(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 […]

Finally the Unknown Scientist has made an argument against me that isn’t wholly a straw man/ad-hominem work of rhetoric. https://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/kevin-behan-ignores-genetics-invents-a-new-history-for-the-doberman/ I have written that most breeds, the Doberman Pinscher in particular, have deteriorated when their function was subordinated to fancy and friendliness. The Unknown Scientist points out that the Doberman in reality suffered from a […]

This dog is highly aggressive and was somehow rescued from a sketchy neighborhood in New Jersey. After riding for several hours in a car to be transferred to a foster, he bit the transport driver severely in the shoulder when she was getting him out of the car, unfortunately causing nerve damage. He becomes highly […]

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 […]

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 […]

Aggression and the Nature of Fear Since in my view all expressions of anti-social aggression are manifestations of fear, it would prove fruitful to take a closer look at the nature of fear. Fear is the collapse of a state of attraction. And because a dog doesn’t discriminate between physical and emotional equilibrium, all forms […]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131010124559.htm Pointing is part of the act of emotional projection, which is how we direct our force. (BTW, force is energy.) The projection of force is universal throughout the animal kingdom. It has nothing to do with domestication per se, in other words, animals don’t “figure out” human gestures because of a history of close […]

Panksepp, Natural Dog Training, correlations and distinctions. The interesting thing about writing this article which I initially thought would be pretty simple and straightforward, is that in order to make correlations, I have to at the same time draw distinctions. I hope this doesn’t detract from conveying how much I respect Panksepp’s work. Step by […]

Learning To Bark Is A Wave Alwynne writes an excellent blog about her dog “Cholula” which among other themes documents the trials and tribulations of teaching a dog to speak on command. http://sweetslugabed.com/blog/2012/10/09/cholula-shows-her-speak/ What’s interesting about the bark-on-command is that some dogs get it instantly whereas for some dogs it can take a long, long…………long, […]

It’s my premise that whenever one tries to explain a natural system (such as the animal mind) with a personality theory (the animal as a self-contained entity of intelligence) one will always generate self-defeating logic loops and this will require more and more complex rationales to keep these self-annihilating principles from running into each other. […]

The old definition of dominance meant a social hierarchy of rank, high status being sought because it accorded breeding privileges and since genetic proliferation is held as the mainspring of evolution. This definition was propagated by scientists who had gathered the data and interpreted the statistics, and was then disseminated by trainers and behaviorists to […]

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 […]

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 […]

What should I do if my dog growls at me? “I told my neighbor what happened and he said his dog growled at him, ONCE. Should I do what my neighbor did?” First, step away from the dog. Step back from the edge. Don’t do anything. Take a deep, deep breath and enjoy a long […]

It’s true that anyone can claim to be natural and in one sense, everyone is being natural because in the final analysis, the dog responds to what the trainer does through a naturally evolved temperament and so it’s always the dog’s nature that’s being affected no matter how arbitrary the training approach. The term natural […]

You can read more about the dog in this clip at the owner’s blog http://baddoglaszlo.blogspot.com/ . Laszlo, the doberman in the video, was a rescue dog that “upon adoption [he] instantly manifested all the most disturbing rescue-dog behavior problems you could conceive: unhinged aggression towards dogs, unpredictable edginess with people, jumping up, pulling like a […]