Natural Dog Training » energy

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.

kbehan — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:22:55 +0000

I don’t dismiss behavioral science and I value its many astute observations and precise descriptions; however it is missing the fundamental element of behavior, to wit: the animal’s nature which is an evolved function of energy. So what is energy?

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.

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.

kbehan — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:20:03 +0000

Behavioral science is indeed being consistent by not using the term energy, and it’s also quite wise to avoid any use of the term because once we add energy into a discussion of behavior, then the paradigm shifts wholesale. On the other hand we can’t agree that there is energy, that everything has energy, and which therefore means that the movement of something that has energy must also be an expression of said energy, and then go on to exclude complex systems such as canine behavior from the mix by sectioning these off into basic learning principles that have been around for a long time. We can’t add just a little bit of energy to the discussion and then go on to talk of a dominance hierarchy or learning according to behavioral science just as we can’t say that once in a while the earth goes around the sun. Because, for either of these two systems (learning theory/dominance hierarchy) to be true in conjunction with energy then energy has to be neutral, blank, having no intrinsic properties or principles of movement of its own and the existence of such energy would be without precedent in the evolution of any natural system. In biology we see that the principles of energy predetermine that all cells must be spherical. There is only one way for a living cell to evolve and that is as a sphere. The principles of energy are also the organizing principle of all physiology and anatomy. Whereas behavioral science maintains that complex behavior somehow “emerged” as if by magic from unrelated processes that miraculously converged into a happy accident: an inconsistent and unlikely view of evolution that I believe in the relatively near term will be discredited by advances in research techniques. So therefore if energy is to be entertained in behavior, and especially if we are to believe in the theory of evolution, then the properties of energy and its principles of movement must be the organizing principle not only of the lower forms of natural systems such as physiology and anatomy, but even behavioral systems such as wolf packs and complex patterns of learning.

Definitions

kbehan — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:26:50 +0000

Some of my definitions are scattered across this site and mostly in terms of why-dogs-do-what-they-do, but what follows is a more concise summary.

ENERGY: An action potential, a differential of force between two poles. Energy in animals builds up by virtue of a bipolar, two-brain makeup each with its own divergent agenda just as if they are two terminals in the body/mind as an emotional battery attracting ionized charged particles. The tension can be defined as such, the Big Brain seeks stasis; the little brain seeks input. (Thus, all physical, hormonal and neuro-chemical energies are funneled through this divergent agenda into a whole body state of tension. The body/mind is displaced by stimuli which thereby augment the underlying state of tension that must seek release. This means that the confluence of all this energy functions as a virtual “force” of attraction toward that which can render relief/release. The body/mind becomes a displaceable medium, like a standing pool of water, an elastic membrane or like the space/time continuum. Thus whatever one can say of gravity, one can say of emotion and vice versa.) The Big-Brain-in-the-head projects energy, the little-brain-in-the-gut absorbs energy. The B-B is the predatory polarity; the l-b is the preyful polarity, two halves of one circle.

CONSCIOUSNESS: Energy that reliably repeats itself by reflecting back on itself. It is therefore a circle, a circle is the means by which energy becomes information (energy traveling in a circle, or wavelength, is energy coming-into-form – - > in-form-ation). This is not as simple as it first appears because since consciousness is energy that reliably repeats itself, it must therefore create circuits with the external surroundings and therefore, given the reality of friction and fractiousness on planet earth, these circuits sustain themselves by always adding energy to the network. Thus we observe the evolution of complexity and ultimately, self-consciousness and self-awareness as the highest expression of energy reflecting back on itself.

INFORMATION: Nobel laureate Dr. Gell-Mann in his book “Quark and the Jaguar” states: “Basically, information is concerned with a selection from alternatives, and it is most simply expressed if those alternatives can be reduced to a sequence of binary choices, each of which is between two equally probable alternatives.” However I feel this is a classical view of information. The most basic definition of information is that because consciousness requires energy to reflect back on itself, the easiest way to do this is to create a field of mutual attraction around a midpoint so that all entangled particles are part of an auto-tuning/feedback dynamic to sustain the circle. Therefore all animals are motivated first and foremost by a virtual “force” of attraction so that they revolve around a midpoint. The most basic form of information is the network that sustains and regenerates itself by constantly adding new energy. Information requires a network because the easiest way to create a field of mutual attraction is by virtue of components being attracted to each other. Organisms attracted to each other in such a way that adds energy to the network is the most fundamental definition of information. Thus we see that animals are always attracted to energy in consonance with the fundamental motive of the network to add energy, and are self-organizing into complex social structures in consonance with the fundamental definition of information. Energy is motion. Form is motion that repeats itself. Consciousness is a form of energy that reliably repeats itself. A circle turns energy into form. It takes a network to make information.

EMOTION: A monolithic (dull) “force” of attraction caused by a release from a state of tension instituted in an animal’s constitution by virtue of an animals’ two brain makeup. Furthermore, it is a source of momentum that requires a discrete amount of motion in order to render a null value. Emotion comes first, and then the physical aspects arise on its template. Emotion is consciousness’ interface with the physical dimension. As the physical embodiment of the laws of nature, it is the operating system of animal consciousness so that life forms can respond coherently in the natural realm, which is likewise organized according to the laws of nature. As a “force” of attraction, emotion is always positive.

UNRESOLVED EMOTION: Energy is always conserved, it cannot be destroyed; it simply changes form. This law of conservation in conjunction with the principle of conductivity means energy can be the basis of memory because if energy moves according to a principle of conductivity, then the byproduct of resistance to such movement can serve as a record of such an event. Unresolved emotion is a physical record held in the body of the resistance experienced (no matter how slight) to the expression of emotion. The body of every animal serves as a data bank of resistance in regards to every experience it’s ever had, a track record of how things rate according to a standard of emotional conductivity. So while pure emotion as a current of energy can be likened to a current of water which requires a constant source to sustain its flow: unresolved emotion can be likened to water in its solid state, ice, and unlike emotion, it is cumulative. One can not hold on to emotion, but one can hold on to unresolved emotion. Unresolved emotion is how information of an emotional content is transmitted reliably through time, and is how animals receive information over distance. By this I mean, one animal can observe another animal that is acting prey-like and this can release unresolved emotion in the observers’ body and render it sensual over a distance just as if energy had been transmitted over distance as a wave.

RESOLVED EMOTION: The resolution of unresolved emotion is facilitated by becoming aligned and synchronized with a triggering agent of unresolved emotion. Resolved emotion can be likened to water in its gaseous state, a feeling of contentedness and well-being that is ephemeral and the most fleeting form of emotion. Unresolved emotion can only be resolved by a feeling, not by a thought. Only the heart can resolve unresolved emotion.

TRAITS: Emotion moves from a place with a higher concentration of energy to a place of a lesser one just as heat radiates from a warm object toward a cooler one. The relative heat values of two objects are their most primordial “traits.” The predator trait reflects the projection of emotion, and as an external influence on other animals, resists the expression of energy toward it thereby reflecting energy back at it, whereas the preyful trait absorbs the projection of emotion and conducts the expression of energy directed toward it. All complex traits (even personality) elaborate upon this primordial platform.

DRIVE: Emotion plus stress (triggering of physical memory) strengthened by sexuality and guided by Feeling is Drive. Drive seeks to make contact with object of attraction and resistance to contact is converted to a stronger force of attraction by Temperament, or Heart. Drive follows the path of highest resistance, whereas instincts, habits, fear follow the path of least resistance. Drive is how the animal does nature’s work of evolution.

THOUGHTS: The capacity to compare one point of view to another; or one moment to another: and all the concepts that follow from such a platform.

EMOTIONAL CENTER-OF-GRAVITY: When emotion meets with resistance, unresolved emotion (stress) is formed and this accretes around the physical center-of-gravity as the physical memory of an emotional experience. The e-cog is projected onto complex objects of resistance in order to induce a feeling.

FEELINGS: These are the emotional circuits. Emotional circuits are not contained within any individual. (Note that autistics have trouble with eye contact because this accesses the e-cog and so they have difficulty creating emotional circuits and going by feel. Autistics work off the mental aspects of emotion that are part of how the higher aspects of the nervous system execute the emotional phenomena.) When the emotional center-of-gravity is projected onto objects of resistance because the emotionally entangled parties recapitulate the principle of emotional conductivity in each other through their synchronized actions and mannerisms, (as object of resistance they first triggered each others’ unresolved emotion and by virtue of being prey-like they simultaneously attract each other’s emotion, in other words, they cause energy to reflect back onto the other and then give it the opportunity to move toward them, this is the circle again), all motion of affiliated parties eventually average out into a state of suspension, a wave function, and this FEELING when fully formed takes up residence in the heart. (This is why our hand irresistibly moves to the middle of our chest when we feel moved, whereas meanwhile emotional researchers are always focused on the brain.) All true feelings feel good because they add energy to the network. Feelings are an auto-tuning/feedback dynamic that implement the principle of emotional conductivity.

HEART: Heart is a circle; it is the source of a true feeling. When a feeling is fully formed; the movement of entangled “parties” thereby inflects and add energy and nuance to the original feeling just as if it is a chord being plucked and so that the feeling continues to elaborate and evolve into complex social structures. In other words, there are quite literally, heart strings. Feelings elaborate like light waves propagate. In other words, the heart pumps waves. Heart is an engine of light.

EMOTIONAL CONDUCTIVITY: The Brain-to-gut connection creates a “virtual” action potential in the body/mind so that on one fundamental level, consciousness functions as an emotional battery. Composed in this manner, the body/mind turns environmental inputs into emotionally ionizing events, in other words, physical energy becomes consciousness subject to the principle of emotional conductivity. A stimulus energizes the Brain in the head and this sensation of disequilibrium then needs to be “brought to ground” by being absorbed in the gut, i.e. converted into a smooth, wave action of the intestines, peristalsis. This is the principle of emotional conductivity: nerve energy of the Brain “grounded” internally within the digestive system by bringing external objects of attraction “to ground” and which thereby calms the physical organism. All complex objects of attraction either amplify or short circuit this internal connection.

SEXUALITY: The processing of the emotional center-of-gravity so that it can be reflected back and forth and onto a common object. In other words, two individuals are sensualized in a complementary way so as to form a circle in their behaviors and in their manner so that feelings can evolve between them because their mutually complementary mannerisms and actions recapitulate the principle of emotional conductivity.

TEMPERAMENT: Behaviorally, it is the mechanical aspect of heart, just as physiologically the heart organ is the mechanical pump of blood. Temperament is the capacity in an animal to perceive the predatory aspect relative to the preyful aspect and hold both in the same frame of reference around a midpoint, e-cog, in order to perceive a being composed of primordial traits, (Prey/Predator) and magnetic traits, (E,W,N,S). In the absence of this, instincts, habits (and in humans) thoughts end up running the show.

PERSONALITY: A defensive response to the movement and/or vibration of the emotional center-of-gravity.

FEAR: Fear is not emotion. It is a nervous sensation that results from the collapse of an emotional state of attraction. It is as close as the central nervous system can get to emotion and so it has been confused as such. Fear serves as a registration tag for deposits of unresolved emotion in the body/mind as an emotional battery.

SOCIABILITY: The purpose of sociability is to externalize the internal wave functions of the body/mind into an external wave function which is observable as a current of synchronized actions. This reconstitutes a wave function which is a circle, and motion along a circle becomes information so that any physical material object or environmental energy that is incorporated into that wave function is now part of consciousness in service to its evolution. Physical objects and energy thereby become information and thus are capable of causing motive, i.e. creating an external action potential between beings that seek to possess such objects. Social behavior is a wave function that repeats itself by constantly creating new action potentials as psychic motive.

HEART: The third self-contained, electro-chemical dynamo within every animal, the seat of the auto-tuning/feedback dynamic itself: the faculty of adaptability, sociability, the place in the body/mind where the energies of balance and hunger confluence and the divergent agendas of the two brains are reconciled by feeling the midpoint (the null or averaged-out value of all motion) around which all emotionally entangled parties orbit and thereby recapitulate for one and the other the principle of emotional conductivity so that unresolved emotion can be resolved. In this state, heart beats synchronize individual actions.

On Training a Dog to “OUT”

kbehan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:01:29 +0000

I want the word “OUT” to be the decisive trigger that causes the dog to release the grip. But before the dog can be receptive to its handler’s voice, it must first be able to feel its handler and this allows it to be attracted to handler inputs. It must also come to feel that Out doesn’t mean an interruption of its energy but rather even more energy.

So the handler sends his dog at me and I catch the dog. Then I become still with dog locked on grip. As the handler approaches the problem dog begins to growl, shake and thrash with more conflict then before, as it is tensing up with the approach of its handler. When the handler arrives I ask him to take his time, pet and massage his dog while he’s biting my arm and then begin to sweet talk with that prey-like patter. The dog is now able to feel attracted to his handler because of the preyful energy the handler is putting out with his tone, touch and words.

You can see the dog begin to soften and for the first time the dog can sense that I have become still, subdued by the strength of its bite. (Sometimes I will renew the fight with even more intensity and then become still again to increase the dog’s power of discrimination between the on and the off position of the helper. I do this a number of times. I also want to become increasingly intense and violent as a way of absorbing the intensity the dog is experiencing from the approach of handler and the physical memory of having been interrupted by incorrect out training that caused the sudden jarring and stripping of the emotional gears. Paradoxically, dogs that don’t Out well are holding back an emergency reserve and until this is cleanly released in the bite, the dog won’t release cleanly the sleeve, and so the more intense the helper gets, the more the dog releases this reserve energy.)

When the dog becomes aware of the on/off modes, he can begin to sense that its energy is impacting the helper, especially the release of that emergency reserve, and thus it begins to feel more in control of what is happening to it and this has a calming effect. In other words, the dog gets into conflict with approach of handler; the helper becomes more intense and struggles to get away, so the dog perceives that a state of conflict towards handler allows its prey to get away and so it gets more focused and learns to discard the old memory of interruption by arrival of handler. As the dog calms because it is more and more focused on holding the subdued helper in position, it can now feel that its handler (the one with whom it’s bonded) is present, rather than some guy trying to fight him over the sleeve just as the helper is.

The handler is on his side so to speak. Then with the dog able to discriminate between helper on and helper off, I go as limp as possible while remaining upright, and when the dog is beginning to soften with the handlers’ words and tone, the handler says “Out” in a firm but completely composed if not gentle manner and the dog comes off easily. (If the dog is still too charged to Out, we let the dog run it off with the sleeve in its mouth and then come back to the helper, and now the handler holds the dog with sleeve in its mouth and massages and coos to it while I begin to crowd them, this then induces the release of the sleeve.

Sometimes I’ll have a second sleeve in front of where dog stops and begin to steal it rather than putting it into conflict about the sleeve that’s in its mouth and this will induce the dog to let go of sleeve in mouth.) Whichever way the dog comes off, the moment the dog Outs I begin to tense up into the poised position, but just below what would trigger the dog to strike, and as the dog gets ready to strike his handler now has a chance to get on board with the dog’s feeling of getting ready to go as well and speak whatever command he uses, “Watch Him” or “Pass Auf” to associate these words with reanimation of helper.

Then I make a move and the dog bites and so now the dog is learning that the handlers’ words control the helper. So “Out” doesn’t end up meaning let go because the handler commanded it to let go, but rather that it’s time to get ready to bite again. In other words, there’s an even better bite available and the handler knows where it is. This is an important distinction because a dog must always learn something as a function of attraction. This progression leads to the dog feeling attuned to its handler because the handler is demonstrating that he knows where more prey is, or to put it another way, how to reanimate the prey that was just dead. So the dog always stays focused on the helper-as-access-to-the-bite, but paradoxically it is therefore easier for the dog to be aware and responsive of its handler as access-to-the-helper without having to directly focus on him. He becomes receptive to auditory input. (The reason a dog is in conflict is because there are competing “negatives” of equal intensity, helper and handler and so the dog has to divide its attention between these.

Ideally, a dog shouldn’t feel different when the handler approaches; the handler should only serve to strengthen the existing feeling. So we want to straighten this conflict out to be the feeling that the handler (-) equals-access-to-helper (+) imprint, rather than dog in effect fighting the resistance of two negatives, handler and helper.) Also, it’s important to say that when the feeling is straightened out so that handler-leads-to-helper and helper-leads-to-bite- and-OUT-leads-to-more-bite –therefore the dog isn’t suffering any loss in “emotional momentum” even though it is being required to suddenly stop doing something that it was previously fighting to sustain.

In fact, even though it’s doing the exact opposite of what it was doing a second before; it nonetheless feels it’s nevertheless moving in a straight line because it can always feel potential energy inherent in the next sequence of events. It actually wants to subdue the helper to get to the Out command so as to reanimate the subdued helper. My premise is that the ultimate reward for a dog isn’t something material and tangible, i.e. the sleeve in its mouth, but rather is “potential energy” i.e. the prey poised to move again. Dogs are consumed with potential energy and so are always motivated by body postures indicating energy is about to move, from owners about to suffer epileptic seizures, other dogs about to eliminate or ready-to-fight, earthquakes, tsunamis, full moons animating prey, and so on. In the way the canine mind is constructed, it seems the moral of Aesop’s fables is wrong. In the animal mind the bird-in-the-bush must always be worth far more than birds-in-hand because otherwise nature can’t evolve.

Animals are always moving toward potential energy. So the dog never gets the idea of listening to its handler per se, rather, the words of the handler always lead to potential energy, and this singular feeling is what construes and holds a complex chain of behaviors together.

A Challenge

kbehan — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:03:34 +0000

A Fractal Pattern

What excites me about my energy model is that I believe I’ve discovered a constantly repeating fractal expression of behavior: a simple and easily recognizable module that constantly repeats itself to factor out more and more complex behaviors and ultimately, a social and cooperative nature. Since all of nature seems to be an expression of just such fractals, from the “golden ratio” that is evident in the anatomy of mollusks to human beings, the spreading circulation systems that are found in watersheds, lungs, to tree branches and root systems, the photo-voltaic effect that empowers all green plants, the two pairs of amino acids that make up every gene, I’m convinced that this must be true of behavior as well.

In my view this behavioral fractal is an expression of how energy moves in nature, from a place or pole of higher concentration, to a place or pole of lesser, an “action potential” that constantly recapitulates itself so as to realize more energy through complex social behavior. I am using the term energy exactly as science does, as an action potential, the same energetic dynamic by which our nerves and cells function and so it seems sensible we might find this same organizing principle in the behavior of animals as well. The advantage to an energy interpretation (as fantastic as this might sound) is that it allows us to see inside the mind of the dog. (We might recall that simply by studying the radiation of heat from a warm object as a function of energy, the “ultraviolet catastrophe” this ultimately allowed physicists to see inside the atom and divine the existence of the photon. And this came well before there were linear particle accelerators.)

My search for a fractal pattern for behavior came from a belief that evolution is correct, that which is complex evolved from that which is simple, that the formed evolved from the unformed, in other words, energy. I was also searching because I saw that the current models for behavior didn’t encompass all the evidence and failed to articulate just such a fractal building block.

On the other hand, and understandably, if one believes that dogs are all figured out by science, then one wouldn’t see the need for a new theory of behavior. So I postulate my energy idea, a few people see the sense of it, at least in part, because it’s very hard at first to apprehend it in its totality, it only took me three decades, but the majority in the mainstream say it is ridiculous or an over-complication of what already has been said.

I have posed a number of questions which the folks who say an energy theory is ridiculous or irrelevant have so far failed to address. For example, why does a dog sit for a cookie, or is afraid of slippery floors, or lifts its leg, and so on. On my last site I had a questionnaire that I will dust off and fix the wording so the points are clearer, but again, there is criticism without exposition. When I talk about the eye contact technique as revealing how the canine mind as an energy circuit works, the experts say this is merely operant conditioning, and yet the technique doesn’t have to be conditioned so it’s as if we are speaking two different languages wherein the same words mean different things. If something doesn’t require conditioning, how can it be Operant conditioning?! I invite someone from the dominance or Operant perspective to explain precisely why my explanation for why-a-dog-sits-for-a-cookie or looks-into-eyes-for-access (flipping of emotional polarity) is ridiculous or overly complex by way of explaining why in their view a dog, and only a dog, sits for a cookie or looks-in-your-eyes without training. In short, what’s going on inside the dog?

What is natural in regards to training

kbehan — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:32:03 +0000

Kevin talks about how he uses the term “Natural” in regards to training. The objective is to elicit certain emotional states within a dog so as to work with energy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Theory Into Practice – Be the Ground

kbehan — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:48:33 +0000

There are a few simple concepts that help put the theory (emotion as animal energy and as a force of attraction) of Natural Dog Training into practical application in regards to the raising and training of a dog. These will be articulated through the following three articles: (1) “Be the Ground” (2) “Objectify the Problem” (3) “Pavlov’s Theory” and will provide the basis of subsequent training articles.

Be the Ground

One fall afternoon about thirty years ago I was driving along a country road that ran above a house. I could see the entirety of its yard which featured a dog tied to a long trolley. Months and months of hard pounding had shaped the dog’s path into what looked like an official dirt bike course, complete with banked curves and notches carved into hillocks. As I neared the property, the dog was lying at the foot of its dog house, intently staring at the far end of its range. Then, it launched itself at a dead run at a squirrel that had come within striking distance of the trolley track. Of course, the squirrel had the calculus all worked out and by the time the dog was almost on it, was safely out of the hot zone. Strangely however the dog never slowed and hit the end of its cable at full speed, which then flung the dog high into the air from whence it was slammed to the ground in a smack-down worthy of Wrestlemania. “Oh, that’s gotta hurt,” I remember thinking to myself and yet oddly as it seemed to me at the time, the dog immediately leapt back to its feet with the biggest smile on its face. Then with tail held high, it trotted back to its lair just as our German Shepherd dog Rommel would prance along when carrying a dead woodchuck in his mouth. It took me many years to understand what I had just witnessed.

Whenever a dog perceives any change in its surroundings, its brain of course becomes active and this generates neuro-chemical energy. No rocket science here. A stimulus would not be called a stimulus if it didn’t stimulate the brain. However, because the dog’s mind is constituted by two-brains, the Little-Brain-in-the-gut in addition to the Big-Brain-in-the-head, stimulation first and foremost invokes a sensation of emotional displacement and this makes a dog feel unbalanced, literally. Even a state of hunger is perceived as a displacement and therefore the dog searches for a “ground” (i.e. a preyful aspect) in order to return it to the pre-stimulated state of emotional equilibrium and which it simultaneously equates with being on terra-firma.

Bio-mechanically speaking, grounding means that nerve energy of the Big-Brain (which is like an electrostatic pressure with spikes of electrical charge) must be converted into smooth muscle wave action of the intestines. The most primal avenues of ingestion or grounding are smell and taste, and so smelling or eating something – even grass – has a calming effect. But sight and touch can also become available as more elaborate pathways for emotional grounding due to the sexual/sensual circuitry. So nerve energy stimulated by sensory input needs to be digested by the Little-Brain-in-the-gut just as nutritional input needs to be digested within the gut. Every input to the organism, whether nutritional or emotional, follows this principle.

In regards to training, this means that it doesn’t actually matter to a dog what logically happens in any given situation, what really matters is how a dog ends up feeling. In other words, after the dust settles does the dog feel grounded or not? For example, if 200,000 volts of stimulation was inputted then 200,000 volts of grounding has to be achieved in order for the dog to end up feeling satisfied.

Bernhard Mannel, a German Schutzhund trainer mentioned elsewhere on this site, posed the following question to participants in a seminar I attended, and this can help clarify how important the feeling of grounding is to canine learning. Mannel asked us to consider that if a wolf were to seize a deer by its hind leg and if somehow the leg in its grasp yanked free of the deer’s body: how would the wolf respond to watching the rest of the deer getting away? Would it continue after the deer or would it content itself with the leg in its mouth? Mannel argued that the wolf wouldn’t care what happened to the rest of the deer. The wolf had leapt into the air to “make prey” and ended up with prey-on-the-ground, and therefore in the canine mind, the situation was resolved.

At the time of that seminar, around 1977 or ‘78, I believed Mannel was right, and since then everything I’ve learned about dogs confirms his supposition. To put his point in my parlance, the wolf felt grounded, and this fulfills the essential predicate of animal consciousness. A wolf isn’t trying to kill the deer or even eat the deer; it just wants to bite the deer’s body in order to attain grounding, and as far as the wolf is concerned, the head of the deer (i.e. its predatory aspect) is welcome to whatever is left. In a dog’s mind, it doesn’t matter what actually happens, – all that matters is how the dog feels after-what-happens happened.

This calls into question the prevailing logic of reinforcement-based theories of learning. For example, we think that praise and food rewards are necessarily experienced by the dog as a positive emotional input. However, if a dog sees a deer and is energized to the 200k volt level, and then the owner calls the dog to their side and rewards with food and praise (which for purposes of this discussion let’s say is worth only 100k volts worth of grounding to this particular dog), then the dog has been left with a shortfall of 100k and sooner or later the dog will have to get back to the unfinished business of grounding-out-deer-energy, even though it may have reliably come to its name the first several times dog and owner encountered deer. Just because a dog is interrupted from a chase by the sound of its name and then returns to its owner’s side, doesn’t mean that all its energy felt consummated and that therefore the dog is gaining the lesson we think it is learning. Because in this example, the dog remains burdened with unresolved energy which will continually vibrate away, deep within its body/mind until it resurfaces at some later point. While unresolved emotion may be latent, it is never dormant; it organizes everything.

Conversely, if the sight of a deer fills a dog up with 200,000 volts of “energy”, and then if those 200,000 volts of energy end up “running-to-ground” it doesn’t actually matter to the dog how the energy ran to ground, just that it ran to ground. If fully grounded into something, as in a bite object an owner might provide, then the dog feels satisfied even if it didn’t end up bringing the deer down. All that matters is whether the dog’s emotional battery is returned to its pre-stimulated state, so that if a deer equals 200,000 volts of stimulation and 200,000 volts of nerve energy runs-to-ground via contacting with its owner, then for this dog, this is what bringing a deer down feels like. A dog doesn’t have to bring a deer down, it just has to bring the energy to ground and therefore it is incumbent on an owner to understand that there is an emotional physics (rather than a psychology) by which a dog defines success.

I now believe that the trolley dog I observed thirty years ago had probably never ever killed a squirrel in its life, and yet nonetheless when the dog pranced its way back to its house to resume its survey of the kingdom below, it carved yet another notch on the transom. For that dog, being flung into the air and body-slammed to earth was the only tangible thing of high intensity value to ever be realized in trolley land, and that thereby came to constitute its definition of what killing a squirrel feels like. As incongruent as it may appear to our human powers of reason and sensibilities, physically speaking the dog did indeed attain a pretty high degree of grounding given that so much of its energy had quite literally been absorbed by the ground. There had been a huge transfer of kinetic energy from dog to the earth and that was enough to satisfy the energetic parameters of animal consciousness. In fact I believe the dog learned to wait at the highest point of its compound at the farthest end of its range so that it could experience the most degree of grounding by hitting the trolley at its highest possible speed. The dog would never be able to learn to lie in wait as the most efficient means of actually catching a squirrel as a cat would do, because in its mind that’s not what killing a squirrel feels like, and it didn’t really want to kill a squirrel. It just wanted to feel grounded.

So the motive of all animal behavior is for energy to run-to-ground, and given that the canine mind is organized as an energy circuit, an owner can position themselves to become the apex of their dog’s mind by becoming the pathway by which the dog’s energy thereby runs to ground. To establish such an imprint this means that if there is 200k volts worth of input, it must be discharged through actions that overcome 200k volts of resistance and that results with 200k volts of grounding. Interestingly, in the natural scheme of things the Being which constitutes this apex of emotional experience is not the so-called pack leader but the moose. I’m not aware of one recorded instance whereby an alpha ever commanded an omega to come to its side. And yet whenever the moose calls, wolves always come running.

So when I encounter a deer with a young dog, I don’t command it to do anything. I say “Gooood boy, yea, let’s get that deer. Reeeaaaaddddy?” We then run away from the deer as fast as I can go and get to the “Ready” tree where I’ve hidden the sacred moose toy. Then we beat each other up over getting that toy in my dog’s mouth. For my dog, that’s what killing a deer feels like.

Quantum Canine Episode 2 ‘No Such Thing as Dominance’ Part III

kbehan — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:56:20 +0000

Kevin Behan and Trisha Selbach discuss dominance in dog training and Kevin Behan’s Immediate Moment theory of social organization in wolf packs. Related posts:Quantum Canine Episode 2 ‘No Such Thing as Dominance’ Part II Quantum Canine Episode 2 ‘No Such Thing as Dominance’ Part I Quantum Canine ‘Eye Contact’ Episode Part III Related posts:

Quantum Canine Episode 1 Part II

kbehan — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:04:14 +0000

Kevin and Trisha continue their discussion from the Quantum Canine Episode 1 Part 1. In this section, hear more about participants’ experiences at the Rowe seminar, as well as Kevin’s interpretation on what their dogs are really expressing. This clip also features Kevin conducting the groundbreaking Pushing Technique, and provides video examples for such terms as ‘avoidance behavior’ and ‘the path of least resistance’.

Clients and readers have also mentioned that they have trouble with the Pushing Technique because their dog doesn’t seem to have enough energy for the exercise, or simply seems disinterested. We encourage you to watch this clip in particular, as you can see an example of a dog with such a temperament, and Kevin explains what is really going on with this behavior. To watch Kevin conducting the same type of exercise with a dog with a much different temperament, click here, and see if you can spot any similarities between the two.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Kevin Behan on Vibrant Living with Glenn Brooks

kbehan — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:35:05 +0000

Kevin Behan talks with radio host Glenn Beck on Vibrant Living.

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Visit Glenn Brooks Vibrant Living Website