“Suppose every mealtime consists of all 3 dogs getting their bowl of kibble. They are full, but after, I have all come round and give a milk bone to Sissy and Red, but not Peanut. At all other treat occasions throughout the day, they all 3 get a treat. If I keep this up, how […]

If I’m somewhat understanding Burl’s very deft translations and commentary on Whitehead, then apprehension is mental and prehension is energy. And therefore animals have no intention, rather they feel the energy that percolates up through their cells and then through their metabolic, mechanical and neurological systems and then go on to formulate a coherent response […]

Thanks to our readers, the Natural Dog Training site is full of fantastic questions and interesting scenarios. We are continuing to develop the site in order to nurture this dynamic, growing community, and hope to provide more and more resources to improve your learning experiences with NDT. At the moment, we realize that there are […]

From Christine Randolph: “One of my dogs jumps up to lie on my belly and licks my face, I understand that is a regurgitation signal for parents. She also pushes her cheek to mine and yodels excitedly while wagging her tail. especially if I start singing a song for her at that stage (resonating chambers?) […]

Thanks to Christine for suggesting this section! The following is an excerpt from her comment: “My first contribution is a scenario: A few years ago my family was out at camp. My sister brought her dog “Happy” a very nervous and high-strung beagle mix. The first thing she did was to bite Duncan in the […]

Very enjoyable intelligent discussion with ideas clearly articulated. However an energy theory sees emotion in a different light. My main critique is that they miss the fundamental aspect of emotion, which is that it is a universal and monolithic “force” of attraction. And this means that there is no such thing as a negative emotion […]

Here are some good examples on Youtube of advanced forms of emotional projection and emotional center of gravity. Persistence Hunting The Barefoot Professor Kevin: What’s profoundly compelling to me is watching these hunters get into an almost musical rhythm as they synchronize with the movements of their prey, they pick up the cadence and I […]

Neil Sattin of the Natural Dog Blog recently hosted a conference call with Kevin Behan. As he had mentioned in an earlier interview, he wanted to provide owners with the opportunity to speak directly with Kevin to get their most important questions answered. Below is an excerpt from Neil’s site about the conference: “We had […]

I don’t want to sound like an ambulance chaser by delving into a discussion of the recent fatal attack by a killer whale against its trainer at Sea World, but I feel compelled to comment because this tragedy speaks to the rise in aggression, in dogs as well, and has direct bearing on how NDT […]

People love their dogs so much and take such good care of them that you often hear them say in regards to reincarnation, “I’d like to come back as one of my own dogs.” I on the other hand wouldn’t want to come back as one of my dogs, or as the dog of any […]

I really like Damasio, but in the interest of time I’m going to be abrupt because simply put, the brain can’t feel a thing. With all due respect to Dr. Damasio: there’s a reason why we place our hand on our heart when we feel moved. We do not point to our brain and this […]

The Pleasure Principle IS Group Circuitry Occasionally Lee and I get involved in debates with behavioral scientists or at least those that seem to be well informed on the science of behavior since they post anonymously, and the back and forth follows a predictable course that ultimately doesn’t get anywhere because apparently I don’t have […]

BURL: OK, next, what is the difference between a feeling and an emotion?  I submit it is much akin to that between color and ‘particular colors.’  As I recently explained using a quote from LCK, a physical feeling has a datum (what it is) and a subjective form (HOW it is), and I stated that […]

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 […]

From my brief dip into Whitehead, what I find concordant is that in my model the observer and the object of attraction are not separate, and the seeming gap between them is what we perceive of as Time and then fill up with concepts to explain interrelatedness. I call this the “mental ether” because just […]

In the interest of organization until we work out the organization of comments situation, we can follow up on other threads with this post. Thank you. CR: Images, I think that is an important key to dog behaviour if it is true.. what kind of images do you think dogs can hold in their consciousness, […]

I want to finish up on some points made by Christine Randolph but most of all on the occasion of this New Year, thank everyone for their participation, their comments, helping to flesh out the model with questions and points as well as offering critical analysis in the spirit of inquiry. I’m greatly looking forward […]

While there is no way to prove my energy model directly, however if it provides the best explanation for what we observe and the way things are, then it is the strongest theory, circumstantial evidence notwithstanding. I also believe that were the scientific community to apply its tools to the model, it could indeed be […]

The A-Not-B Error and Physical Memory NPR reported on the following study and I’ve quoted it in its entirety below. This is an interesting study because from my point of view it shows the correlation between physical memory and feelings. It is also interesting because it shows how experimenters are misled by a personality theory […]

As an overview, the emotional battery stores both mass and energy, (I mean this literally since physical objects of attraction–as well as their inherent energy–become fused through Pavlovian conditioning onto the animals’ sense of its physical center-of-gravity) and serves as both an energy reserve boost and as emotional ballast (e-cog) as a source of information […]

Physical memories of experience are typed first and foremost according to intensity. The output of the Big-Brain is this intensity, the stimulation engine, perhaps quite like an engine in a car. The Big-Brain is the sensation dynamo, the sensory interface with the environment, and it generates a certain amount of thrust that is variably grounded […]

A discussion as to whether dogs apprehend reality in terms of a virtual rather than an actual field of energy may not seem particularly relevant to training a dog to stay in the yard and staying off the furniture, but it is. Because dogs are social by nature, they do everything in terms of a […]

Natalie Angier just wrote an epistle in my behavioral Bible, the NY Science Times entitled, “The Circular Logic of the Universe.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/science/08angier.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 (I’m not according any particular publication the status of papal infallibility, just making the point that physics is as Einstein once remarked, our best way of knowing the mind of the “Old One” […]

Thanks Lee: hopefully my responses to your comments and questions will help clarify the model and flesh it out in all its particulars. Thanks. KB: Perhaps my next article (Nature/Desire) will address your points more precisely, but for now let me just say that the nature-of-information is variability, but not variation by virtue of some […]

Lee asked some very fruitful questions and I proceeded in their order as listed below. LCK:  1) Why do you call it a virtual field? It seems to me that the network consciousness you talk about is dependent on there being some sort of medium connecting all things in nature. Valerie Hunt seems to have […]

An Energy Interpretation of a Squirrel-Chasing Dog The main thing to realize is that the real action isn’t in the head. The Big-Brain is fundamentally but one terminal in the body/mind as an emotional battery. There is something going on to be sure up there, but the main function of neurological activity in the Big-Brain […]

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 […]

I’ve taken some passages from the newspaper article on the Princeton research to highlight parallels and distinctions with my reading of animal behavior. “Chakrabarti and Rabitz analyzed these observations of the proteins’ behavior from a mathematical standpoint, concluding that it would be statistically impossible for this self-correcting behavior to be random, and demonstrating that the […]

The OC School argues that learning theory based on reinforcement completely encompasses everything being said in Natural Dog Training. Meanwhile my complaint with OC is that while it is highly descriptive and in ways insightful, this is because in my view a lot of “charge” is removed from someone’s mind when they observe what’s going […]