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 […]
A child learns to crawl, stand, toddle, walk and run without stopping to wonder how they are capable of manipulating their arms and legs in order to move about. They do it because they can do it. It just happens. Apparently all a child has to do is want to crawl, stand, toddle, walk […]
We normally think of compulsion as something aversive to a dog, but there are situations wherein it can release a dog’s energy. We think this way because we humans have an outside-in perspective on change, we think the outside causes what we experience inside. But an animal has an inside-out perspective, feeling that what is […]
I converted this to a post for two reasons. 1) b.. ‘s synthesis represents an achievement of replicability. The good news is that one can learn to understand the internal processes of the animal mind, we do all have one after all. However the bad news is you might end up thinking like me. 2) […]
(This is a very, very long post on NDT theory) Canine body language revolves around the same question that drives much social research, what is the nature of impulse control? I propose that a primal impulse can only be held in check by an impulse of equal primacy. Otherwise an individual will be in […]
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 […]
http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2013/09/24/study-explains-why-women-want-to-eat-babies/ “The researchers concluded: ‘These results show that the odor of newborns undoubtedly plays a role in the development of motivational and emotional responses between mother and child by eliciting maternal care functions such as breastfeeding and protection.” Researcher Johannes Frasnelli said: ‘What we know now and what is new is there is a neural […]
Music, Natural Dog Training, Panksepp and the Constructal Law http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40285693?uid=3739664&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102652666731 My argument is that the locomotive dynamic is the basis for our aesthetic appreciation of music, however not in the manner which is theorized in the article below, i.e. that synchronizing footfalls renders a beat of silence which then makes it easier to hear […]
At the 3:00 minute mark of this video there is an excellent example of how the notion of calming signals leads to a fundamental misinterpretation of two dogs interacting. The author of the video interprets an interaction between a yellow dog and a black lab in terms of calming signals, as one self-contained entity of […]
NPR reported on some intriguing research. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/10/09/162401053/a-lively-mind-your-brain-on-jane-austen Professor Natalie Phillips who specializes in literature and neuroscience and who is especially interested in the nature of distractibility given that it is a prominent theme in Jane Austen’s work, engaged in a study examining the difference in a reader’s mind when deeply immersed versus skimming. “Phillips said […]
Eric Brad in his excellent blog has recently written about a phenomenon he thinks is a mysterious and yet a normal part of obedience training: the randomly disobedient dog. I would argue that it’s not mysterious and it’s not “normal” as in, to be expected in the natural course of living with a dog. In […]
Calming signals or emotion as a group mind? Calming? Yes Signal? No The most significant thing in this video is that the brown dog at all times acts as a mirror, as the equal and opposite to the Malamute and, it also has a drive to approach the Malamute, […]
Cliff (of Lenny fame) and Eric Brad has an interesting exchange on Eric’s site, linked below, and this gives me the opportunity to emphasize again the fundamental distinctions between NDT and Learning Theory. And even though I’ve probably said these things many times on this site before, perhaps in this interweaving of a number of […]
(Thanks to Russell for bringing this research to our attention.) http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-retreat-circuit-links-hunger-pursuit.html Emotion begins with “a want,” no matter how complex or sublime a feeling, it always crystallizes around “a want.” This is a common denominator that runs true from the most complex to the most primitive organisms. If something is perceived as conducive to a […]
(Be advised that this a long essay on theory.) Recently there was a productive discussion (except for you know who) on Lee’s Psychology Today blog in regards to the differences between dogs and cats in terms of their respective social capacities. I would like to springboard off this discussion in order to more thoroughly develop […]
If you get a chance, see this Sunday’s Sixty Minutes segment on “autobiographical memory.” My first impression is that the people profiled have access to their physical memories so that they can recount every day of their life. It seems that they recapture the feeling they experience, and that the feeling can be correlated to […]
THE THEORY OF EMOTION AS THE BASIS OF THE ANIMAL MIND (which is easiest to see in the behavior of dogs). When a dog is wandering about a roadway and a car approaches, even if it is frightened because it had just been abandoned or had escaped from its yard, the dog unlike a cat […]
The physical center of gravity is the kernel of a dog’s self and a dog’s sense of it is activated by external forces and sources, specifically when dealing with other beings, it is activated by eye contact. This is because a state of attention is composed of two beams, the external focal gaze by which […]
I can say that the ability of a dog to feel an earthquake before it happens, often hours, is the same capacity of a dog to feel an impending epileptic seizure or diabetic attack in an owner, hours before it happens. Its sense of continuum is picked up through its balance circuitry and when there […]
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 […]
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 […]
