How Physical Memory Makes Pleasure In The Moment

ADAM asks: I’m still having trouble really feeling and understanding this line…

“The dog perceives being looked at (or called) just as if it is being pushed, just as if its mother is knocking it over and rolling it around on the ground. It’s a force of acceleration, a degree of momentum that demands a terminus.”

Why don’t humans have this kind of reaction? It seems like we never really feel our p-cog disoriented in this way. Is it because we have concepts that guide us? As in we understand what the ground is, what up and down are…I’m trying to relate to how the dog feels…is it like being dizzy from spinning or the feeling of dropping on a roller coaster?

KB: We are affected exactly the same way as a dog, it’s just that our human intellect is so powerful it overwhelms our conscious awareness as thoughts instantly swamp the more subtle emotional awareness. But when someone stares at you, one most definitely becomes aware of their p-cog being displaced, but it happens on a far more subtle scale as well. For example, if you want to get in your car and go somewhere, you first projected your p-cog onto a place, this is end product of displacement; so displacement + projection of p-cog + the perception of a ground = a desire, and it invests your body/mind with a specific degree of acceleration, a momentum that requires a certain expenditure to reach terminus, and until that is achieved the organism will vibrate if not in the process of moving in conformance with a desire.

So one senses an unease about being where they are (displacement) and then they get a sense of a destination (projection) and the feeling for the object of attraction as a suitable ground for the force of acceleration and now this composite constitutes their desire to get into the car and drive to that particular destination. This desire is then compared in an emotional calculus to the degree of resistance perceived between where one is and getting to said ground, and if the force of desire is strong enough, the kids and luggage pile into the car to go to Disneyland. At every step of the way there is that uniform sense of momentum informing you as to how things are proceeding relative to processing resistance toward the desire, and this sense of momentum doesn’t vary from the moment of leaving the driveway to pulling up to the gates of Disneyland. It’s like the internal voice of the GPS navigational system, ever present during every moment of a transcontinental road trip until “Your Destination Is Ahead On The Right!” is triggered at the terminus.

So this emotional calculus is underway in any emotional interaction, but it’s easiest to apprehend by retraining your mind by seeing dogs as creatures of the immediate-moment, and then studying your own mind whenever attached to an energy system, as in driving a car or riding a see/saw.

And then yes, the sensations of rising and falling and spinning, are what a dog is experiencing when he’s watching something moving at high speed once he’s projected his p-cog into it. If he feels fully grounded into the object of attraction then he has a great experience, if he doesn’t feel grounded, then he’s having a bad experience.

So when a dog sees the eyes of another dog, it is displaced and thereby accelerated. The eyes become its definition of terra-firma if it can hold the body of the dog in conjunction with its eyes. If so, it will feel a warm sensual pressure in its deep gut/loin and this may 1) inspire it to urinate, 2) approach along an arc because its rear end goes faster than the front end 3) ingest the essence of the other dog by smelling or tasting its urine, saliva, tear ducts, musk, etc. This pattern of behavior will have a calming effect on the other dog not due to its self-aware intention in performing any of these behaviors but because it is acting prey-like and becoming an emotional ground to the other dog, which then will most likely soften and be inspired to behave in mirror fashion to the dog that’s being prey-like. The other dog will be softened by the first dog acting on it via its hunger circuitry.

ADAM: You also said that the p-cog can move anywhere in the body…is this the physical memory at work? As in the dog feels a certain area of his body stimulated and perhaps “gravitationally pulled” towards “the ground.” And this ground could be anything, as long as it brings stability to the situation? If you could give me a play by play example of how and why a dog would feel his p-cog in his shoulder or foot, or any place I guess that would be helpful.

KB: When a dog projects his p-cog into another, and it moves, it rekindles the physical memory of its own movements when it was imprinted during its infancy and mastering the mechanics of motion as it went toward objects it desired. The stronger the desire, the more it associates the movements of the object with the release of pleasure opiates in the tissues of its body. For the most part, the memory of p-cog traveling through its body travels up the alimentary canal and the point of union is in the mouth, so this is the dog’s number 1 organ of sensual contact. But it can travel anywhere through the body peripheral to alimentary canal and so for example, if a dog rolls on a prey object on the ground and smears its body against it with its shoulder, then its shoulder is being sensualized just as would its mouth, and this becomes a physical memory of pleasure which will inform it how to make contact with a person for example by rubbing its shoulder against someone’s leg. The rump is another likely candidate for a ground as when the dog acquires the physical memory of sitting while looking at something it’s attracted to but can’t make direct contact with. The rear end becomes an indirect means of making contact and so the dog will present its rump for a scratch when sensualized toward a person or another dog. It’s a sensualized, feeling of warmth in that particular region which is the earliest physical memory of the infants co-joined with each other and their mother (before they can control their body temperature), not to mention in the womb before their is any experience of resistance except for what’s chemically impressed into the mother’s bloodstream.

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Published September 17, 2010 by Kevin Behan
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7 responses to “How Physical Memory Makes Pleasure In The Moment”

  1. Christine says:

    I’m thinking of Duncan and how he “shoulder rolls” into me and ,sometimes, other people. He loves to push into me and through my legs but will rub his head and shoulders into whatever part of me he can connect with. This happens when we come home after some canicross and I’m taking his harness off and when I come home and he greets me. Sometimes he will will roll over onto the ground, shoulder first and wind up belly up. I can see that it is very pleasurable for him but I’ve always wondered “Why?” and “Where does this come from?” Is this the opiate you are speaking of? And why does Duncan always pick up something in his mouth when he is very excited to see someone (for example, when I or my son comes home and Duncan does the initial greeting, he almost always will pick up something in his mouth). I wish he would follow that protocol when he greets my mother! He’s always so excited to see her and wants to jump up and get in her face and she is 84 and her skin is very fragile! She loves that he loves her but it is a challenge to convince him that a calmer greeting is just as pleasurable.

  2. Heather says:

    Dogs are hard to understand sometimes. Cats are more straightforward. Despite Kevin’s assertions to the contrary, cats divine the essence of things — they are just satisfied with that. As Kevin said, it can’t be both, it has to be one or the other (form or essence), and opposites attract, so the only way to get satisfaction is via the cross-species connection. Sad sort of but there is so much unknown that the fun is in the mystery.

  3. kbehan says:

    The front end isn’t connected to the rear end, and furthermore, the top half isn’t connected to the bottom half, so when a dog rolls on the ground he feels as if he’s “pulling” an object of attraction into his body by rolling on the ground, thereby connecting the top half to the bottom half (this is how the hunger circuitry as animal magnetism deflects the dog onto circuitous yet fulfilling ways of making contact). The whole connection process can also happen by getting something in the mouth directly, which is why Duncan goes for the toy. Also, teach him to speak on command for your mother as a way for him to outlet the intensity without having to act on the impulse. He will be able to learn self-modification this way.

  4. Heather says:

    Mothers are uber samurAi trainers, you ignore their requests at your own risk! But they always have cookies and never hold a grudge.

  5. kbehan says:

    Yes, all animals can divine the essence since we’re talking about a universal animal mind. The distinction between cats and dogs for example, is that dogs have a higher emotional capacity and so can thereby divine the essence at a higher rate of change, thus they can adapt to the ways of mans in more ways than can cats. Hope this clarifies.

  6. Heather says:

    Not sure that is true for the big female cats, but I digress, because that is also the predator-prey dynamic and I am looking at it more like a pyramid/triangle…and it’s not like it isn’t up to you to decide.

    I recall you telling Christine that whether or not her dog had behavior problems was not up to her dog, it was up to his owner (his mother in this case, and her mother above all as it turns out) and that she should not feel guilty, or afraid, because that is how people lose their will, it is predestined to be that way, as there is only one Will, the Will of the owner. So it is indeed possible for her dog to reconcile and get to a point of her dog jumping in the car, arriving at the waters’ edge and flipping polarity with other beings there (maybe even cats if they are hanging about their cars). You have said that healing takes time, but nature has all the time in the world (I love the essence of that). But I get impatient and say what I need to say, that I suppose is why dogs are our mirrors.

  7. Christine says:

    I find myself getting my Will back these days. A recent incident helped to clarify…somehow my neighbor’s cat wound up in my dog’s yard and yes, the cat was shredded. It has been said that the cat was already dead when it was thrown in by some unknown person (I believe that to be likely) At any rate, a few of the neighbors jumped on the opportunity to “tell tales out of school” to the investigating officer. My dogs supposedly killed someone’s rabbit (not true) and my dogs supposedly interfere with deliveries at a local market (yes, Duncan does bark and appears aggressive, jumping at the fence, etc., although I doubt that has actually stopped any deliveries)
    To make a short story long…I’m not at all worried, afraid or even feeling guilty; as if I should somehow pay a penance or put up extra fencing to keep my dogs contained.
    The neighbor who owns the demised cat is not upset at me or my dogs; she went into the yard to get her kitty (I was at work) and my dogs were wiggley, waggley and friendly‼♥
    A few months ago I would’ve been undone with remorse and guilt, feeling there was something wrong with my dogs. It’s quite liberating‼☺ I credit NDT with the change in attitude. ♥

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Books about Natural Dog Training by Kevin Behan

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