As mentioned earlier Gary Wilkes is a thoughtful writer on dogs and is willing to make definitive statements. Since some of these statements touch on my theory, I like to expound on these topics since I can contrast my model with a gene-centric interpretation as offered by Wilkes. We will find that gene-centric theories […]
Willem has brought the following to our attention and I quote him below: “The research result (yet to be duplicated, I assume) described in this article is simple – that people experience the eyes as projecting a force, regardless of their conscious beliefs – is simple, and 100% in accord with Immediate Moment Theory, […]
“A crowd that flows like water” “The behavior of large numbers of insects, animals, and other flocks is often based on rules about individual interactions. Bain and Bartolo applied a fluid-like model to the behavior of marathon runners as they walked up to the start line of the Chicago Marathon (see the Perspective by Ouellette). […]
To avoid these kinds of incidents my experience leads me to recommend lots of off/lead hide and seek games as the foundation for the Police Dog training. The dog learns to work freely and being in the woods his capacity to discriminate between friendly victims and aggressive felons is very easy for him. We used […]
INPUT ———> THROUGHPUT ———> OUTPUT (Stimuli) (Senses/Perception/Processing) (Behavior) It’s been suggested by a reader that one can train a dog without trying to figure […]
I like to debate and pit my theory against other theories. Alas however these exchanges usually degrade into ad hominem attacks or worse, “my training is better than your training” contests as opposed to a discussion on merit. However recently I almost got into a debate with a prominent thinker on dogs, Gary Wilkes. Wilkes […]
(Thanks to Sang for bringing this book to my attention.) Little by little the paradigm on dogs is shifting. The current consensus is becoming that the hunt is what drew wolf and early man together and ultimately yielded the domestic dog. What’s particularly refreshing about this treatment is how it relies on Indigenous stories of […]
http://time.com/5363954/j35-killer-whale-calf/ It’s a touching story and we can all resonate with the mother Orca and the loss of her calf. But is this grief, and if not, is grief more meaningful than what the mother Orca could otherwise be said to be experiencing? Now when I argue that this is not grief because grief […]
From the New York Times Science Section: “The setting was romantic enough. Sunny spring day. A cherry tree blossoming a vivid pink. One party, the suitor, was dark, fetching and amorous. But the other party lay there like a corpse. It was, in fact, a corpse. So began the first documented human observation of […]
Wolves versus Dogs at Cooperation This experiment is exploring the cooperative capacity of dogs relative to wolves. It ends up with a muddled result because of two interrelated biases built into the interpretation. One, it sees the nature of cooperation as a function of cognitive capacity as opposed to emotional capacity. Are wolves smarter and […]
Join Kevin Behan at the Rowe Center April 13th-15th 2018 Whether you have a dog in your life or simply want to learn more about our species’ best friend, join renowned expert Kevin Behan and discover how a dog communicates with its body. What does a dog need? Love, play, food, shelter? These are important, […]
Lately there have been dramatic developments in the research on emotion. On one side of this new paradigm is a book by Lisa Barrett entitled “How Emotions Are Made” in which she argues that emotion is not hardwired Ala the classical model to which the likes of Panksepp and Dimasio have profoundly contributed. On the […]
A smart student who applies themselves at their studies might find themselves at an elite institution of higher learning, Duke University for example. And were they to excel there, they might find themselves studying under the auspices of a world famous scientist, perhaps someone who has discovered a new principle in physics, someone perhaps such […]
In “YDIYM” I postulated that if two beings want the same object they can potentially communicate. And if they want the same object that neither can get on their own, they can potentially connect. Above in the symbiotic relationship that’s evolved between badger and coyote we have an example of the former, a relationship which […]
Thermodynamics and Cooperation “Rewriting Life” “New Model of Evolution Finally Reveals How Cooperation Evolves By treating evolution as a thermodynamic process, theorists have solved one of the great problems in biology.” https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608139/new-model-of-evolution-finally-reveals-how-cooperation-evolves/ In this study the thermodynamics of how atoms in a material coordinate their spin states so that the same spin sweeps through the […]
My Facebook feed is almost 100% curated to provide a stream of dog behavior, interesting science and of special import, heavy construction equipment. At any rate this piece on dog behavior just came over the transom and warrants comment. 5 Signs That Your Dog Actually Loves You Let me put it this way, if one […]
In NDT the bite-and-carry is one of the five core exercises, and in fact it might be the most essential. Above we see that Victoria Stilwell is in effect prescribing the bite-and-carry exercise. Interestingly, so called science-based dog training is moving in the direction of the NDT practice and theory (Bradshaw: dogs should always win […]
What a Dog Wants to Tell You: Secrets of Canine Body Language Rowe Camp and Conference Center March 31, 2017 – April 2, 2017 22 Kings Highway Rowe, MA 01367 Whether you have a dog in your life or simply want to learn more about our species’ best friend, join renowned expert Kevin Behan and […]
The video linked below returns us to the question as to what is it about the body posture of the play bow that proves inviting and, we can approach this matter by way of a related question: How did the Play Bow evolve? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgVVKoX8eIc&feature=youtu.be (hopefully the link above will work) For example, if someone receives a […]
I’m currently writing a book on body language so that my model can be applied to the things we see dogs do everyday. In the meantime, and in sort of a crowd-sourcing way to flesh out my argument, I would like to pose the following question to a science-based trainer or a behaviorist. After a […]
From time to time Dr. Bekoff writes articles to clarify the matter of dominance in dogs. Bekoff: “I’ve argued in a number of essays that there is a basic misunderstanding of what dominance means and that people need to read the ethological literature on dominance in animals to gain a more complete understanding of what […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PepZPSbvj6A It occurred to researchers that dogs trained in the “Do-As-I-Do” obedience method presented the opportunity to test whether or not a dog is endowed with episodic memory. From Wikipedia: Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events (times, places, associated emotions, and other contextual who, what, when, where, why knowledge) that can be […]
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/47373/title/Mice-Display-Human-Like-Sense-of-Body-Awareness/ This research provides further verification of the phenomenon of emotional projection, by which I mean the projection of a feeling of the body’s physical center-of-gravity (p-cog), into an object so that the object feels to the subject as if it is an extension of its own body. This internal/external emotional connection is facilitated by […]
From the NY Times 10/10/16 “Why do dogs love to roll around in things that smell repulsive?” “One theory is that their sense of smell is really a complex motor system related to the brain. And so, Dr. Horowitz said, when Finn alights upon a rotting squirrel corpse in the park, the smell […]
The following article is quoted in full: By Anil Ananthaswamy “Thanks to unconscious processing, most of us instinctively know where our limbs are and what they are doing. This ability, called proprioception, results from a constant conversation between the body and brain. This adds up to an unerring sense of a unified, physical ‘me’.” “This […]
In Touch with Your Dog: How Getting Physical Helps Dogs Get Calm Rowe Camp and Conference Center November 11 – 13th, 2016 22 Kings Highway Rowe, MA 01367 Learn the “physics” of being physical with your dog, from a master trainer who knows what your dog needs in order to be a calm companion. Register […]
What language is spoken on Planet Dog? We sent Zeke to Portland Maine to find out. In the mind of a dog there’s only one question: What do I do with my energy? And there’s only one answer: Move well. Every object comes to mind as a function of resistance-to-moving well. Sensory input coalesces […]
Science is currently on the cusp of a paradigm shift in understanding the animal mind. On the one hand systems researchers are discovering simple principles responsible for complex social and collective actions. But then moving in the other direction cognitive researchers purport to find human like rational processes in the minds of animals. The debate […]
“The premise that the dog is linked to the wolf is nothing new. What is newly being presented here is the idea that sociability is a by-product of, and is dependent on, the prey instinct. Since killing large animals makes advanced social living possible, it makes sense to look for a connection between thew […]
