecting the energy perspective into all of this shed any light? Yes I believe it does.

What strikes me the most when I watch the videos of Sea World performances, is the incredible degree of sensory stimulation to which these animals are exposed. In the audience’s mind the trainers are just dancing, – entertaining. But to the Orcas, arching out of the water and facing them on the fantail, it might seem that the trainers are writhing provocatively in black and white shiny wetsuits (if I’m not mistaken a human being is about the size of a seal). Perhaps the input isn’t being absorbed as simply good theater that it’s intended to be. Just as I always advise dog owners not to let their children wave their hands in a dog’s face or run past the puppy’s crate, I know I’d feel very uneasy sashaying around in the face of a killer whale. So the question is: since sensory input energizes the nervous system, and Orcas are bombarded with huge doses of it, where does all this energy go? I do know that in the deepest most primal recess of animal consciousness, when there is a high rate of sensory input, it means either danger or dinner; predator or prey; and either way the “computer” commands BITE.

The other thing that strikes me from watching the performances is what might the Orcas be experiencing as they perform their various routines. In the trainers mind they are conditioning the Orca to perform tricks, simple conditioned responses. The “cue” is the input, the behavior is the output. And in the trainer’s mind the output of behavior, no matter how complex the linked chain of behaviors, it nonetheless merely equals the input: in short the animal mind is basically a learning machine. But behavior is fundamentally about the transmission of energy, and energy has a quantity as well as a QUALITY to it, and so the relevant question becomes: what is the Orca FEELING when the trainer riding on its back points at people in the audience and then it flicks water in their faces by a sudden swoosh of its powerful tail? For example, if I were to condition my cat to flick its tail at a dog, I would worry if I’m inciting the cat toward feeling “aggressive” toward that dog.

Of course, the vast majority of times, with the greatest percentage of Orcas, the performance routines go off beautifully, and so this supposed primal command to bite by computer apparently isn’t being given. Or is it?

It’s my contention that the question, ‘why are Orcas the stars of aquatic amusement parks’ – - is also the answer to the question a to why most Orcas don’t maul their trainers while some do. Killer whales excel at these performances for the reason some attack, and most don’t. In other words, so far “Tilikum” has been characterized as a 12,000 pound Orca with a big problem; this may be his third victim, whereas an energy theory characterizes Tilikum as a big Orca with a 12,000 volt problem.

THE ANIMAL MIND IS AN ENERGY CIRCUIT; it absorbs sensory input and converts it into physical and psychic energy. Physical and psychic energy evolved to do work, to overcome resistance so as to move energy throughout an ecosystem. This is what truly drives evolution. It is more fundamental than the matter of gene replication or even survival. If an organism can capture, harness and move energy through an ecosystem, it thrives.

And in order for an energy circuit to reliably repeat itself, there must be an “emotional battery”, its purpose being as a reservoir for the sublimation of simple, pure emotion (pure emotion is attracted to a preyful essence) so as to be converted into unresolved emotion and stored as stress, with this stored energy being a built-up degree of force that can do work, but it is simultaneously information on how to align with others in order to do such work. (I.E. synchronize with others so as to overcome more complex and stronger forms of resistance.) This means that the purpose of sociability isn’t for companionship and for the pleasures of affection, as wonderful derivatives of sociability as these indeed are. Rather, the purpose of emotion, affection, love and its first cousin stress, is to do the work of evolution.

Meanwhile Sea World is peddling a Disney story that “love makes the world go round,” “We are one with the Killer Whales”, and “Orcas just want to be friends”. “We’re really good to these animals, we love them.” However, the fact remains that because Orcas are predators, this is how they are equipped to perform as they do. I’m no fan of the circus but at least old time Lion tamers cracking the whip, brandishing the chair (and we all knew there was a sniper off stage with a high power rifle) were selling honesty.

When animals are emotionally bonded, such as Killer Whales living in their pod, two, three, four or more synced up into a complex energy circuit, their many emotional batteries become one emotional battery, with this collectivized energy being for the purpose of overcoming more and more complex objects of resistance, – which is really what a complex routine of tricks represents. And interestingly as alluded to above, the featured star players at parks like Sea World are the oceanic equivalents of wolves, i.e. group hunters, such as dolphins and killer whales, and they evolved to herd schools of fish for efficient killing or disorient huge whales that are much larger than they are.

The emotional battery is “ionized” by environmental/sensory inputs so that the body/mind becomes “polarized” in a complementary manner. Thus the animal can align and synchronize with its peers in order to hunt collectively. I would guess that killer whales love synchronized activity for the same reason that dogs love car rides. And the higher the capacity of the emotional battery, the more adaptable the organism because its capacity for synchronization is higher. This then means all stimulation, be it gently petting and stroking the Orca’s tactile sensory regions; visual arousal; audio inputs such as blaring guitar solos and driving bass rhythms, is – in the final analysis – emotional energy. Neurons fire, bio-chemical energy is generated and so we return to the fundamental question: what is this energy “designed” to do? In my view, it is designed to do work, and the work that Orcas evolved to do is to pool their collective batteries in order to hunt.

I’m reminded here of an impromptu experiment Dr. Mech conducted when filming the “White Wolves of Ellesmere Island” with Jim Brandenburg. One can see this for oneself on the National Geographic video of that title. Mech and Brandenburg were set up above the wolf’s den and one afternoon while the wolves seemed fast asleep, Dr. Mech whispered to Jim that he was going to sneak down wind a couple of hundred yards and then let out a howl. Jim got excited; this was going to be an interesting field experiment.

When Mech got into position he began to howl, and he was very good at it because the wolves arose and became very excited. But then to Jim’s amazement, they began to fight, several of them biting and locking up and then tumbling into an alder thicket before they came to their senses. When Mech returned, Jim filled him in and recounted blow by blow what had just happened. And then he turned to Mech expectantly and waited for the interpretation of the results to the experiment. Oddly, Mech had nothing much to say. We had just observed an experiment, the results had been tabulated, and yet no interpretation was forthcoming.

So then, what happened? In my view, the wolves were summoned to a hunt that wasn’t. They got all dressed up but had nowhere to go. Their prey-making impulse, which in social interactions is sublimated into emotionally deflected behaviors via the emotional battery (i.e. mounting, posturing, rub-a-dubbing, rolling, flipping polarity, chase-and-be-chased, deflection  onto a common bite object), was in this context not available because they had been suddenly energized for the hunt and yet no prey was available to absorb this sudden arousal of energy. This meant that the only way out for the “charge”, – which is made of compressed prey-making arousal and normally reserved for the large, dangerous prey animal, – was each other, which is why they ended up fighting, or making-prey on each other. Between wolves, this not too big of a problem given that as canines they are endowed with the reflexes of a ninja and can avoid tooth to sensitive body parts, and then even when bitten their tough hide and thick pelt can virtually resist a leather punch. So no harm no foul. Whereas when a dog “flashes” a human, we can’t get out of the way, our soft skin easily tears and a relatively harmless pinch and twist of the incisors can need 20 stitches to close. In other words, over-stimulation can fry the circuitry and cause the batteries to violently dump energy as a survival response.

Currently in dogdom, everyone’s on the lookout for the abusive dog owner, – animal rescue 911 is all the rage on TV. Everyone thinks that the remarkable increase in aggression in dogs is due to abuse, but I believe it’s primarily due to over-stimulation of the emotional battery in conjunction with a romanticized version of what it is to be “one with an animal”. Dogs used to be tied to dog houses in the back yard, and now they’re invited on the bed if not under the covers. And yet the purpose of sociability is not companionship; it’s to move energy, and when no outlet for synchronized group action that can channel all this energy, stored up in the battery, is provided, instinct finds its own way out.

A further clue to what’s going on with the Orcas might prove to be the curled-over dorsal fin that is characteristic of a killer whale in captivity. It has been suggested that this is a physical condition of deterioration, however in a number of videos on-line where the Orca is actually making prey, the fin appears to be firmly upright. One clip shows three Orcas taking out a hapless Pelican that alighted in their pool, and then the videos of the various attacks on people that have been captured, in particular the scene of the Orca taking a “victory” lap with the trainer in its jaws being held by his ankle (2006), – again the fins appear to be perfectly upright. My hunch is that the disposition of this fin might very well correlate to a dog’s tail, with its set and action being configured around a dog’s physical (as well as its emotional) center of gravity: the core of the body/mind as an emotional battery. This would then suggest that being in a small enclosure, especially a hard reflective surface such as a concrete or metal pool brightly painted, would make the Orca feel compressed and curl the tail over, much like a dog with a tucked tail. It doesn’t feel “grounded” but then after the tumultuous download of its battery, just like a dog with the prey in its mouth and trotting along with an unmistakable bounce in its stride, the fin rises as does the dog’s tail. In all these cases, the emotional circuitry, which evolved in service to the fundamental purpose not of sociability, but of moving energy through an ecosystem (which in Orcas as in canines means the hunt), has run to ground. In the Orca’s mind, all that stimulation finally arrived at its energetic endpoint; the hunt has finally hit the stop signal.

I believe that the synchronized actions mimics for Orcas the experience of hunting, just as playing fetch with a dog, or taking a dog for a car ride, does for canines. Group synchronization is the basis of Orca motivation and why they enjoy performing their tricks. But apparently it must prove to be an exercise in frustration, like always praising a dog and getting it worked up and excited so that one day, seemingly out of nowhere, it bites. This is why I stress the concept of an emotional battery, as you can only fill it up so much with energy before it has to start downloading or crash. All input that can’t be conducted through the pure channel then goes into the emotional battery and is stored, – it doesn’t just go away after the lights dim and the crowd goes home. I’m suggesting that performing a back flip for a fish doesn’t constitute resolution of a 12,000 volt problem.

Sea World and learning theorists characterizes the system of training they do as being purely positive, but in the animal mind, the negative equals access to the positive. So even when we’re being 100% motivational (from our point of view), our dog is giving our “eyes,” i.e. our predatory aspect, credit. We are becoming increasingly negative, and if this isn’t grounded in purposeful work from an evolutionary point of view, things can run aground. (If I were to design the costumes at Sea World I would appropriate my design from the rubber workers in Burma. I would outfit the trainers in a garish wet suit with harsh right angles as the design pattern, and shockingly bright colors that hold in graphic relief two menacing eyes prominently featured on the trainers’ back. This might more effectively reflect the energy they project onto the trainers, back at the Orca’s and keep their energies on track and deflected toward the fish in trainer’s hand.)

Over-stimulation, rather than abuse, is why I believe there is a rising rate of aggression in domestic dogs. Owners are pouring so much energy into the relationship, and it’s got nowhere to go. The fact that most dogs can sublimate the energy and become even more intensely friendly is what confuses the real picture of what’s going on. If being positive could stand on its own, if it were possible to be purely positive in a way that meant something to the animal mind, then dolphin training as practiced at Sea World would work in the wide open ocean on free Willy. But the animals must be constrained so that they can perceive the trainer as the negative-as-access-to-the-positive. This is why the social hunters such as dolphins and killer whales are so readily motivated and able to perform amazingly synchronized activities. The hunt is what makes it worth it to an Orca to rocket out of the water, spin three times and then dive back in through a hoop for a fish. This is as close to hunting as it’s ever going to get, unless another unlucky Pelican wanders into its pool.

Orcas are constantly being summoned to a hunt that is never to materialize. And sadly, in some tragic instances, it becomes trick training run amok.

Related posts:

1. Why Do Dogs Love Car Rides?
2. Why Do Dogs Wag Their Tails?
3. Why do dogs chase their tails?

Over these next few days Trisha is out of town and so I’m taking care of Hero and she is one intense little puppy. If she perceives something as having one iota of preyful essence then it’s meant for her mouth only and must be brought to ground. She goes from point A to point B at the speed of light and knows how to shift tectonic plates when access is denied. She was bred for work and would be every canine handler’s dream dog, and yet could just as easily be fodder for the euthanasia meat grinder that is the American pet marketplace. So what to do with this little furry ball of caged lightening? Of course, no training, no walk; let’s get some wood. The day before I had dropped a dead ash in the lower field so I loaded up my chainsaw, splitting maul, gas and oil in the tractor and off we went. Hexi is in heat so our logging party comprised of me, Hero and Hessian.

I spent an hour or so sawing up the limbs and trunk, getting the brush out of the way and then splitting the slugs into cordwood, all during which Hero and Hessian had their own private little adventures that radiated from the job site as epicenter of their synchronized orbits, Hero covering twenty paces for every one of Hessian’s (he’s nine years old now). There is a relatively busy road a hundred yards away but I knew that Hero’s drive to make contact is so strong that what is a problem in one context is an asset in a supportive environment. She was at the center of the only universe that mattered to her so there was nothing else out there.

The tree I was working on fell at the edge of a small thicket of white pines and poplar saplings where the woods were beginning to encroach on my field (next summer’s project) and on one of Hero’s sorties I saw her coming out from under the pines with a big chunk of frozen something buried so deep in the back of her mouth I knew the attraction was primal magnetic. I assumed it was a chunk of a deer that a coyote had taken down and eaten most of and now Hero had found its remains. It might have been a section of the skull and there were wads of fur still stuck to it. Hessian too could see the primal importance of her discovery and was soon trailing in her wake and sniffing at her mouth and this allowed me to see just how great Hero’s temperament is. Even when she lied down to concentrate on her meal, and with Hessian crowding her muzzle and milling around to get a good whiff of what was going on, nibbling on the crumbs and flecks in the snow by her paws, Hero never growled or interrupted herself to deal with Hessian. She wanted that carcass with every cell in her body and Hessian could feel it so there was absolutely no tension between them even though they were check to check and jowl to jowl. It was a powerful experience to watch them achieve reconciliation over a potentially charged moment and completely via their own resources. I cringed thinking how so many such incidents in a domestic household distort the cooperative faculty that every dog is born with when two dogs find themselves in a comparable situation before this faculty has fully evolved.

But the dog trainer in me couldn’t resist the teachable moment so I called Hessian, had him lay down by the tractor and then approached Hero and knelt down about twenty feet away. “What a goooood girl, she’s sooooo boootifulll, Heeerroooo, yea, looook at that fluffy, furry wabbittt you’ve got there. Hero got up and came toward me and so I stood up and began to slowly backpedal while I increased the volume of my cooing. Hero proceeded to circle me and so I knelt down again and with her leaning against me, I gave her a good rub-a-dub along her topside and flanks and she all the while continued to hold the carcass calmly in her jaws. Perfect, she was giving me her energy. What a temperament.

An hour later when I was stacking wood in the shed behind the house, Hero found an old marrow bone in the yard and so to build on what had happened earlier I asked her to Hup while I patted my chest. To my delight she did. And why not, when you love what you’re doing, it’s all in a day’s work.

Related posts:

1. New NDT Blog!
2. Kevin Pushing and Pulling with Hessian
3. Kevin Training Hero