In a recent experiment dogs were said to have displayed jealousy when their owner paid attention to a stuffed dog that could be made to bark and wag its tail. It was based on an experiment with pre-verbal children who likewise were said to become jealous when their parent attended to and lavished over a […]
I’m the object of a regular beat-down on the site of the Unknown Scientist and I return to these “discussions” because they so clearly demonstrate the internal contradict at the heart of modern Behaviorism. {Of course these are the same theocrats who criticized me in the seventies, eighties and nineties when I argued that wolves […]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25894-meet-the-electric-life-forms-that-live-on-pure-energy.html#.U8rFDo1dWYk Everything about the behavior of these bacterium is in direct response to energy proper, nothing interim such as digestion to reduce something to its energetic essence, it begins and ends with essence. Could the behavior of animals evolved to be different from such a platform in that their minds are configured to reduce […]
Join us September 27 – October 1st Cornelius, Oregon quantumcaninewest.wordpress.com NDT is proud to head to the west coast this September for an event organized by the NDT West group. Set on a private farm an hour from downtown Portland, this conference will consist of two sessions: an introduction of the Natural Dog Training theory […]
As well as learning to think positively, we need to learn to stop thinking. Steve Taylor, Ph.D. Indeed, one can’t think outside the box because thinking is the box. The key is to feel.
Via Twitter, I posed this question to the SPARCS conference. Of course it got lost in the shuffle but I am surprised that such a question didn’t come up given that the phenomenon of hierarchy is the number one feature of the canine mind. If dominance is an instinct, yet malleable to context (and thus a […]
CRITICAL THINKING IN DOGDOM ”Many theories have been advanced but there is a mass of confusion about social signaling among animals,” Dr. Weldon said. ”Mimicry of age, alarm calls and other characteristics, as well as sex, often cause misperceptions among observing researchers.” http://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/19/science/guile-and-deception-the-evolution-of-animal-courtship.html?pagewanted=2 Another SPARCS conference on the canine mind is being held in […]
Little by little the NDT thesis is trickling into common understanding. Stanley Coren recently took note of the Mammoth Megasite interpretation by Pat Shipman and wrote a very good article in summation. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201406/dogs-and-mammoths-new-glimpse-early-canine-history However this understanding of the canine mind I discovered simply by studying the behavior of dogs without reading human thoughts into their […]
An article, purporting to be the latest science on dogs, has been making the internet rounds in condemnation of Cesar Millan. http://yodogcast.tumblr.com/post/55504306960/the-damage-of-the-dog-whisperer-a-scientific-critique Cesar Millan is a particularly nettlesome burr under the saddle of progressive learning/training theorists, who believe that animal behavior is driven by reinforcement. Cesar is challenging this view, in effect saying that there is an […]
“It is a fact that we have only to set the most simple and primary into action, to find, without our having to import any further complications, that more sophisticated considerations are already implied, inherent within them.” Lawrence Edwards The principle of emotion as a function of attraction, implies flow, resistance to flow, and […]
Many owners of aggressive dogs have visited my farm and done “Trolley Work;” what I also call “Maple Sugaring” wherein we burn off the stress that makes two dogs want to fight each other by running them along parallel trolley lines and thereby get down to the sweet nectar of pure attraction whereafter the dogs […]
Any theory that attempts to account for the animal mind and which doesn’t incorporate an energy dynamic as its organizing principle, will always contradict itself after it inevitably ascribes thoughts (as in comparing one moment or point of view to another) to the mind of the animal in order to hold their theory together. As […]
Occasionally the Unknown Scientist puts down the pipettes, quells the bunsen burners and graciously takes the time to critique my work. Recently the US has questioned the linkage I’ve drawn between emotion and stress as an explanation for why dogs muzzle grab. The US has employed the technique of interchanging equivalencies to see if my […]
Answer: Because IT can only get out the way IT went in. Hexie and Hessian, my two German shepherds, one day suddenly started muzzle grabbing Cousy, my neighbors’ rambunctious and incessantly playful lab. I’ve never seen them do it to each other or to any other dog. In fact, you rarely see dogs do […]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/science/the-social-life-of-spiders-thriving-in-a-social-web.html?ref=science&_r=0 In “NDT” and “YDIYM” I offered a new view of personality in contravention to the prevailing consensus of learning theory, i.e. that reinforcements and instincts are enough to account for the complexities of how a dogs’ behavior changes over time. I discovered that two dogs living together and treated exactly the same (even were […]
After being stimulated by something, the first step in an act of mental apprehension is the phenomenon of emotional projection. The animal projects its physical center of gravity into the form of what it’s attracted to and thus arrives at a feeling. This is the most conservative statement that can be made about the mental lives […]
In the video below a magician plays a sleight of hand on a number of dogs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEQXeLjY9ak Stanley Coren in his Psychology Today blog argues that the dog’s reaction corresponds to a child’s cognitive understanding of “object permanence.” To support this view he cites a dog still retaining interest in a ball that […]
What do these two scenes have in common (was unable to embed the video, just paste into a new browser and should show up)? The first one below purportedly shows altruism inherent in the mind of a “person” ……. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1830995853705995 …………….the other about high cognitive process in a “person.” Hint, […]
I don’t think it takes any leap of imagination to see the emotional leverage the moose in the video below enjoys over the dog as predator. Because a Moose has a strong predatory aspect, its head is very high, it triggers deep physical memories in the dog, which is why it is barking in a […]
PBS this week featured two excellent shows on animals. One was a Nature episode about the Turkey man, Joe Hutto, who grafted himself into a flock of wild turkeys and learned their ways. In this new documentary he makes contact with mule deer simply by being among them for two years. http://www.wgbh.org/programs/Nature-26/episodes/Touching-the-Wild-51073 {It seems to […]
In Harmony with Nature Animal Haven presents Kevin Behan’s Natural Dog Training April 11 – 13th | Orlando, Florida *Update: this event has currently reached capacity! For questions, please email Kim at kimkapes@gmail.com.* NDT is pleased to head to Florida for another conference this spring! On April 11-13, a three-day workshop will take place in […]
(Thanks to Ann F. for bringing this important book by Lawrence Edwards to my attention) The following passages from “Vortex of Life” (p.17) are especially apropos to our discussion about seeing the interactions of the street dogs in the “heat pack” as a flow system, rather than reducing them to a smattering of disconnected parts, […]
Putting aside all the ethical considerations that this video has provoked, a simple question about the pack dynamic depicted here: who is in control?
I had a very enjoyable interview with Justin and Kate from Extreme Health Radio, the link is below. The green play button is toward the top of the page: http://www.extremehealthradio.com/ep-220-kevin-behan-how-your-dogs-behavioral-problems-are-simply-a-reflection-of-your-own-issues-3-20-2014/
Thanks for collectively straining over the puzzle as to what flocks of birds cavorting aloft, Orcas porpoising alongside boats, Orcas collectively knocking a seal off an ice flow, a horse and dog playing, and in fact we could extend it to all the things that animals do, have in common. Below is a compilation of […]
Can the stress that an animal experiences in its lifetime be inherited by its progeny? Yes http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/opinion/sunday/can-children-inherit-stress.html?ref=opinion&_r=0 “What explains this pattern? Does trauma lead to suboptimal parenting, which leads to abnormal behavior in children, which later affects their own parenting style? Or can you biologically inherit the effects of your parents’ stress, after all?” “It […]
Please see the link below: http://bixiegirl.wordpress.com
http://bixiegirl.wordpress.com We’ll set up a dedicated section for this new blog on the NDT website soon, but I trust you’ll find this entry interesting in regards to rehabilitating a dog whose life has gone awry. The fates have conspired to bring Bixie into our lives, funny how it works that way, and this blog will […]
