This is their first time to run free together, but I kept a long line on sable GSD in order to be safe and I positioned an old dog crate for Huuney to run into if she felt overwhelmed as these can often serve as innate “time out” spots that lets a dog emotionally restore […]

In this video I introduce the extremely high prey “instinct” sable GSD to Huuney. Note that both dogs are restrained on/lead and this is so I can control what happens. Why do I need to control what happens? Because I’m afraid they might fight. Does this fear travel down the lead? No, because it doesn’t […]

This is pretty self-explanatory. I took the sable GSD for a walk on a long lead, and then Cousy showed up and I tested them with my leash held tight knowing that if things didn’t go well, there was no possibility for a fight since Cousy would simply leave. But as I expected, the GSD […]

So here we have two whole males, both with very strong nature, and my goal here is to convert incoherent screaming (energy ungrounded in the gut) in the ungrounded male into coherent, metered barking for food (energy grounded in the gut). We can see that the black and tan GSD has a deep metered bark […]

Instinct is a load/overload manner of energy transfer. It’s how most animals most of the time make their living. Drive on the other hand is a steady-state energy transfer and it allows two beings to emotionally fuse so as their combined energies can overcome greater and greater objects of resistance. This is how complex hunting […]

When I wrote “Your Dog Is Your Mirror” I tried to anticipate critiques and “preload” a rebuttal into my argument. Unfortunately from my point of view, but fortunately for the readers’ that would have made the book too long and have even changed its focus. It turns out one can’t write defensively, the main thing […]

The following is a review from yingyanghouse.com. ~ Your Dog is Your Mirror: the emotional capacity of our dogs and ourselves, by Kevin Behan, New World Library Review  by Judith Poole Behan’s book first came to my attention when I heard him being interviewed on a PBS station. His premise caught my attention and the […]

Dolphins use electrosensing to locate prey: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20732-electric-dolphins-cetaceans-with-a-seventh-sense.html?full=true&print=true A Serbian boy manifests magnetism strong enough to hold onto metal objects, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1360081/Bogdan-The-seven-year-old-Serbian-boy-appears-magnetic.html   Animals of course migrate by way of earth’s magnetic field and recently it’s been discovered that humans carry a gene in their eye  http://www.bionews.org.uk/page_97703.asp that makes a protein, cryptochrome, which in insects senses the […]

Lee on the NDT Buzz page draws our attention to a science story that affirms my belief in an energy theory of behavior. In the eighties, I was inspired in this direction by reading about “packs” of Wolf Spiders that hunt Musk Ox Larvae, that in response to predation, herd up into defensive circles, hence […]

I am going to offer a number of thoughts on the nature of leadership, not because there is such a thing in the nature of animals, but because this issue is generally on every dog owner’s mind and can determine the nature of their relationship with their pet. In the old days folks used to […]

On Dog Star Daily there is a self-contradicting logic loop generated by two articles, one by an unidentified author, the other by Dr. Roz. (1) “When puppies reach adolescence, food lures temporarily lose effectiveness. The owner and their food lures now have to compete for the dog’s attention with all the more interesting stimuli in […]

In response to Annie’s question about Luke and Huuney, yes, Luke can be a great flip/flopper. I used to say flipping polarities for both front-to-back spinning ← → and top-to-bottom ↓ ↑ rolling over, but I’ve added “flopping” to make the distinction between the two because while they are related they are indeed separate phenomenon. […]

“Huuney” has discovered that it’s better to receive than to give. In other words, it feels better to be the object-of-attraction and absorb the other dog’s energy, than to be at the predator polarity and transmit energy to the other dog. This guarantees social behavior because acting prey-like softens “Luke’s” tension and rather than getting […]

Pavlov discovered that the best time to CORRECT a dog is when it is performing a task CORRECTLY.   The theory of Natural Dog Training (wherein emotion runs to ground through physiological states that then produce behaviors in conformance with the prey drive) can also be expressed in terms of Pavlov.  Note that the prey […]

Kevin will be talking to Tom Ashbrook tomorrow, June 2nd, from 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EST on NPR’s On Point program. Call in to ask your questions, live, and hear more about the theory behind his new book, Your Dog Is Your Mirror. How can you listen in? Click here! Call 800-423-8255 to ask […]

Join us for an evening with Kevin Behan: Monday, July 25th, 2011 7:30 – 9:00 pm at the Westport Public Library in Westport, CT .  Does your dog have a behavior issue that is a total puzzlement to you and does not seem to change no matter what your dog trainer does? Kevin Behan, dog […]

So why wait for science? The goal of NDT is for owners to become their own experts. This requires questioning authority, learning to trust what you feel, and to recognize internal contradictions in the information you’re being presented with, no euphemism or oxymoron must lie unchallenged (for example, the term dominance instinct is an oxymoron). […]

Adam asks: “Also, is eye contact from the object of attraction onto the dog, required for this phenomenon of emotional projection?” It’s not required as a two way deal, but the dog fixates on the eyes of what it’s attracted to because this gives it direct and instant access to its own body’s physical center […]

I’m looking forward to the possibility of a “blog-a-log” that might develop between Lee Kelley and Dr. John Bradshaw at Psychology Today. Especially since these questions of why animals do what they do I believe help illustrate the distinction between attraction and intention. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pets-and-their-people/201104/greetings/comments I also look forward to reading Bradshaw’s new book, in particular […]

The idea of choice immediately evokes in our mind the notion of a self-contained intelligence deliberating over options and doing a cost/benefit analysis over some span of time. However, in emotional intelligence, which is a network consciousness, it takes two to make a choice. Every animal wants to feel good, but we are complex emotional […]

Some Interesting Science: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110428070237.htm   “Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany recently reported in the journal PLoS ONE that although the physical laws governing object stability are reasonably well represented by the brain, you are a better judge of how objects fall when you are upright than when you […]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/science/03firewalker.html?_r=1 The above is an excellent story which in my view details how through emotional projection (the stronger the bond the more the individual “lets go” and releases into the vicarious experience of watching what another, with whom they’re bonded, is experiencing.) Then, the hearts become synchronized so as to establish a common beat. Emotion […]

Some maintain that science requires numbers, data must be quantified so that experimental results can be firmly established and replicated. Sometimes a small spike in a graph, a mere statistical blip on a graph indicates the presence of a new finding. I read recently that the Fermilab particle accelerator found a statistical anomaly, an unexpected […]

On a recent radio interview I was asked by the host; What do dogs want?  I answered, “To resolve their owner’s unresolved emotion.” However I hadn’t achieved enough context for that remark by that point in the interview so my answer felt a little flat to me. Thus, I’m grateful to Sang for the following […]

Perhaps on a drive through prime horse country you’ve found yourself taken by the view of gleaming, magnificently muscled horses grazing contentedly within fenced in fields presided over by stately barns and manor. Some of these horses are worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars as would of course befit such multi-million dollar equestrian complexes. […]

As you get further along in your reading of Your Dog Is Your Mirror, or as you turn that last page of the book, we would like to create a section on the NDT site where you can discuss your thoughts about the material. It could be about a story, an ‘a-ha’ moment, or simply […]

When I work with clients I often reference certain movies as insights into how animals learn and what the training and rehabilitation process is truly about. The “Karate Kid” is one long time favorite as in “Wax/On; Wax/Off” and then there is the “Horse Whisperer” —to paraphrase Robert Redford’s character: “Maam, I don’t help people […]

From time to time I want to point to science that while studying a different subject, can nevertheless shed light on the nature of animal consciousness. The main premise of my model for the animal mind is that the hunger/balance processes of the body and brain, do double, triple and ever-more elaborate duty in their […]

What could be cozier, a dog snuggled deep into the comforter on a raw winter’s night, warming the bed, groaning and sighing with drowsy contentment while the cold winter wind bites and whips against the bedroom window? When my father and I floated the Cains River in New Brunswick, Canada during the last run of […]